All it needs to do now is shoot lasers, this will ensure it can do damage the entire 5 years.
Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thats amazing. Imagine also when we get good graphene super-capacitors that are smallish and light-ish and we can fill the wings with them. Trickle charge them with solar power and have each one large enough for a burst of that laser - and it can charge over time and then have a battery of burst avaialable to it.
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#33More 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 ne…
Two weeks is a lifetime compared to vaporware.
It's interesting engineering that should keep improving as photovoltaics and batteries improve. A fleet of these sun chasing giant satellites that don't need to come down(but can if necessary)? It's like a Dyson swarm, except on a lot more manageable altitude.
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#34Not sure why they're be better than balloons except perhaps to deploy quickly to a region.
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#35250lb - can carry Hellfire. New incarnation of a multi-month-on-station [previously nuclear] bomber/cruise missile concept.
Hmmm. How much damage could a 250-pound fin-guided kinetic penetrator do, falling from 12 miles up? Could you kill a tank with that?
Not much good for blowing up wedding processions, admittedly. But it is interesting to think about. I don't think you'd want a stock Hellfire for a vehicle like this. Whatever the payload, you're probably looking at something more like a guided bomb than a missile.
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
The hypothetical craft with the 250lb payload has a wingspan almost as wide as a 747's.
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#37Assuming this is not vapourware, it's awesome! It carries 250 pounds, which is ~113Kg. So I'm like 80Kg or so. That leaves about 30kg, which is almost enough for a month's supply of food. If we can build a system of balloons to periodically float up supplies, we can seriously just live in the sky and have wild adventures!
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#38Can this give us cheaper world wide internet coverage? I have also been thinking of using the moon as a satellite laser relay, latency would be 1.2sec but you would get internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_Moon_Relay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
Re: Aerospace Company Develops Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
Aerodynamic lift (in Newtons) is proportional to airspeed and invesely proportional to air pressure. So is aerodynamic drag. This holds true up to the transsonic region; ~800 kph of true airspeed. As long as you're subsonic, it's sufficient to have the same amount of thrust as at low altitudes, and you'll keep flying at the speed required for lift >= aircraft weight.
Granted, this will require proportionally higher propeller RPM, but with electric engines this is unproblematic. You'd get in trouble with hydrocarbon engines though, since you need the same amount of oxygen to generate power. So at altitude, you'd need a turbocharger or similar machinery.