Life goes on for TAO Transatmospheric Operations GmbH in Stuttgart after its recent split with Sanswire. The company retains all of its rights in its stratospheric airship project SkyDragon and is now looking for new investment partners. SkyDragon will be capable of unmanned and autonomous flight for an undetermined period at an altitude of 20 km.
Traditional airships operate at altitudes up to 7km, ordinary aeroplanes up to 12k m. The stratosphere above 16km is free from human built long endurance flight vehicles. Company founder Prof. Dr. Bernd Kroeplin, explains “The project is to accomplish the first long endurance flight mission in the lower stratosphere. This will introduce the representation of mankind in the last regime of the earth, where up to day permanent representation is not possible.” Telecommunications and surveillance are the first goals. The fields of application are manifold as for example telecommunication in areas of catastrophe, while all infrastructure has been destroyed the SkyDragon system can re-establish the mobile telecommunication system within very little time, assuring telecommunication for the suffering population and the respective rescue parties.
The TAO Group is composed of the TAO Transatmospheric Operations GmbH, of the TAO Technologies GmbH in Stuttgart and Berlin, TAO MnD Switzerland and associated companies with various partners.
It all started with the world’s first solar airship, the name of which was „Lotte“. The airship was built in 1994. It participated in the solar race in Australia and still today is considered as pathbreaking technology in the field of solar flights with lighter than Air vehicles. Based on this technology the German Airship Technology GmbH (AT) was founded in 1997, the company today is part of the TAO-Group.
In 1999 Prof. Dr. Bernd-Helmut Kröplin received the Körber Prize for the ideas about high altitude platforms. Subsequently he established a new research and development team with the objective to build the new SkyDragon, a lighter than air vehicle allowing to fly in the stratosphere.
The first TAO company was founded in 2001 to implement some of the theoretical concepts conceived within the Institute for Statics and Dynamics in Air and Space Constructions (ISD) of the University of Stuttgart, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. habil. Bernd H. Kroeplin.
For the last nine years the TAO-Group has been building segmented airships to be used at high altitudes. These lighter than air vehicles combine the characteristics of a plane with the advantages of conventional airships.