Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
lasvegas.cbslocal.com
lasvegas.cbslocal.com
There are many companies involved in manufacturing solar drones; most of the industry heavyweights are in on the action. This company is not one of those. They have a small-scale prototype and are claiming a 60m wingspan (enormous), 65,000-feet-flight for 5 years. NASA among others haven't gotten a month. The model they have is a glider with solar panels. There is literally nothing new here besides the marketing. (They also didn't coin "atmospheric satellite", that goes back decades; AeroVironment had a company with the same concept in the 90s.)
This is a small group out of New Mexico with minimal funding and experience making wildly exaggerated claims. Five years is just laughably irresponsible for anyone involved in aerospace engineering.
In real engineering news, Astrium bought QinetiQ's solar UAV Zephyr program, and outlined last month an actual two-week high-altitude 70,000-foot solar flight here: http://www.astrium.eads.net/en/news2/first-flight-of-astrium.... This is a real engineering team with real money, real development and a real engineering feat.
Notice the lack of "five years" linkbait in Astrium's press release... which is why it wasn't spam-posted all over the web this week.
It's interesting engineering that should keep improving as photovoltaics and batteries improve. A fleet of these sun chasing giant satellites that don't need to come down(but can if necessary)? It's like a Dyson swarm, except on a lot more manageable altitude.
It also raises some flags when their quotes are from Senators and their "social proof" logos aren't customers they are supplies of the components they are using.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6528099
(In drone vs. bird I'm all for UAVs! ;). I know that birds are more advanced / sophisticated pieces of technology, but drones are ours, made by humans. Regardless of all the unfortunate military application, I feel proud for humanity that we keep on inventing more and more amazing things.)
Here's a link to the video. Had to youtube it because that site kept on causing my browser to crash.
Making something that flies on solar power is not that hard, but I wonder how they are going to deal with mechanical and electronic failures.
On the timescale of years, something will break or crash, or suffer from PEBCAK
"you’re paying some dude to watch the payload and make sure the aircraft doesn’t do anything stupid.”
When your buyer is the ridiculously over-funded US Military, you can afford to charge quite a bit more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_Moon_Relay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
Attack pigeons, anyone?
http://imgur.com/I5qQA3D EDIT:
Fair point. The max height on cumulonimbus clouds are 60,000 feet[0]. Effectively there is zero weather.
(Ok, 250lbs is not that much weight, but you must add the plane's weight. And it does not have huge wings.)
Granted, this will require proportionally higher propeller RPM, but with electric engines this is unproblematic. You'd get in trouble with hydrocarbon engines though, since you need the same amount of oxygen to generate power. So at altitude, you'd need a turbocharger or similar machinery.
http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=52628
"The device cut through a 15-mm-thick steel girder at a range of 1000 m, shot down several diving target unmanned aerial vehicles at a range of 2 km flying more than 50 m/s, and engaged an 82-mm-diameter steel ball representing a mortar round and traveling approximately 50 m/s. "
Not much good for blowing up wedding processions, admittedly. But it is interesting to think about. I don't think you'd want a stock Hellfire for a vehicle like this. Whatever the payload, you're probably looking at something more like a guided bomb than a missile.