Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#101

Post by flaghacker » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

mannyv wrote: post #74

Power companies on the West Coast might be a great market for this. The downside is that the plane might have to operate in poor weather. Not sure if imaging can make it through the clouds etc. This might also be great for coastal/fisheries monitoring. Not sure how that would work exactly or who the customer would be. Definitely coast guards for the third world, who are resource-constrained when it comes to coastal p…

Interesting, what could power companies use this for? Checking for overgrown power lines? Checking for roofs to place solar panels one?

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#102

Post by LightBug1 » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

pierrekin wrote: post #80

e-_pusher wrote: post #63

Didn’t Facebook pursue this idea also? Do you know the details and why they didn’t end up succeeding? https://www.theverge.com/a/mark-zuckerberg-future-of-faceboo...

I worked on this at Facebook very briefly. I believe the project was called Aquila internally. I worked with a famous engineer who joined Facebook from a well known british aircraft manufacturer. He was an aerodynamics expert and was trying to solve the problems of flutter and other dynamic instability in the extremely large, high aspect ratio, lightweight composite wing. I wasn't officially told this, but I believe…

Can't leave that hanging out there ... of course we're interested ...

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#103

Post by rolling_robot » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

I am curious how are you planning to cope with aeroelasticity issues in near-earth turbulence. Given low air speed, low wing loading, and huge aspect ratio this is going to be an issue. I suspect that most of the previous projects failed because of these issues combined with tight requirements on very light-weight structures.

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#104

Post by pierrekin » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 7:59 PM UTC

pierrekin wrote: post #80

e-_pusher wrote: post #63

Didn’t Facebook pursue this idea also? Do you know the details and why they didn’t end up succeeding? https://www.theverge.com/a/mark-zuckerberg-future-of-faceboo...

I worked on this at Facebook very briefly. I believe the project was called Aquila internally. I worked with a famous engineer who joined Facebook from a well known british aircraft manufacturer. He was an aerodynamics expert and was trying to solve the problems of flutter and other dynamic instability in the extremely large, high aspect ratio, lightweight composite wing. I wasn't officially told this, but I believe…

I am possibly wrong about small details, and would appreciate corrections.

So when I joined the project, the physical aircraft was based in the USA, but the software team for the autopilot was based in the UK.

For some reason - I think it was the very high altitude capability - the USA considered the autopilot to be munitions.

When I first joined the project, there was this bizzare situation where it turned out to be simpler and easier to occasionally ship the entire aircraft across the ocean, than to send software updates over the internet.

I'm not sure how long this lasted but I was assured it was temporary.

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#105

Post by Leherenn » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 8:02 PM UTC

How do you deal with temperature (roughly -60°C/-70°F)? Do you heat the batteries? What about icing? It might be too cold for it at that altitude?

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#106

Post by OnlineGladiator » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 8:02 PM UTC

pierrekin wrote: post #104

pierrekin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on this at Facebook very briefly. I believe the project was called Aquila internally. I worked with a famous engineer who joined Facebook from a well known british aircraft manufacturer. He was an aerodynamics expert and was trying to solve the problems of flutter and other dynamic instability in the extremely large, high aspect ratio, lightweight composite wing. I wasn't officially told this, but I believe…

I am possibly wrong about small details, and would appreciate corrections. So when I joined the project, the physical aircraft was based in the USA, but the software team for the autopilot was based in the UK. For some reason - I think it was the very high altitude capability - the USA considered the autopilot to be munitions. When I first joined the project, there was this bizzare situation where it turned out to be…

Hey dang, this is the second time I had to vouch for this user's comment. I don't know how your system is set up, but it seems odd to me these are immediately showing up as dead.

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#107

Post by pierrekin » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 8:06 PM UTC

pierrekin wrote: post #80

e-_pusher wrote: post #63

Didn’t Facebook pursue this idea also? Do you know the details and why they didn’t end up succeeding? https://www.theverge.com/a/mark-zuckerberg-future-of-faceboo...

I worked on this at Facebook very briefly. I believe the project was called Aquila internally. I worked with a famous engineer who joined Facebook from a well known british aircraft manufacturer. He was an aerodynamics expert and was trying to solve the problems of flutter and other dynamic instability in the extremely large, high aspect ratio, lightweight composite wing. I wasn't officially told this, but I believe…

In the UK, we had a smaller scale model of the aircraft that we used for testing. The team that built the scale model was having trouble configuring the autopilot and I volinteered to help

They were using an off the shelf 'drone' autopilot based on an open source project PX4, which I had some experience with.

I was asked to visit the location with the prototypes and spent the weekend trying to get their RF, magnetometer and GPS calibrated and working with their carbon composite prototype in the way.

I was expecting that they would already have an expert working on this, but instead I found some very senior hyper specialised engineers that were experts on helicopter rotor design for example, but could literally not read the instructions on an FTDI based usb to serial cable and connect their laptops to the autopilot.

It was a classic situation where you connect the projector in english class and the teacher thinks you're the next Donald Knuth.

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#108

Post by pierrekin » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 8:07 PM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #106

pierrekin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am possibly wrong about small details, and would appreciate corrections. So when I joined the project, the physical aircraft was based in the USA, but the software team for the autopilot was based in the UK. For some reason - I think it was the very high altitude capability - the USA considered the autopilot to be munitions. When I first joined the project, there was this bizzare situation where it turned out to be…

Hey dang, this is the second time I had to vouch for this user's comment. I don't know how your system is set up, but it seems odd to me these are immediately showing up as dead.

I think it's just because I'm a new account. I signed up to make this comment. But I'm not a troll or anything so thank you for vouching.

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#109

Post by pierrekin » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 8:12 PM UTC

pierrekin wrote: post #80

e-_pusher wrote: post #63

Didn’t Facebook pursue this idea also? Do you know the details and why they didn’t end up succeeding? https://www.theverge.com/a/mark-zuckerberg-future-of-faceboo...

I worked on this at Facebook very briefly. I believe the project was called Aquila internally. I worked with a famous engineer who joined Facebook from a well known british aircraft manufacturer. He was an aerodynamics expert and was trying to solve the problems of flutter and other dynamic instability in the extremely large, high aspect ratio, lightweight composite wing. I wasn't officially told this, but I believe…

One last thing that is a little bit sadder, so I thought I'd post in a separate thread.

I grew to really like the engineer that invited me to the project. He was a well known expert in the field with a wiki page, books, academic eminence and everything, and he offered to mentor me etc.

I travelled with him a few times from FB's London office to the prototyping site and he was always very generous with hotels, travel etc.

Eventually someone pulled me aside and mentioned that he had "alterior motives" and had repeated the same pattern with previous young men. I was honestly so saddened and betrayed, and afterwards couldn't believe I had been so nieve as to be made to feel special by him.

Re: Launch HN: Radical (YC W23) – Autonomous high-altitude solar aircraft

#110

Post by sroussey » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #10

Wow, 10cm live view for complete situational awareness of forest fires feels like it should be a game changer. Can we make sure someone (if not you guys) fully builds this service on your flights for the fire service?

There are commercial sats doing this.