AirStar Wants to Send Copters to Gulf

AirStar International Inc. has offered its unmanned “camera copters” to U.S. media networks to provide real time aerial coverage of the Gulf oil spill. Moorpark-based AirStar sent a letter to CNN making available a lightweight unmanned helicopter capable of carrying recording or photography equipment that can get into areas to show the damage from the leaking British Petroleum oil well. “We would be capable of flying around fences to bring eye witness news coverage to the most difficult to reach areas to see first hand what damage there is to fragile marshes and their ecosystems, behind buildings and over damns, in virtually any air space in existence,” the company wrote in a letter to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. The network had not yet responded to AirStar’s offer. AirStar is a division of aerospace technology consortium The Mundus Group Inc. Its unmanned vehicles have been used for filming by the major Hollywood studios. Mark R. Madler