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I read the linked article and wondered why they stopped at 14 days. Still not certain, but it appears they made a decision to do so, instead of some malfunction or loss of elevation, according to their press release:

QinetiQ will today bring Zephyr, its solar powered high-altitude long endurance (HALE) Unmanned Air System (UAS) back to earth after two weeks in the air - smashing a number of long-standing official and unofficial world records.

Zephyr was launched on 09 July and is currently still flying above the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Today Zephyr will have been aloft for 14 nights continuously, achieving the objective of the trial and setting a number of performance and altitude records. At this point QinetiQ's Zephyr team in Yuma will bring the aircraft back to earth.

Does anyone have further details? Were they just tired, met the design/test objectives, and wanted to process all of that? I'd think if it were "eternal", it could have just been left there flying and would still be up there today. My *guess* is that it may be unmanned, but not entirely autonomous, so it required people on-site to monitor and control it.

It does appear to be somewhat asymmetrical, unless there's some kind of optical illusion going on (hi-res image available here: http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2010/3rd_quarter/zephyr_2010.Par.22482.File.tmp/Zephyr%202010%20launch.JPG)

My guess: it appears to be made primary to hover over a particular area, so it spends a lot of its time circling, which could possibly be made more efficient with asymmetry.

I'm genuinely interested in the fact that you can "modelize" facial traits in 50 bits or so.

Could you point me to a source ? I browsed the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and QinetiQ corporate websites and came up with nothing...

This (parent's link) is an outdoor 95 GHz passive image (from Qinetiq). It is not representative of passive indoor terahertz images. Note the "glare" from the cold sky temperature on all upward-facing features in the image.

An actual indoor passive terahertz image (bandwidth 100 GHz to 1.2 THz) looks like this. With the broad bandwidth, you can both see through the clothes (100-300 GHz) and also see the clothing features (above 500 GHz. note the zipper, folds, etc. There is an APL on transmission of mm-wave/terahertz/infrared radiation through common clothing that may be of interest here.). I'll point out that this is raw data, unprocessed.

Disclaimer: this is the subject of my Ph.D. thesis.

Those aircraft are very low weight composite aircraft with very thight energy budgets. Due to the composite parts, they are invisible to primary radar. Due to the energy budget, they cannot install an SSR transponder. In other words, they are completely invisble in case something goes wrong. (in which you cannot trust the transponder anyhow)

What you need in such case is a direct link to air traffic control to tell that your autonomious plane is lost so that they can clear a part of the airspace. Now, since your aircraft is no longer controlled by a "ground pilot", who is going to make the call?

One alternative is to let the ground station relay the aircraft position to ATC centers (air traffic control centers). However, current ATC systems are not built to accept this information, especially not when the number of users of UAVs increases.

And don't forget the 21" monitor.

That's achievable - eyeglass monitors or Head mounted displays

And a full keyboard and a mouse.

For flat surfaces:
http://www.virtual-laser-keyboard.com/images/virtual-laser-keyboard-hand.jpg

Alternatively:
Senseboard - which doesn't project a keyboard at all
or

Lightweight eyetracker with any number of On screen keyboards

This one is cheaper, quicker and easier to use

http://www.qinetiq.com/home/commercial/space/space _services___facilities0/interference_modeling/sati d.html

Since >95% of unauthorised signals are some idiot with the wrong frequency or broken equipment, the interference usually comes from an antenna in the satellite operators DB. Consequently the "final search" is not necessary very often and such systems are not as expensive compared to the cost in lost bandwidth to the operator you highlighted.

With the appropriate authority, the police can do things that your everyday hacker on the street might find very difficult, e.g. gain physical entry to Downing Street, so there's no reason that there would be a gaping hole waiting for black-hats to enter through.

There are several organisations in the UK that regularly do IT security work for the ministry of defence, the police and the security services and have staff who are cleared to high security levels. I worked for Detica about 10 years ago and I think that they would have had the capability to assist in this kind of thing then, don't know if they still do. Qinetiq might be another firm that would have people with relevant expertise.

In ours, sadly. This thing is a nice concept, but TFA says it needs 100bar water. The normal pressures for firefighting are around 8-20bar, so it'd take specialised pumping equipment and hoses for it to work.

That's not a showstopper of course, but it'd probably be cheaper just to build a conventional electric robot like Quinetiq's Talon based firefighting bot, which can pull conventional 63mm fire hoses.

That's why its a collaboration, everyone's ideas go to make it work and get tested. There is no way just money would be provided by the teams involved. Hyshot III is not just a rehash of Hyshot II - its quite different.

"Our engine has a lower combustor entry temperature than the UQ design with less compression of the captured air. This has the advantage of lower intake losses but the disadvantage that it is difficult to get the fuel to ignite and burn. "The QinetiQ prototype is cylindrical with four combustors around the outside. The aerodynamics of the vehicle is improved by this arrangement but it wasn't cheap to manufacture. It was cast from stainless steel where as the UQ engine was assembled from copper plates."

Try reading up at this page.

You're right about them doing quite a lot with very little though. Other thing to bear in mind is its more about missiles than passenger aircraft.

Anyone living in the UK in Farnborough (Hants) will regularly see such bizarre vehicles. Chairs, beds, sofas, tables are all fodder for the local nutcases building vehicles and then performing stunts around the town centre.

This Farnborough is the home of European aviation and the bi-annual airshow, also the weird and wonderful world of quiniq, the guys that bring you invisibility clocks, total recall style x-ray ways and more besides.

Did anyone else notice that the QinetiQ logo 'painted' on the body of the fighter appears to be just a poor photoshop job? Looks like their logo wasn't on the aircraft (or at least visible in this shot) so they decided to slap one on after the fact.

High-res photo and a zoomed close-up

The question is not 'can you put out a press release', more 'can you do something useful and get it to market'.

The countdown to the launch of the QinetiQ1 balloon altitude record has just started. Early on Tuesday a balloon the size of the Empire State Building will take off from the back of a trimaran warship, carrying a ultra high altitude UAV to fly and take its picture on the edge of space.

News: Check, they've been waiting on the right weather for two years
Nerds: Check, this is real science and technology
Rejected: Check, a slow news day eh?

And then we get a story like this ???

Too right I'm pissed

Why not change the tagline to "Funny Stuff and a Bit of Linux" - it'd be more accurate.

The countdown to the launch of the QinetiQ1 balloon altitude record has just started. Early on Tuesday a balloon the size of the Empire State Building will take off from the back of a trimaran warship, carrying a ultra high altitude UAV to fly and take its picture on the edge of space.

News: Check, they've been waiting on the right weather for two years
Nerds: Check, this is real science and technology
Rejected: Check, a slow news day eh?

And then we get a story like this ???

Too right I'm pissed

Why not change the tagline to "Funny Stuff and a Bit of Linux" - it'd be more accurate.

The website for the attempt is at QinetiQ 1

Its worthwhile noting that they will launch from the back of a trimaran warship research vessel, and will be observed from the highest flying powered, tethered UAV ever.

So it will demonstrate a whole slew of new technologies, real Slashdot stuff.

The website for the attempt is at QinetiQ 1

Its worthwhile noting that they will launch from the back of a trimaran warship research vessel, and will be observed from the highest flying powered, tethered UAV ever.

So it will demonstrate a whole slew of new technologies, real Slashdot stuff.

If everything comes off, this will be a very public, practical usage of high altitude UAV, taking pictures of a record breaking high altitude balloon, taking off from a triple hulled ship.

Nothing like three birds with one stone.

If everything comes off, this will be a very public, practical usage of high altitude UAV, taking pictures of a record breaking high altitude balloon, taking off from a triple hulled ship.

Nothing like three birds with one stone.

It was us that did the work: QinetiQ
Wait, what am I thinking ... OMG - I just /.'ed my own company's server!! Where's the delete option on this thing ...

A few interesting links for those seeking more technical information:

The original press release from QinetiQ is available at this news release.

Here is the corresponding German press release from the University in Munich.

More interesting, perhaps, is the page of one of the German professors involved in the experiment, devoted to this same subject, found here (in English!).

Try:


http://www.qinetiq.com/applications/news_room/ne ws _releases/show.asp?ShowID=511&category=0

for the Press Release with a few 'technical details'.

http://www.qinetiq.com/applications/news_room/news _releases/show.asp?ShowID=272.

This has some details of how the team is working and how the experiment is carried out.

There's the promise of a new press release on the record distance very soon; when its available, we'll post the link.

British-government-owned company involved: QinetiQ

Article from The Economist: "Free-space" optics
'"Free-space" optics requires no fibre' (oh, how I love that British English)

Quantum secure key exchange paper: here

Saying that, there is action around. For instance, want to buy the raw materials for building your own nanomachine? Try buying in bulk from http://www.nano.qinetiq.com/

With the action around, fast forward to 2010 and you start to see the real ramp up of the nanotech revolution. Quite what that will do to the world, who knows? But its nothing to the impact of Von Neumann nanomachines...

DERA the British "defence" research agency developed a much better version years ago (technologically, if not financially), where the panel itself was made to vibrate using electronic impulses. More info here.

Interestingly, they were looking for ways to reduce background noise (using anti-noise) when they stumbled across it. They've been available commercially for years.

I have personally seen it in several places , it's out there but the tech-guys often don't shout about it. I don't know why, whether it is internal pressure, or commercial pressure or interoperability between departments.

QinetiQ the UK's commercial wing of DERA (Defense Evaluation and Research Agency) produced this report: QinetiQ_OSS_rep.pdf. Which is the most pro-OSS report I've read.

The German Government support GnuPG and a few other security related projects.

And of course the NSA have SE-Linux, and have put money into research at the university of Utah.

LANL have some pretty serious Linux clustering.

I wonder how much taxpayer dollars the Coast Guard will spend to fish these guys out of the sea?

It seems like a really cool thing to do here, but I sure hope that QuinetiQ plans for the inevitiable failure. Frankly, the government should rethink its policy and seek reimbursement from thrillseekers.

Apart from the fact that Quinetiq are a British corporation, and operate under the authority of the British government, and are a great deal more effective than NASA are for the US government.