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Domain: avinc.com
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Liquid Hydrogen Powers a UAV For a Cool 48 Hours
An anonymous reader writes "While liquid hydrogen may not be a mainstream fuel for drones, the aerospace industry has said it holds the promise of flight endurance on the order of days, seemingly just another far-fetched aerospace industry pitch ... until now. The Naval Research Laboratory just announced that the Ion Tiger, a diminutive 37-pound airplane with a 17 foot wingspan, flew for 48 hours and 1 minute on liquid hydrogen and a fuel cell (anyone else notice the oddly specific duration? Guess it's better than 47 hours 59 minutes). This is a dramatically different scale than the liquid hydrogen powered 150 foot wingspan Boeing Phantom Eye and 175 foot wingspan AeroVironment Global Observer, which have yet to live up to their multi-day endurance projections. Interestingly enough, the well-known Global Hawk only has an endurance of 33.1 hours, which barely cracks Wikipedia's list of notable UAV endurance flights. Of course, solar-electric airplanes have flown for two weeks continuously, but that sure seems like refueling!"