Open up your mind and say, ahh...

A group of volunteers have an idea for joining the private space race – airships.

The DIY crew sent an unmanned powered airship soaring 95,085 feet above Nevada last month, an altitude they claim is the record for a (remotely) piloted airship. Some free-floating research balloons have gone higher.

The group operates JP Aerospace and the tandem balloon vehicle is part of their “Airship to Orbit” project. They hope to use high-altitude airships as a launch platform for rockets or hypersonic aircraft sent into space.

JP Aerospace president John Powell said in a statement the group achieved flight with a dramatically smaller budget than the usual aerospace companies.

“The big aerospace firms have been trying to do this for decades, spending hundreds of millions of dollars” Powell said. “We’ve spent about $30,000 and the past five years developing Tandem.”

Air-launching a space or hypersonic vehicle is not a new idea. The X-15 project used a Boeing B-52 bomber to carry the dart like X-15 to more than 40,000 feet, where it would be dropped before rocketing to sub-orbital space and speeds of more than Mach 5. Scaled Composites used an airplane to launch SpaceShipOne and will again use the same type of airborne launch for SpaceShipTwo.

Using an airship as a launch platform also has been on the drawing boards awhile but never put to use. Lockheed Martin has been developing its High Altitude Airship, but the vehicle is designed for altitudes around 60,000 feet and is primarily a military observation platform.

The JP Aerospace vehicle is 30 feet long and uses a pair of balloons for buoyancy. Two electric motors mounted on a carbon-fiber truss turn six-foot diameter propellers designed to work in the thin air found at such altitudes. The airship was maneuvered by a person on the ground.

JP Aerospace hopes its relatively simple and inexpensive system could be a cost-effective way to put payloads into orbit. And of course there is the plan to one day use larger airships as a launch platform for astronauts on their way to make some laps around the planet.

It’s been a while since an airplane maker has rekindled the age old dream of New York to Tokyo flights in a few hours. But taking advantage of having the aerospace world currently camped out on its home turf, EADS, the parent company of Airbus, used the Paris airshow as the venue announce an idea it’s pondering for the latest Mach 4+ airliner.

Aimed at travelers who may need to travel half way around the world and back in a day, the concept being developed by EADS is called the Zero Emission Hypersonic Transport, or ZEHST. We’re not quite sure how the three different propulsion systems add up to zero emissions, but it is an interesting idea.

The 50-100 passenger airplane would take off from a runway using turbo fan jet engines like a normal airliner. Shortly after take off the sleek fuselage would be pulled into a steep climb where rocket engines would then push it along to Mach 2 and more than 100,000 feet. Once up to the proper speed and altitude, ramjet engines would then be used propel the ZEHST to over Mach 4 (~3,000 mph) allowing it to link any two cities in just a few hours or less.

Upon arriving near the destination, the ramjet engines would be shut down and the airplane would glide until it is flying slow enough and low enough to start up the turbo fan engines. It would then make an approach and land like a typical airliner.

If all this sounds like a dream, EADS acknowledges some of the technology is still in the development phase. But like any good dreamy idea, it is not promising anything soon. The company says such an airliner would not enter service until 2040.

Photos/Video: EADS