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Comment by jthomaslm | Hacker News Reader

Wildland forest fires were actually the inspiration for this technology! A year ago Seattle had the worst air quality in the world for a few days, which piqued my interest in the area. Speaking to people in the USFS we learned about the challenges of getting real-time high-resolution data, and realized that an ultra long endurance drone would be a great way to get this.

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You know what would be really helpful in such a use case? Thermal imaging. Now I'll admit I know nothing about Thermal Imaging, but I imagine if it was possible to get a live high resolution thermal image of an area, you could identify hotspots quickly. Heck, even for SAR missions, being able to thermal image a large area and look for warm bodies may be very useful.

Of course I have no idea if this is feasible or not, but I assume someone here will correct me if I'm pipe-dreaming.

its very feasible with satellites and drones run by DARPA or USAF. Even helicopters use IR and "night vision". the sensing systems are expensive

Any idea how big an effect air quality has on cell efficiency? Do cells work with diffuse light or is 20km high enough to be unaffected?

Flying at 20 km should place us above cloud cover and fire smoke, but the cells do work surprisingly well in diffuse light. Ensuring that we use imaging sensors that can cut through the smoke will be key (most likely LWIR or MWIR)

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