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Construction of a high tower to the stratosphere was first proposed by Canadian Thoth Company. Because of its enormous scale, people are hesitant to implement the project immediately. This paper proposes several next steps to its realization. Fundamental aspects of the structure are presented. Based on the models, treated are a long bridge over Tsugaru Straight, medium height towers for an inter-city rope way or a suspended rocket launcher in addition to the stratospheric tower. For a light weight structure, some inflatable models are tested to verify its effectiveness to the aerospace field of application.

The existence of a platform at the stratosphere is expected to be the role to gain a foothold in space. When the platform is employed airship in, it is transported by advection due to its light-weight body. Thereupon, a mooring of platform is reasonable in order to incarnate fixed-point platform. Conception of a captive platform system is similar to the Rockoon one which rendered remarkable services for the space observation of the early days. Therefore, the application of captive platform system to the launch site is highly expected in order to realize the space transportation system with a large quantity and high frequency. In this study, the motion of a captive platform system constructed from an airship and a tether is analyzed in order to ensure that the motion of a captive platform system is practically incarnated. Moreover, the sensitivity of aerodynamic performance of the airship is observed. Consequently, the practically incarnated motion of a captive platform system has been identified under the condition of the storm environment. Furthermore, the reduction of the advection distance driven away by the storm has been quantitatively indicated under the different condition of aerodynamic performance of the airship.

A station-keeping platform in the stratosphere can be a novel foothold toward spaceactivities. If the platform is conformed as free-ight LTA vehicles, there are possibilitiesthat they may be blown away by the atmospheric advection due to its free-ight nature.Therefore, mooring this type of platform to the ground by a cable will be much easierto hold it in position. This concept of a captive platform system looks somewhat similarto rockoon systems which provided remarkably good services for the space observation inthe past days. Namely, application of a captive platform system to a rocket launch padis well expected to realize a space transportation system of ample payload capacity withmuch frequent services. In addition, this newly conceived system will have a wide spectrumrange of application elds such as agriculture, meteorology, communication, etc. However,several technical issues are identi ed to materialize such a captive stratospheric platform.In these studies, summary results are presented for each of these technical issue itemsregarding ight tests, tether system operation, and wireless communication experiment.Consequently, useful knowledge has been empirically acquired concerning the above issuesin order to construct a captive LTA stratospheric platform.

The existence of a platform at the stratosphere is expected to be the role to gain a foothold in space. When the platform is employed airship in, it is transported by advection due to its lighter-than-air body. Thereupon, a mooring of platform is reasonable in order to incarnate fixed-point platform. Conception of a captive platform system is similar to the Rockoon one which rendered remarkable services for the space observation of the early days. Therefore, the application of captive platform system to the launch site is highly expected in order to realize the space transportation system with a large quantity and high frequency. In this study, the motion of a captive platform system constructed from an airship and tethers is analyzed in order to ensure that the motion of a captive platform system is practically incarnated. Moreover, the sensitivities of aerodynamic performance and buoyancy of the airship is observed. Consequently, the practically incarnated motion of a captive platform system has been identified under the condition of the storm environment. Furthermore, the reduction of the advection distance driven away by the storm has been quantitatively indicated under the different conditions of aerodynamic performance and buoyancy of the airship. The sensitivities of the lift and buoyancy of the airship for the motion of a system has been revealed in order to conceptually design airship geometry.