AIRPUP

By Mathew Lippincott (US) 2018

A crowd funded kite balloon with novel design for long-lasting flight and ease of aerial videography, communications, and meteorology.

Airpup is the first new kite balloon design in 25 years. Kite balloons are tethered balloons that fly like kites, and are often called ‘aerostats’. Invented in the late 19th century, most kite balloons are fairly large tethered blimps used for advertising, weather measurements, photography, and to lift radar systems. Airpup utilizes a novel aerodynamic shape and lightweight construction to make a smaller, more portable kite balloon. Airpup can fly for ten days from a helium tank carried in a backpack, and stay in the air for three days between fillings. AirPup also cleverly circumvents flying restrictions placed on drones.

EXHIBITOR BIOGRAPHY

Mathew Lippincott has collaborated across the boundaries of art, science and education to execute projects as diverse as the city of Portland’s emergency sanitation plan, signage for the US’s first edibly landscaped public park, and a space suit you can make in your living room. He has shown artwork at the CDC, spoken at the USGS & EPA, written a new chapter to the Uniform Plumbing Code, and consulted on kite flying for NASA.

As a founding member of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, he worked to translate environmental monitoring prototypes into manufactured kits and wrote and illustrated guides to environmental pollution. Mathew maintained and versioned community research into Public Lab’s Balloon Mapping Kit, and the campaign made Kickstarter’s best of 2012

Credits:
Fabrication assistance from The Blimpworks
Photo credits - Colleen Donaldson

LINKS

Website: headfullofair.com

Website: crowdsupply.com/head-full-of-air/airpup

Instagram: @headfullofair

Twitter: @headfullofair