ISU professor plans to build Bigfoot blimp

An Idaho State University professor has a plan to build an aircraft specially designed to search out Sasquatch.

“(This is) a means to conduct a state of the art aerial wildlife survey in order to try to track and locate a Sasquatch,” ISU Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology Jeff Meldrum said.

The plan is to build a 50-foot-wide Bigfoot blimp with the help of a Utah based company.

“It looks like something out of a science fiction movie. It’s a dirigible, an airship that has two aircells that gives it a kind of catamaran stability in the air,” Meldrum said.

The airship is designed to be filled with high tech equipment including infrared cameras that will give researchers the best possible chance of spotting anything elusive in the woods.

“It’s not just looking at a little blob of red light against a blue background. This is high-definition videography that will use a telephoto lens that can zoom in from a mile away literally,” Meldrum said.

Of course, before the airship has its maiden voyage it has to be built. Meldrum said the money to put it together will come from completely from private donations.

Beyond the more attention-grabbing goal of finding Bigfoot, Meldrum said the planned aircraft has many other possible uses.

“All kinds of wildlife studies even geological studies could be conducted with data that could be garnered from an airship gathering this type of aerial surveillance imagery,” Meldrum said.

You can learn more about the airship project at http://bigfootblimp.com.