Viewing profile — jthomaslm

Thanks for sharing. Estimating air mass and solar irradiance are definitely interesting topics - I'll take a look at what you've put together!

Thanks, I've been training! ;)

Thanks!

Thanks, next stop is the stratosphere! :)

Thanks Lars - I have emailed you!

Our aim is to fly at higher altitudes than Solar Impulse/SkyDweller, which keeps us above the turbulent winds and cloud cover of the troposphere, and makes long endurance flight mo…

Thanks, wildfires inspired us to work on this technology, so we're excited to see it used in those applications too!

Thanks, it was a lot of fun!

Thanks - feel free to reach out if you have any lessons learned you think we should know about! Being a student of history is important for a project like this!

Absolutely, we think there are some really interesting use cases around imagery too - for exactly these reasons.

Thanks - appreciate the love!

Thanks so much, it's a lot of fun to work on. Thanks for the website feedback - for the sake of clarity, our test flights with the sub-scale aircraft have all been at lower altitud…

We haven’t put this together, but that’s a great idea!

Love the enthusiasm - it's definitely a very fun project to be working on! Discussed a few of your questions elsewhere in the comments, but here are some thoughts on scaling laws: …

Wow, very cool! I've watched plenty of races at the Nurburgring but never stopped to think about how I was receiving the video feeds! If you have any contacts there I'd love to spe…

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 throug…

Yes, FB were trying something similar to this with Aquila. We actually used to work with a few people on that project, it sounds like the all composite flying-wing design was a bit…

Quite a lot has changed in the past decade. Li-ion Battery energy density has roughly doubled, solar tech has come a long way (both in efficiency, but also production scale/costs f…

Atlantik Solar was a very cool project, read a lot of their research - count me as a fan :)

The aircraft is able to climb under its own power. We have a diurnal energy cycle - charging the battery up through the day and deploying battery energy in the night. If we launch …

This is a concern for us. As with many disruptive technical advancements (e.g. in Nuclear or AI), there are many ways our technology can be used - both good and bad. It's important…

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 a…

Yes, Airbus’s project and team is very cool! What we’re doing shares similarities with Zephyr, but we’re focusing on a lower cost system, and a larger payload which will enable mor…

Each has merits, but in our evaluation, if you are able to overcome the aircraft design challenges, fixed-wing offers a far more capable platform. The stratosphere has winds that c…

We’ll be hiring in the near future. Early engineering hires will likely be controls/RF/EE focused, and we might bring on some biz dev support.