I love that these aircraft are built so lightly and fly so high. They are probably cheaper than any missile capable of shooting them down. They could operate over enemy territory without much worry. Send dozens. Shooting them down will cost more than their replacement.
Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
151–160 of 220 posts
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#152I'm assuming the flights were achieved mid summer when they days are longest and it can't yet operate outside this window. If this is the case, shame they don't just admit this up front
no mention of their recent faults too... (https://www.reuters.com/article/airbus-zephyr-idUSKBN26J0NU)
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#153This 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 ho…
I find it quite strange that on the Azura landing page they don't have even one photo of a yacht. Just renderings.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again I have to believe this is only a temporary restriction.
SpaceX are launching satellites with ("frickin") lasers now. So, if you are in the middle of the ocean, your packets step between satellites on the same orbit, forward or back, until they get in range of a node. First actual use is for polar service. On certain routes, packets will be artificially delayed so that high-speed traders can pay big bucks to get their packets through first, ahead of fiber. And, maybe pay e…
Is there any real world test data out for going over the laser interlinks yet? I know there have been Elon Musk tweets on the topic, but he tends to tweet from a spherical cow engineering world when looking at future specs. From very early on the "much lower latency due to the speed of light in a vacuum" posts have been repeated but there is a non negligible number of routing decisions and hops in the starlink mesh and the additional 1100-2200km entry/exit, as well as bandwidth and handover limitations.
London/New York doesn't seem like the distance that there is going to be huge wins for back bone connected entities. But I guess that even if you can land a percentage of packets quicker via starlink, then there is some value in the trading world?
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#155This 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 ho…
I find it quite strange that on the Azura landing page they don't have even one photo of a yacht. Just renderings.
They also have a price, which was nice.
It looks like shit though. The other yacht looks much nicer.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#156This 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 ho…
anyone else think it would be super damn fun building solar floating homes like this?
I’m waiting for the floating cities. Sounds incredibly fun.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#157To fly through the night, you need energy. I'm wondering if it's more efficient to store it in the batteries, or as stored kinetic energy by flying to a high altitude and descending through the night.
If you fly fast enough you can outrun the night, but that opens up a whole new set of problems.
Also, if you raise altitude high enough, you also can get rid of air resistance, so you won’t need to spend any energy to maintain altitude.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#158Related (in at least one dimension): https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/airborne-for-64-day... Cessna 172 flown for 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_172 : "From December 4, 1958, to February 7, 1959, Robert Timm and John Cook set the world record for (refueled) flight endurance in a used Cessna 172, registration number N9172B. They took off from McCarran Airfield in Las Vegas, Nevada, and landed back at McCarran Airfield after 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds in flight. The flight was part of a fund-raising effort f…
Was the engine oil okay for that long continuously? I mean I guess obviously it was but is that ok?
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_172 : "From December 4, 1958, to February 7, 1959, Robert Timm and John Cook set the world record for (refueled) flight endurance in a used Cessna 172, registration number N9172B. They took off from McCarran Airfield in Las Vegas, Nevada, and landed back at McCarran Airfield after 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds in flight. The flight was part of a fund-raising effort f…
Was the engine oil okay for that long continuously? I mean I guess obviously it was but is that ok?
according to the airspacemag.com link in other comments, they replenished the engine oil in flight.
Re: Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX are launching satellites with ("frickin") lasers now. So, if you are in the middle of the ocean, your packets step between satellites on the same orbit, forward or back, until they get in range of a node. First actual use is for polar service. On certain routes, packets will be artificially delayed so that high-speed traders can pay big bucks to get their packets through first, ahead of fiber. And, maybe pay e…
I suspect this is why starlink has some base station licenses in eastern parts of Newfoundland. It’s the closest you can get to London before swimming from Contiguous North America.
They also need them there for current architecture up and back service to rural Atlantic Canada.