Inside an inconspicuous building adjacent to Bolton Field, a pair of Ohio State University master's students are testing what could be the next breakthrough in airfreight.

Dynalifter is a blimp-airplane hybrid one thousand feet long with a 160-ton carrying capacity. It is a slim blimp with two sets of stub airplane wings - four times the length of a 747.

Compared to a C130 airship - the cargo workhorse of the U.S. military - Dynalifter has double the engines, double the power, three times the range and 12 times the cargo space.

By using a combination of helium buoyancy and jet propelled wing lift, the aluminum-framed Dynalifter can carry more tonnage farther than any aircraft ever made, according to its developers.

"We are slower than jets, but cheaper. We can carry a lot of cargo anywhere in the world in 56 hours," said Bob Rist, Dynalifter developer and cofounder of Ohio Airships. "We can carry two tanks."

The airship has an aircraft aluminum frame, inflatable Mylar bags that fill with helium and an outer skin of sail material. A patented frame construction allows for equal weight and stress distribution, as well as fixed landing gear.

Dynalifter can take off and land at airports just as conventional jets can on 4,000 feet of runway, Rist said.

He and Ohio Airship co-founder Brian Martin currently are battling with Lockheed Martin and other international aircraft manufacturers to win a federal DARPA contract from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is a DOD program that uses contests to integrate new technology for military use.

For example, OSU recently participated in a DARPA contest in the deserts of California and Nevada. Using onboard computers and GPS satellite technology, teams programmed unmanned vehicles to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The military saw significant need for unmanned wartime cargo deliver vehicles.

The DARPA "Walrus" program is for a "hybrid aircraft" that can carry "500 tons across intercontinental distances, being able to transport a Unit of Action (UA) from "Fort-to-Fight" as a complete integrated action-ready package of personnel and equipment."

Dropping vehicles and combat-ready battalions en masse from the sky will change the nature and scope for future warfare and defense, said Rist, adding that Dynalifter can move these troop packages anywhere on the globe in 56 hours.

Also, Rist said, Dynalifter's huge size and slow movement could make it ideal for "radar picket duty," protecting borders and scanning far over the horizon ahead of military missions.

In addition, one blimp-plane could drop more 20-ton cargo packages of materiel to intra-theater troops than half a dozen C130s.

Rist said Dynalifter also could be used for submarine detection and attack; as flying command posts; as deep-sea helicopter refueling tankers; or as aerial chemical laser platforms.

Stateside, the military could use Dynalifters to fight fires, Rist added. Rather than the 3,000-gallon water capacity of C-130s, the blimp-plane can deluge blazes with 50,000 gallons.

Before these visions become reality, Rist and Ohio Airships must test model-sized Dynalifters in wind tunnels.

At OSU's Aeronautical and Astronautical Research Laboratory near the university-operated Bolton Field in Dublin, Aerospace Engineering Masters students Sean Orchuk and Cliff Whitfield test a four-foot styrofoam and balsa wood Dynalifter model they made.

After five minutes in the wind tunnel, where Whitfield tested the model from different angles, Orchuk said the data looked good. The results are a "good correlation" with a Dynalifter test conducted earlier in the year. That means Rist's huge blimp plane is one step closer to reality.

Though there are still more tests, Rist said he and his team currently are building a 120-foot Dynalifter in Alliance, Ohio.

Orchuk and Whitfield's professor and mentor, Dr. Gerald Gregorek, sat in on the wind tunnel test Wednesday, watching his students. Gregorek has taught aeronautical engineering at OSU since 1960.

Of the Dynalifter design Rist introduced him to five years ago, Gregorek said, "it's a clever way to combine buoyancy and aerodynamic lift. You get a big lift and long range for small power."

Though Rist received a degree in avionics, he had worked for years at Mount Union College in the administrative staff department.

He built model planes for his son to fly.

"I had always thought about putting wings on an airship (blimp). The idea of the (Dynalifter) structure is what I came up with."

Rist drew up plans and built models of his idea. Martin then came on board. The two started Ohio Airships in 1999 and have since raised $380,000 in private investment.

Two years ago, the company hired Dr. Daniel P. Raymer, former director of Lockheed Martin's advanced design group. It was Raymer who put the mathematical expertise into Rist and Martin's Dynalifter idea.

If Dynalifter wins a DARPA contract and the airship goes into production, Rist hopes to utilize it as much in the military as in the private sector.

"There are three underutilized airports in Ohio: Youngstown, Mansfield and Rickenbacker," Rist said. Flying at night when there are calmer winds and less traffic, Dynalifters could bring in "light, high-volume goods" such as software and produce he said.

Rist said his blimp-plane would capitalize on the underserved middle markets, the areas remote from bigger cargo hubs or with underutilized distribution capacity.

Dynalifters could botch up air traffic at major airports, but at second- and third-tier facilities, Dynalifter could fill a niche by dropping cargo faster than any other form of transport, Rist said.