Free Travel and Total Liberty for All Humanity
All relevant information is on http://OpenAirShips.com. Pop in and join the conversation on our Discord: https://discord.gg/wZ6nu7H
The first buildable OpenAirShip is a 3D-printable model. It has a smooth ellipsoid hull of printed slices, a shrouded fan in a smooth central intake, and vectoring air-multiplier thrusters on the equator. Everything is open source.
- Flush fan housing: each thrust duct now runs straight on from the fan housing, with no step inside or out. The ducts hug the hull curve all the way from the fan.
- Lighter keel: the ovals and diamonds now reach right up to the fan housing, so the hull is 4–7% lighter in every size.
- Renamed 1026 for October 2026. The 926 files are in
OldFiles. - Corrected float numbers: the v0.2 budget undercounted the double-Kobra hull (it measured 350 cm³ instead of 502). The figures below are the corrected ones, for the new, lighter hull.
The double-Kobra build is 1.58 m across. It carries its own battery and ESP32 controller and floats on hydrogen alone, for indoor flights in a garage or warehouse.
- Hull: 12 slices (4 left, 4 right, 4 plain). Each prints in 5 pieces on an Anycubic Kobra Max, and the intake shaft is two printed tubes.
- Weight: 977 g all-up in full-foam lightweight PLA with a 1500 mAh LiPo. Its 1022 L of hydrogen lifts 1145 g, so it has 168 g to spare, and about 44 minutes of flight.
- An 18650 pack gives 83 minutes, with 153 g to spare.
- Use full-foam LW-PLA: in moderate foam it only just floats (+27 g with the LiPo, +12 g with the 18650 pack), and the 21700 pack makes it 93 g too heavy. See FLOAT.md.
- On helium (about 7% less lift) the full-foam LiPo build still floats, with about 84 g to spare.
- Downloads:
| 8 thrusters | 4 thrusters | |
|---|---|---|
| Bench size, 415 mm (Prusa MK3S+) | PieSlice1026-v0.2.1-8T.stl, print 8 | left and right, print 4 of each |
| Kobra Max size, 790 mm (Anycubic Kobra Max) | PieSlice1026-v0.2.1-8T-KobraMax.stl, print 8 | left and right, print 4 of each |
| Propulsion parts (STL) | bench · Kobra Max | bench · Kobra Max |
| Expected thrust | ≈ 408 gf | ≈ 422 gf |
These don't float on hydrogen alone, but they can hover on their fan. The 4-thruster Kobra Max model in full-foam lightweight PLA (503 g, 124 L of hydrogen) has 55 g to spare, and the 4-thruster bench model in full foam (368 g) has 73 g.
| CAD (FreeCAD, STEP, parametric Python) | Hull slices · Propulsion |
| Bill of materials | Electronics/BOM.md: about $230–320 for the core parts, with Amazon links, a lightweight-PLA option and the v0.2 changes |
| Build notes | Hull slice · Propulsion · Electronics and firmware |
| Engineering | Will it float? · Airflow · Airflow, 4 thrusters · Design constraints · Open questions |
| Changelog | v0 → 1026 v0.2.1 |
At a glance
- Hull: 0.86 mm airtight walls. The outside is a smooth ellipsoid, and it's lattice everywhere except the air path. The intake is Ø66 from the bellmouth down to the fan.
- Fan: a 2207 1750 KV motor on 4S drives an 88 mm PETG impeller, and the hull's housing wall is its shroud. It comes out through a bayonet hatch in the keel.
- Thrusters: 8 or 4, each swivelling ±90° on a micro servo, exactly on the equator.
- Control: an ESP32 with a Wi-Fi control page and a link-loss failsafe. It drives a PCA9685 on the bench models, or the servos and ESC directly on v0.2, with a battery monitor.
| Folder | What's in it |
|---|---|
CurrentModel/ |
The current buildable model (1026 v0.2.1): CAD, print files, propulsion, electronics, firmware, analysis and changelog |
web/ |
Source for OpenAirShips.com (static site on Cloudflare) |
docs/ |
Project notes: website deployment and content audit, the Unreal diagnostic report |
WhitePaper/ |
Whitepaper and builder guide |
Art/, vidz/ |
Logos, concept art and concept videos |
WebSnap2024/ |
PDFs of the 2024 website |
OldFiles/ |
Earlier models and print files, kept for history |