A plane flying non-stop for five years | Hacker News Reader

A plane flying non-stop for five years

flightglobal.com

13 pointsgongfudoi6 comments

The business applications of such aircraft will be far more valuable than the military applications.

If you could mount a powerful cell phone repeater it would be more valuable than an Aerostat as whenever a cell tower is taken down, you simply need to fly one or more over an area to cover it.

They might even be a cheaper more efficient way of covering densely populated areas than paying exorbitant land fees and the constant battle to get them placed. I really don't see how a plane that can fly for 5 years wouldn't benefit the Cellular industry.

It would also help wildlife studies. I mean simply program one to follow a high density of radio transmitters, and tag as many birds as humanly possible before they migrate and then you've got perminant tracking and monitoring of the birds flight positions. The plane could be equipped to transmit the locations through a satellite telephone link or other such device.

I'm sure there are thousands of uses. Terrain mapping, you just strap a camera to the bottom and GPS and you could have it build up a high detailed map of an area. I mean it would be a lot more useful for any industry that requires land surveys as getting a high detailed map with a wide angled lense would allow you to build up a topological map.

Hell you might even be able to spot useful resources, or really anything visible from altitude. Police could use it to find recent graves with infrared and optical sensors and it'd be cheaper and faster in open areas than using people.

As I write this I realise the list is literally nearly endless, so I think I'll save myself the time and STFU now before I get carpel tunnel!

The possibilities are endless, but not all the scenarios you describe require planes that can stay in flight for 5 years. For a lot of the scenarios you describe it would suffice to have a fleet of planes that take off, fly, land, resupply and take off again completely autonomously.

Always a weapon first.

What a world it will be once Thag evolves far enough to make it a hammer before he makes it a club.

Okay, I was going to deride this (60000+ feet for a 7 horsepower propeller aircraft seems ludicrous, a typical 200 horsepower light propeller aircraft can't climb above 16000 feet, and the thin air increases required propeller RPM as you climb). However, it seems that Boeing has already managed to send a solar-powered ROV to 67500 feet. Admittedly only for a few minutes, but it doesn't any longer seem like such a stretch.

Amazing what concepts a huge budget and no requirement to satisfy the public market can give you. I wish I could work on something like this...

s/^(.*)$/\1\?/

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