NASA's Flying Wing Breaks 2 Records

ELBnet writes "CNN reports in this story that NASA's Helios flying wing broke the altitude records for both a propeller and jet aircraft with an altitude of 85,100 feet... and they were still climbing shooting for 100,000."

Comments

But it doesn't scale

[inio]

Sure, it makes sense that if you built a huge one of these you could ride it up into space ... or not.

The problem is that while lift scales with the square of size (make something twice as big and it gets four times as much lift), its WEIGHT scales with the cube (it gets eight times as heavy). This means that you couldn't use one of these to say, lift a rocket into near-orbit and launch it from there. In the end this doesn't get us any closer to space - it just gets the telcos a cheaper short term satellite.

Re:And this is even more stupid.

[Greyfox]

Research is never stupid. Even if you don't end up sending it to mars, there are practical applications here for an aircraft that can stay in the air more or less indefinitely. At a cost of two orders of magnititude less than what it costs to just launch a communications satellite, you could use the craft in the same role, assuming it pulls in enough power to run the kit you'd have to load on it.

Re:"David's Sling"

[Caid Raspa]

Lets face it, even with a small payload, like 600 lbs,

The thing itself weighs about 1600 lbs, so 600 lbs is lots, but with something like 60 lbs could also have quite nasty effects.

that's two reasonably effective gravity bombs

Why gravity bombs? Both Russian and US armies have 'tactical nukes' with a few kt power, that can be fired with a cannon. A small container of something (Anthrax? Smallpox? Nerve Gas?) would also be quite effecive.

from an aircraft that is not even made of metal, so practically invisible to radar.

So, you wouldn't even know who did it. As this is very public research, has the US army something better or have they not realized the potential of it?

I hope it is the latter.

Does the technology scale down?

[jeko]

Does anyone know if this technology can scale down? Would it be possible to use the same principles to build a craft that is 10 meters across instead of 100?

Re:This thing can fly in such thin air

[Wyatt Earp]

The F-15 in the early and mid 80s tested an Anti-satellite missile.

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/ove rv iew.htm

"The Air-Launched Miniature Vehicle (ALMV) was the primary American ASAT effort in the early 1980s. This weapon, launched from an F-15 fighter by a small two stage rocket, carries a heat-seeking Miniature Homing Vehicle (MHV) which would destroy its target by direct impact at high speed. The F-15 can bring ALMV under the ground track of its target, as opposed to a ground-based system, which must wait for a target satellite to overfly its launch site."

Back in the 50s and 60s the USAF and Army tested both air launched and ground based systems as well.

How does it maintain position?

[Goonie]

I've no idea what average wind speeds at 100,000 feet are, but I know wind speeds at airliner altitudes are typically *much* faster than 20 mph. Assuming that's the case at these higher altitudes, sounds like you'd have about as much control over where these planes went as a high-altitude balloon (ie not very much).

If that's so, what's the advantage of the plane, nifty though the technology is?