Stratoflight and Zephalto rely on the regional spatial ecosystem to concretize their project.
by Audrey Sommazi (Toulouse, Correspondence)
The trip would last between four and five hours, two of which are 35 km high, at the gates of space. Pulled by a stratospheric balloon inflated with decarbon hydrogen, produced by an electrolysis of water and renewable electricity (wind and solar panel), the shuttle would stabilize half an hour at this altitude to allow the six passengers accompanied by two Pilots to go out on the outdoor balcony in combination of astronaut. The descent on firm land would be gently, using a sail housed on the capsule in the shape of a warhead.
This is the promise of Stratoflight, the start-up created in 2019 in Labège (Haute-Garonne), a few kilometers from Toulouse, regional metropolis which boasts of being the European spatial capital with 120,000 employees in 400 companies. To materialize this idea of traveling in balloon in the stratosphere, born from the desire of its founder, Arnaud Longobardi, airline pilot at Air France and high-level sportsman broken with mini-vow and paragliding flights, the company S ‘ is backed by an engineering and council giant, Expleo (15,000 employees, 1 billion euros in turnover in 2021).
For eighteen months, a Toulouse team of ten engineers attached to the company innovation laboratory worked on the resistance to the temperatures of this shuttle which is eight meters long and four meters wide, on the electronics embedded and aerodynamic design.
“Exclusive agreement”
Observe the curvature of the earth about twenty kilometers from the ground, the head in the stars, it is also the dream of Vincent Farret d’Astiès, former air controller at the Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC ). To carry out his six -hour travel project aboard the celestial – a pressurized cabin pulled by a balloon inflated to helium -, the forty -year -old manager of Zephalto, whose headquarters are in Pouget (Hérault), set up, in June, His prototyping workshop in Escalquens, in the Toulouse suburbs, to get closer to the National Center for Spatial Studies (CNES).
“We have just signed an exclusive agreement with our partner, announces Vincent Farret d’Astiès. This will allow us to access patents on CNES balloon technologies, to its tools and installations to carry out tests. And our operators will be trained by its teams to inflation of the ball, its flight and flight management. “Even if the tests, on the ground and in flight, are planned in 2023, and the first flight scheduled for the end From 2024, 500 people are already ready to pay 120,000 euros to make the trip.
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