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Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

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Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#21

Post by omegant »

fooqux wrote: post #17
TeMPOraL wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this article is here because someone mentioned it earlier today on the bird thread: 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 t…

One advantage of birds is that their droppings are easily washed off my car, unlike the droppings of UAVs.

UAV's droppings will wash your car and everybody onboard easily..

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#22

Post by na85 »

pepijndevos wrote: post #8

I assume the video at the top is of a smaller prototype? 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.”

It's certainly possible to make bearings and whatnot that last for enormous lifetimes. It's all a question of cost.

When your buyer is the ridiculously over-funded US Military, you can afford to charge quite a bit more.

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#23

Post by wahsd »

I think it's time to get into the counter drone systems business. What's an easier target than a drone that flies for five years or just simply continuously. I wonder how much the cartels would pay for systems that can detect, track, and integrate with a means for "dealing with them". No, not necessarily in a destructive manner.

Attack pigeons, anyone?

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#24

Post by dudeinforest »

More like "imagines" said drone.

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.

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#25

Post by marcosdumay »

marvin wrote: post #12
dfbrown wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there much weather at 65000 ft?

Not really. Thunder clouds usually top out around 60.000 feet. There are some wind phenomena that could reach this high, but mostly I think it's calm at this altitude. The air is so thin you would have to have very strong winds for there to be a problem.

That's what makes me wonder... How will they keep a plane flying at that altitude at 68mph? The thinner the air, the faster your plane must move.

(Ok, 250lbs is not that much weight, but you must add the plane's weight. And it does not have huge wings.)

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#26

Post by mik4el »

marvin wrote: post #12
dfbrown wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there much weather at 65000 ft?

Not really. Thunder clouds usually top out around 60.000 feet. There are some wind phenomena that could reach this high, but mostly I think it's calm at this altitude. The air is so thin you would have to have very strong winds for there to be a problem.

Cool, thx =)

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#27

Post by jcampbell1 »

Game_Ender wrote: post #6

So this looks pretty cool, and their marketing department already coined the term "atmospheric orbit", but their aircraft currently looks like vaporware. All of their videos are pre-rendered and the short clip in the article is too [0] small to be the aircraft they are trying to sell. It also raises some flags when their quotes are from Senators and their "social proof" logos aren't customers they are supplies of the…

I also noticed the prototype in the video doesn't have solar panels on it.

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#28

Post by VladRussian2 »

samstave wrote: post #19
VladRussian2 wrote: post #15

250lb - can carry Hellfire. New incarnation of a multi-month-on-station [previously nuclear] bomber/cruise missile concept.

Imagine these things being able to be re-supplied with munitions whilst in flight.

well, imagination can run pretty wild - instead of Hellfire one can just arm them with a good 50KWt solid state laser - no resupply necessary:

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. "

Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years

#30

Post by Arallu »

wahsd wrote: post #23

I think it's time to get into the counter drone systems business. What's an easier target than a drone that flies for five years or just simply continuously. I wonder how much the cartels would pay for systems that can detect, track, and integrate with a means for "dealing with them". No, not necessarily in a destructive manner. Attack pigeons, anyone?

some kind of Ender's Game version of a distributed network 'game' of attacking drones w/ other drones I suppose could be fun.
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