Volume 25: Accelerated Energy Innovations and Emerging Technologies

An Aerospace Approach To Counter Climate Change Narayanan Komerath, Ravi Deepak, Adarsh Deepak

Abstract

Combating Climate Change requires temporally and spatially-resolved atmospheric and solar data planetwide. The Glitter Belt HALE architecture of reflective vehicles serves both as meteorology platforms and as a scalable, reversible option to reduce insolation. The 30.5km altitude and 12-hour night glide requirements, rendezvous and swarm operation for high-precision distributed antenna applications all pose unique challenges, but are shown feasible with the present approach. Conceptual design, small scale design-build-fly tests, and dynamic flight simulation are used to remove uncertainties and derive system properties. Scale-up to reduce atmospheric heat retention is viable in concert with GHG reduction and efficiency improvement measures. Given international will, Global Warming can be controlled in verified, safe and reversible manner that uniquely satisfies all guidance from the National Academies.

Keywords Glitter Belt; Flying Leaf; Flying Leaflet; Solar Reflection; UAV swarm