Navajo - Next Generation Balloon and LTA Performance Model
Global Aerospace Corporation is developing an innovative, new trajectory and performance tool for Earth and planetary balloons and lighter-than-air (LTA) vehicle systems, called Navajo. The key innovations of Navajo are integrated vertical and horizontal trajectory modeling, application to Earth and planetary balloons and LTA systems, a graphical user interface, and a computer-platform-independent software package. Additional innovations are (a) the decoupling of environment and balloon trajectory models to allow a given balloon design to be flown in any number of environments with different levels of fidelity (b) the opportunity for integration of safety analysis of Earth balloon flights for in-flight and pre-flight safety calculations, (c) improved fidelity of thermal models, and (d) an extensible application architecture to allow different balloon designs and new environments. Navajo has been benchmarked with the current SINBAD code used by many balloon operators. Navajo provides a more accurate simulation than SINBAD and doesn’t require the usual fudge factors to provide good performance predictions.
Navajo is a new, advanced, and modern simulation and analysis tool to enable the development of new balloon and LTA technologies for Earth and planetary applications.
