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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?
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.
I need a beowulf cluster of AI controlled solar powered flying devices
Need a Catering Connection
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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This
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.
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
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 /. =)
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-- Geof F. Morris
If you want 24x7x365 coverage for a particular geographical area using a satellite, you either need a bird in geosynchronous orbit (which means higher launch cost and more power needed to transmit) or a constellation of low-earth orbit ones. Until we get a cheap way of putting things in orbit, this is the next best thing.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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
Well, you are right, and you are wrong. Imaging (pictures, infared, sidescan radar, etc) is one very good use for this sort of aircraft, and worth the high development costs to both for inteligence gathering and scientific studies (the kind that go into studying the enviornment and wind up helping US agriculture to see paterns that bring more food to your table for example). But that is only the cash cow that is going to get the research done.
The big deal with this sort of system is the ability to selectively "park" it at high altitude over one spot for extended periods of time (the current holy grail is in the two month range), and serve as a communications platform. In simpler terms they want to replace low orbit sateites (*cough* *Iridium* *cough*).
Putting something in orbit cost a lot per pound, and if you make a mistake on something in building the "payload", or something unforseen happens, or if Murphey's Law just rears it fickel head, then you are stuck with what is in orbit. There is just not enough money to go out there and fix satelites in orbit in most cases (Hubbel being a major exception). But if something were to go wrong with a payload on one of these birds all you would have to do is tell it to land, and then fix/replace the payload, and since this costs soo much less than orbiting a satelite, you probably can afford to have a backup waiting on the runway to replace the whole thing.
Now as to the question of baloons/dirigibles, they simply do not have the staying power that this mission calls for. It is hard (impossible) to construct an envelope (the bag that holds the gas) that does not leak, meaning that missions longer than a few days are simply not possible. Add to that the fact that the winds at the altitudes called for in these projects tend to be faster than lighter-than-air-craft have posted in the past, makes them simply the wrong horse to bet on in this race.
It is not about weight, it is about the ability to do the mission at hand.
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.
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
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.
What about sterling engined gliders? Basically, they have GPS and simple station holding avionics, so they circle in the same general area, day after day. They're above the clouds, so they can recharge the fuel cells for the night's flight during the day. During the day, they take advantage of the heat differential between black top of wing and white bottom for a sterling engine.
huh? has anyone built one? How high could you get it to go?
How self similar are the air streams at altitude? How far do I have to fly in order to find one to "blow me back" to where I was?
But "birds" provide wider coverage -- larger footprint from higher altitude, so you'd need ALOT of these wings. Still might be cheap enough for local coverage, but likely not global.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The "jet stream" is over a hundred miles per hour at times, and it is generally west to east. I don't remember if the analogous jet stream south of the equator blows the other way or not, but I suspect not.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
You're so ignorant (can't even spell Stirling correctly) that I'm going to assume that your post is a joke.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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).
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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).
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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.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Even if that is the large scale trend, aren't there likely to be eddies (like in a stream) that actually flow backwards, or at least much slower?
That's what I meant about self similarity.