ROADMAPApex · Stratospheric Persistence — ground-to-orbit handoff
Apex
Solar HAPS — 20km altitude, multi-week station, the ground-to-orbit handoff.
Apex holds the stratosphere. A solar-electric pseudo-satellite with an ultra-wide wing climbs to 20 kilometres, above weather and traffic, and stations there for weeks to months on sunlight alone.
From that altitude it is a comms-relay node and a wide-area persistent sensor — a satellite's job at an airframe's price and responsiveness, repositionable on the Vector stack.
It is the top of the Segal column: seabed to stratosphere, and the explicit ground-to-orbit handoff to the Segal space arm. Roadmap, and marked as such.
Cross-domain
Comms backhaul + ISR above a naval logistics corridor; the ground-to-orbit handoff.
// BASE SPECIFICATIONS
- Span
- 78 m
- Length
- 12 m
- Lift system
- Solar-electric, ultra-high-aspect wing
- Base payload
- 60 kg
- Base endurance
- 720 h
- Endurance
- 720 h
- Ceiling
- 20,000 m
- Crew
- 0
Roadmap — stratospheric persistence demonstrator.
// CONFIGURABLE OPTIONS
Mission profiles
- RelayComms backhaul + persistent sensing.
Lift / propulsion
- Solar-electricForces the ultra-high-aspect HAPS envelope.
Payload modules
- Comms relay payloadWide-area backhaul node.
- Wide-area sensorPersistent observation package.
Endurance / range tiers
- Standard — 30 days
- Ultra — 90 days
Sensor / comms packages
- Comms backhaul
- Wide-area EO/IR
Autonomy modes
- CrewlessNo onboard crew on a standard sortie — Vector resolves its own airspace.
- SupervisedSingle-command human oversight from the ground.