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Flying Wing To Run On Sun-Replenished Fuel Cells
Saint Aardvark writes: "CNN reports here
that a new flying wing is being powered by a combination of solar panels
and fuel cells that suck up 100kWh every *day*. They hope to keep
these(unmanned) babies up for six months at a time -- essentially making
them cheap satellites. The $12 million price tag puts it a little out of
reach for me and thee right now, but just wait 'til they get
open-sourced...:-)" The question is, will this help meet my unbound desire for cheap, ubiquitous, unmetered, wireless Internet access?
Slashdot needs all the critisism it can get (or a good kick in its pants) but this typo doesn't appear to be the slashdot crews. It's the property of the submitter of the story, unless the italicized stuff was typed in as opposed to cut and pasted.
No, really they need to work on incorporating a simple spellchecker into the slash code. It would be sooo easy to do, I'm surprised some slash enthusiast hasn't done it for them. Spellcheck not just their posts, but ours too.
Never meant half of the things I said to you. So you know, there's a half that might be true - G. Phillips
A thought occurs to me: Since solar cells need a stable surface area, why not plaster these babies on the top of a dirigible aircraft? Without having to haul fuel, and with the electricity (to spare!) to heat a sizable cabin at high altitudes, it would be conceivable to run airships very, very cheaply.
The research project itself costs $12M/year. When it enters production, the flying wing itself probably will end up being cheaper.
Is there any way that we may be able to harness this power to use instead of our current toxic power plants? -psyiode
-Psyiode
I need a beowulf cluster of AI controlled solar powered flying devices
Need a Catering Connection
And the moderators need to realize that my post was meant to be PRODUCTIVE.... god... I am going to bed.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
And we didn't have any bread, either.
It's things like these that make me hate Microsoft. Such injustices in the world, and they stand by! Watching poor helpless cps (yes, we call it CPS here) eat junk food. Malnourished, it what we are! I say we strike! Fight the power!
No CPS students wre harmed in the creation of this post.
Really.
Someone BETTER be manning SOMETHING. Otherwise, I'm going to re-evaluate my homeowner's insurance...
-- Chicken Little MIGHT be right...
So what we have here are fuel cells being charged by solar cells. Okay, nothing new there. Now we attach it to a kite & let it fly around. Why? Cheap satellite? How is this cheaper than a high altitude unmanned balloon? Seems useless as a powerplant - are you going to run a long wire from this thing down to your house, or maybe have it airdrop you charged batteries & pick up the empties skyhook-style?
I'm sure the people who've been working on this have good reasons for doing it. Too bad the CNN article doesn't tell us a single useful thing. Why do they bother mentioning space applications? Aren't they aware that solar charged fuel cells have been standard equipment in space since the Apollo program? And there's no air up there for that wing.
Enlighten me, someone.
Alright this sounds great. Maybe I watched Enemy of the State too many times, but the government will be utilizing the flying wing. Now, what exactly will it be used for? Perhaps 24/7 camera surveillance equipped with infra and heat monitoring? Why not?
Having only satellite intelligence and cloud coverage can be such a bitch.
Of course, the government can say that it will be used for collecting atmospheric data and infomation about the weather.
It is bad enough to troll so shamelessly, but to SPAM your troll is a wee bit much, don't you think?
NASA has a page on previous involvement with AeroVironment, including descriptions of all previous solar aircraft, starting back in 1971 and up to the Helios (the one in this article) and the ERAST program in general. These things have come a long ways in thirty years.
-- Anne Marie
This is what I've been waiting for.
:)
I've always wanted to live in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunatly, I'm unwilling. No electricity? No telephones? I'd be completely out of touch with the world. No more friends, no nothing.
A technology that allows one to become completely independant from the rest of the world is a really good thing. With these solar/hydrogren cell packs, one could live in the middle of nowhere, with all the comforts you'd have in the city(assuming you raise/grow your own food). Technology like this puts that dream within the reach of the masses. No more would you need to live in a city, squished like sardines.
Does anybody know how cheap it is to live on your own, making your own food? DAMNED cheap. Assuming you owned the property and buildings outright, you would only need to work one year in five(assuming minimum wage) to be comfortable.
Ooooh baby. That forest getaway is looking more and more likely
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Long-term, cheap, flying surveillance vehicals. Everyone, everywhere, monitored, doing everything. Link them to some computerized systems like FACE in the UK so they can automatically alert the authorities of interesting individuals and situations picked up by various surveilance senses on the flying wing and you've got yet another reason for loving this wonderful country!
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seumas.com
My guess is that they didn't use an airship because they wouldn't have gotten research grants or press attention. Airships are a 19th century and early 20th century technology. They're not in fashion these days.
There's really no practical application for these systems other than aerial photography. If there were, there would have been airship-based versions of them long ago.
We already have these devices, except they're called airplanes: expensive to maintain, require refueling, occasionally crash, and when they do crash, they kill people (the pilots). Governments aren't going to stop using them (or stop spying in general), so we might as well make them as cheap as possible both in monetary cost and cost to human life.
Soviet Russia proved that if you want to spy, all you need is a complicent populace to bear the brunt of the spy-work. With these planes doing the work instead of our tenants or landlords doing the work, we don't have to be the ones doing the work. It's ultimately a good thing, comparatively.
-- Anne Marie
This the ideal combination for an "unlimited source of renewable electricity". The interesting thing about it is the fact it is put on a airplane. I guess this allow for longer exposure to the sun and more potent rays of sun light to convert to electricity. The only thing that I am wondering is how effiecent are the solar panels.
The country, the planet, the species, we all need, nay, REQUIRE a cheap, replenishable fuel source, and right quick! If we could slap an array of solar cells on every home's roof and a fuel cell in the basement, and do it for around $10K US, WOW...imagine the uses for the dollars normally spent on heating, cooling and electric! Plus, no appreciable pollution.....COME ON PEOPLE!! We have to get behind these energy alternatives and make them work, stop sucking on the teat of big oil.
The article mentioned states that these would be an ideal solution for the space station. I don't follow the space scene that much, but solar panels themselves have already been around for decades, and NASA has already been using fuel cells for the shuttle. The space station should be able to draw plenty of energy from the sun with existing technology, considering the atmosphere isn't getting in the way of the solar rays.
I don't believe that testing the new technology in this manner is necessary either. Obviously, these things won't be put into orbit and therefore can't cover the range that satellites in a medium to high orbit can. That would mean that you would need more to cover the same area, and it would only last for 6 months. I don't know the exact cost of traditional satellites vs. these things, but since there would be higher maintenance, and a larger quantity, it probably won't be cost effective for at least another decade, maybe two.
Also, there would have to be an outage while the existing wing is brought down, and a new one is positioned. I would also like to see more posted on how they plan on keeping these things stationary for 6 months straight, unless a client site for wireless net access is going to have a positioning system that will move with the wing. Or maybe a new receiver that doesn't require direct line of sight.
Call me pessimistic, but I don't see how this will change anything. I tend to think it's one of those things where the engineer are just trying to see if they can do it, and aren't considering whether any real benefits will be produced from their efforts.
** Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist (probably misspelled) and therefore probably don't know what I'm talking about anyways. I'm just trying to apply logic to the information I read.
Why do people always quote power figures like this, instead of saying the roughly equivalent "suck up 4 kW"? This is roughly equivalent to my saying that I live 16 mph-days from San Francisco, rather than 400 miles.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
It is unlikely that these things could hold geo-static position very well, even in normal weather. The wind speeds at the altitudes they fly at surely require too much energy to counter without draining the cells and plunging onto your house. More likely, they glide wherever the winds take them. Now comes along a bad storm system and your wireless access is completely screwed. They would be good for drifting, but if they don't maintain station, there seems to be little practical use as an access provider.
Perhaps if you lofted enough of them to create a network that circled the earth slowly, you would have something. But that sounds awfully expensive to me. Sounds pretty neat, though. Espeically if you had a continously updated map and could watch them scatter away from storm fronts. Then again, they might fly high enough to escape the main blow of the system, but I imagine major systems must really screw up the atmosphere above them. Any weather experts in the house?
Check out these guys!
http://www.platforms-intl.com/
They are already doing it in Brazil!
They have tested their "plane" system and it worked, now they have gone into stationary blimps. I can't wait until the FCC/FAA allows them to use this tech in the states! (much cheaper that 12 million). Their "arc" system is about 5 million for a city-covered installation. What local government wouldn't want to be the first city with permanent free wireless internet! ($5 million a pop is NOTHING!)
Cd
--
This
Hey.. if these flying wings can serve as cheap satellites, any moderate to large corp. can buy one. We could have spy psuedo-satellites everywhere.
Next thing you know, the RIAA will be looking in the window to see who has Napster running.
Spooky spooky!!
It's not the fact they put these technologies on flying wings that's interesting. The conbination of solar panels + clean fuel cells is a perfect source of clean energy for everyone. Such equipment could be put on every roof, or even be used on large areas and be used as a local powerstation.
It's clean energy, with only water as a byproduct. Once the systems get into mass production, their prices will drop sharply. The cost of environmental damage isn't quantifiable and we can't keep on relying on fuel and nuclear power forever.
The applications for such concepts are huge ; from depolluting industrialized countries to the equipment of developing countries by diminishing the power grid infrastrucure.
If you combine this system to fast-spinning flywheels (read this excellent artice from Wired Magazine), you get permanent, clean energy with little or no maintenance as long as the components can last. Heavy industry could rely on fewer heavy-duty (polluting) powerplants, thus greatly reducing pollution (I don't think we can eradicate all of it, unfortunately).
To me, it looks like the ideal power source for durable development.
May I turn your attention to the fact some areas of our planet are becomming unfit to life because of complete ozone layer depletion? It's actually the case in Terra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. By getting outside unprotected you get third-degree burn in less than seven minutes. Organic life isn't possible without the ozone layer.
If we don't want that to happen to the rest of the planet, it's urgent some serious investments are made in such technologies.
Think about it.
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
because they're getting it from CNN, but the fact is that this is a story I've been following for years. I never would have thought of submiting it here because the whole thing is so old hat.
Hell, I think I saw film of it flying about two years ago.
The idea is pretty cool though. The plane can do nearly anything high altitude balloons can do, only it can do it for MONTHS at a time, returning data the entire time, but unlike a balloon it is under human controlled powered flight. Fly it where you want it to be. Fly it in circles for as long as you like, and then fly it somewhere else.
At the end of the mission * fly it home* and land it right where it started from, complete with its instrument package, prep it, and send it off again.
The plane will always cost more than a single balloon, but it can do more useful work than hundreds of balloon, and then do it again, and again, and again.
I saw a show about this exact project on the Discovery Channel about 6 months ago. CNN is just now finding out about it?
As a builder/flyer of radio controlled model airplanes, I've also heard of such systems employed, albeit on a much smaller scale (literally), on RC planes. One example that comes to mind is a fellow who covered the top surface of the wing on a model plane with solar cells. The resultant power was enough to power the motor and the radio receiver, so his flights of the model are now limited in duration by the batteries in his transmitter, which last for hours. Compare that to the average flight time of about 10 minutes for battery-powered electric model airplanes, and you can see the utility of efficient solar power. No more burning 50 pounds of jet fuel for every mile travelled in an airplane, for example. Of course, NASA has been doing this longer than I've been alive (Fuel cells charged by solar cells, essentially). The trick is to get the price of the technology down into the range of practicality, much like the computer price/performance curve from the 70's-present. I'm sure it can be done if we get Corporate America to realize that "If you make it, they will buy it."
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
The government first use of these will be to monitor drug traffic in places like Colombia and Mexico. Since the FARC don't have Anti-Air capability for 40K+ takedowns but routinely screw with helicopters and even some surveilance aircraft (prop), this is an ideal system to gather intel.
Only later will these be used for beneficial purposes such as migratory pattern research and pr0n w/o borders servers in the sky;)
Reality is just a clever Hack, and the Planck constant is the refresh rate.
Its all fine and dandy about the flying machine but the really important issue is how long till they can use this technology in cars. Then we will have a clean environment and can forget about the middle east :)
Manufacturing current solar arrays produces horrible pollution and takes about 5-10 years to break even on that count (when compared to burning fossil fuels to produce the same amount of electricity). And many parts of the world (e.g. Seattle) don't see enough sunlight to break even in anyone's lifetime. The economics aren't quite as bad as usual, because you are already making other use of the land -- solar arrays are always more environmentally costly for wasting arable land than for most other reasons -- but the numbers still don't quite pan out.
You're also discounting the macho do-it-yourself ethic that exists out there, especially among male homeowners who cannot bear to let professionals do "their" job for them, because it might reflect poorly on their manhoods. You know whom I'm talking about; the guys who will routinely try to patch their own roofs but always leave them leaking (and occasionally fall through them, trying). They'd be insane to try to maintain an electrically complex one (and would be a hazard to themselves and others).
-- Anne Marie
Keep your knees together if you fall off. . .
or get pushed.
The biggest problem with this will be solar cell degradation. After the cells are excited so many times, they just don't excite to the same levels anymore. [Insert your jokes about the same old pr0n here.] There is a way to prevent some of this, but since I'm doing a little on-the-side, patentable research on it, I'm not posting it on /. =)
--
-- Geof F. Morris
It's aways a sunny day at 50,000 feet. ;-)
--Mike--
Well, they can video-tape it. It must be comforting to know that you're being watched everywhere you go in public. Sure, it won't prevent you from being killed or maimed, but at least it'll be archived on video and perhaps the person who did it will be found. Lucky you.
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seumas.com
What irks me the most about Slashdot, especially in the recent past (last year or so) is the amazing number of story reposts. It is as if many of the story editors don't even read this site anymore. How many times have we seen what is essentially the same story reposted to Slashdot within the span on a week? Too many for me to count...
I won't really even get into some of the other minor things that bug me, like the zealot-ish slants many of the stories take (say, stories on mp3, linux, etc), because that could be argued for in a couple of ways (the editors post what interests them...and/or what interests the majority of readers).
Oh yeah, and I also hate Jon Katz, but I won't mention that..I'm already getting the -1; Offtopic, why bother risking the -1; Redundant?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 270292 hours , 27 minutes ago. No need to try again.
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seumas.com
*cough*LawOfConservationOfEnergy*cough*
By the way, look at the fuel for the SR-71. Throw a match at it and it just sits there wondering what the big deal is, and your match goes out. There are many different ways for chemical energy to be harvested. Alkaline batteries contain rather stable chemicals, but they have proven remarkably successful as energy sources in many applications. It doesn't matter how the energy comes out, it just means you might have to ask a Chemical Engineer instead of a Mechanical Engineer or Electrical Engineer how to put it to use.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Actually there is a plan to use airships as highspeed communication relay points. Like cheap satelites. I believe that they will be solar powered. Sorry, I don't remember anything else. If anyone knows the details please let me know.
The only statistic your page disagrees with is the figure for breaking even (1 year versus more than 1 year). I never said solar arrays are never economical; but they're hardly the no-brainer decision that everyone tries to make them out to be -- they, like everything else, have costs, and those costs would be magnified incredibly if they were implemented on the scale that the original poster was envisioning. Especially the costs due to social engineering.
-- Anne Marie
He was a competitive glider pilot, and won the national championship a few years in a row. After the last time, he showed everybody the little circular slide-rule he had developed to maximize speed and range (the McCready SpeedRing) which pretty much revolutionized the sport.
In the mid 70's, he was in debt to some friends for $50,000 -- and he heard about the Kramer Prize, $50,000 to the first person to fly a human powered aircraft through a 1-mile figure-eight course. McCready was building indoor duration models at the time (unbelieveably fragile creations of wire and film that would fly for 20 minutes on a few twists of a rubber band) and realized that that same technology could be used to make a plane that would win the prize. The result was the Gossamer Condor -- a externally-braced plane to make something as light and large-span as possible. It easily won the prize. Unfortunately, he went through about $100,000 to build it. Later, he won the next Kramer Prize for the first human-powered plane to fly the English Channel, and then build a few early solar powered planes (piloted by a very light young woman).
GM hired McCready to build a car to win a solar-car race across Australia. McCready's astonishing realization was that it was all about aerodynamics -- where other teams were trying to maximize the amount of energy they were getting from the sun, McCready was worried about going really fast. It won the race by several days!
McCready built a flying Pteradon for a Smithsonian movie. It flew, flapped its wings for power, and was successfully filmed for the IMAX film.
And then there are these flying wings. Truly astonishing machines. They currently hold the record for the highest-flying propeller-powered planes, and are just (to me) insanely beautiful. Here is a gallery of photos of Helios. This picture in particular I find just sublime. What a machine. What a guy.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Low-cost wireless networking, for one thing. And all of the things that are now handled at tremendous expense by geosynchronous satellites, for another.
http://www.cargolifter.com/
so weight doesn't come into it.
Deleted
Anchor ropes are just a bloody stupid idea, I don't know where you got that from but modern airships are quite capable of holding station against 70mph winds. The goodyear blimp might not be able to but it's hardly state of the art in airship design.
Deleted
You're way, way out of date on envelope materials. Weeks to months of flight time are possible. The limiting factor airships have at the moment is carrying the fuel to stay up for long periods, which these NASA blokes seem to have solved.
Airships are also quite capable of holding station against significant winds. Even the ships of the 1930s were capable of a sustained 80mph.
You may be thinking of the goodyear blimp and other similar advertising blimps.
Deleted
So... What's the wind speed at the altitude that these things fly?
Deleted
SkyStation.
Uses a lighter-than-air solar powered helium airship.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The question is, will this help meet my unbound desire for cheap, ubiquitous, unmetered, wireless Internet access?
Puts the phrase "my internet service crashed" in a different light, huh?
-Peter
With a cruising speed of only 19-25mph.
Deleted
How is that going to cope with the 'obvious high velocity wind conditions at said altitudes'?
Regular airships (goodyear blimp etc) fly at 40-50mph. The rigid airships of the 1930s could cruise at 80mph.
Envelope fabrics have been helium impermeable for so long now that it isn't even funny. Because an airship doesn't have to use any power just keeping itself in the air it can use all the power for thrust and control.
Add to that the lift provided by helium increases with the cube of the size an airship will be able to carry a much larger payload.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
The only ones left are blimps or semi-rigids. Bit of a shame really. The Hindenburg fire put airship design and technology back almost 100 years. So no metal skeleton.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
My god... first solar power? What's next -- hydroelectric power?
Ok. I'll let you bug-test v0.9. I think I'll wait till release 1.2
----
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
So this thing is going to be flying for six months??? What when [name any tiny but critical part] turns out to have not such a long lifetime? Airplane engineering has never proven itself to be failsafe, and keeping planes in the air for six months seems like a big challenge.
:-)
:-)
I concur, I wouldn't be living beneath one of these. Especially as the fully charged fuel cells will contain a lot of hydrogen and oxygen, conveniently mixed in the ideal ration for extreme explosiveness! Remember the Hindenberg?
Why don't we just use all those 60+ Iridium satellites to provide high speed Internet access? They're not going to be used anyway
Xacos
Basically my point was that you get out what you put in. Granted, there will always be efficiency issues, but the post I was responding to made it sound like activation energy was lost in the reaction, which any high school chemistry student, at least one who pays attention, will tell you is false.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
What idiot moderated this fool up to a 3? Third degree burn in 7 minutes from the sun? Do you even know what a 3rd degree burn IS? Give us a break! Crawl back under your rock, you Greenie!
Brought to you by the Invincible Chordate Pikaia Commemorative Society.
Your shell has to be big enough to hold all of this gas, even when it's very thin (and doesn't displace a lot of air). The shell still has to sustain its weight, so it doesn't lose mass very fast as the design is scaled to higher and higher maximum altitudes. I don't know how high you can go before modern materials give you a machine that is effectively 100% shell and no payload, but 70,000 feet may be into the region of diminishing returns.
A blimp, or a superpressure balloon with an internal ballonet (to hold its shape during launch and the initial ascent) might be more tractable than a rigid airship. If I were designing this, I'd add a second ballonet inside the helium space to hold hydrogen for rapid ascent, and dump the hydrogen as the machine got up to altitude (and the air ballonet was already empty).
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If it's under control, it either lands for repairs or is put down somewhere safe.
If it's out of control, it gets snared by the first tree it hits and turned into wreckage. Remember, this is a gadget designed to fly under the power of sunlight; it can't weigh much. The previous versions have resembled tissue-covered model airplanes. In a fight between the airplane and your house, the house would win handily (besides, the typical cruising speed of this thing near sea level is probably under 20 MPH).
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Are you trolling, or didn't you know that the other product of the H2/O2 fuel cell is H2O (water)? You save the water you generate overnight, and use solar power to turn it back into H2 and O2 during the day.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
And don't forget that Moore's Law is still in effect. You might want to call these birds down every 6 months just for upgrades.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Wouldn't this be ideal for secure hosting companies like HavenCo - send on of these wings up and you're guaranteed no-one will touch the servers. Moreover, who would dare try to bring it down? - Fly an unauthorized MIG in any airspace and you're in for a hot reception.
-
You're not funny.
+++ATH0
What's next -- hydroelectric power?
You think there's enough water vapor for that?
the use of hydrogen and oxygen powered Internal Combution Egine works But there is a better way.... Fuel Cells these use hydrogen and oxygen and combine them ti create water this Chemical Reaction gives of electricity that can be harnesed to run an Electric Motor and presto a car that basicly runs off water!