Complete outsider doubt: Does this has the potential to replace satellites? Or, why did google project loon failed?
Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
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Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#22For those curious about the physics of these aircraft, here's an analysis I did of the same concept. The goal is to determine the smallest aircraft configuration that can indefinitely sustain flight: https://github.com/gusgordon/atmospheric_satellite#readme
Is there a reason you optimized the amount of starting energy in the battery? I know basically nothing about how solar power works, but surely you'd just fill the battery up to 100% with an extension cord on the ground before launching it?
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#23Probably/unfortunately not really a Starlink competitor, right?
They don't specify the "cruising" altitude, but I assume it's ~10 kilometers at most, probably less?
Airbus would need quite a few of these in order to build a global internet connectivity service then.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Zephyr says ~20 km.
Starlink sats (will) operate at ~540-570 km:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/04/29/spacex-launches-60-mor...
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#24This is great and points to how solar in some cases already can facilitate continuous operation without the need for refueling of planes, boats, cars, you name it. Expect this to grow as battery and solar cell tech develops further.
My favorites atm are the yachts that are capable of sailing just about anywhere in the world without a drop of fuel. The price is prohibitive, but considering that you might not need a house anymore it is actually getting close to possible for a reasonably senior tech employee.
[full disclosure: no affiliation]
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#25It’s so depressing to read that one proposed mission for this plane is…monitoring oil spills.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#26What's the benefit over something like a weather balloon?
Pretty interesting thought, tape a few hundred micro SD cards to it and you've got some impressive bandwidth.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#27It’s so depressing to read that one proposed mission for this plane is…monitoring oil spills.
I worked on a satellite imaging startup. For this kind of stuff usually oil and gas and large scale agriculture are the first ones to show interest. They don't need great resolution or revisit times and their assets span over very big areas so monitoring from the ground/sea or with small drones is really expensive.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#28For those curious about the physics of these aircraft, here's an analysis I did of the same concept. The goal is to determine the smallest aircraft configuration that can indefinitely sustain flight: https://github.com/gusgordon/atmospheric_satellite#readme
Is there a reason you optimized the amount of starting energy in the battery? I know basically nothing about how solar power works, but surely you'd just fill the battery up to 100% with an extension cord on the ground before launching it?
Batteries are heavier when fully charged. Takeoff weight matters. It's not much heavier, but it might be enough to affect things at this scale.
edit: remember the context. This is about an abstract optimization to find the minimum viable aircraft.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#29Doesn't appear to have a payload in the picture. That would add weight & power draw.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#30It’s so depressing to read that one proposed mission for this plane is…monitoring oil spills.
Why is that depressing? Unless you have some silver bullet to remove the need for oil or prevent any future oil spills it seems like creating innovative technologies to detect them as soon as possible is a good thing.
It would be like if someone developed a cheap, non-invasive technology that could detect cancer extremely early, and then you complained because they hadn't cured cancer instead.