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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."
has NASA's PR department just gotten too used to blurting that out
People are not interested in seeing tax money used in science unless they feel they could benefit from it. So, saying something like this to people who don't have a clue on science is
Why would you want to conduct experiments at 100,000 ft at 20 MPH?
A few things come to mind.
Chemical analysis of rocket exhausts might be possible, if you put this in the right position. The solid-fuel stages might leave some dust particles that give hints to what kind of fuels are used. This would help in estimating the ICBM payload capacity.
Low-orbit satellites have orbital velocities of several miles per second, so if you want to have a better look at that Chinese ICBM base, Helios could be a choice.
Atmospheric research would benefit from this. You could send up a whole armada of weather stations in the upper atmosphere instead of a single weather satellite.
Studies of the Earth's magnetic field and it's connection to the solar wind could use measurements right under the auroral oval, where solar wind hits the upper atmosphere. Combining these with radar-scattering experiments would be extremely interesting to geophysicists.
As this thing runs on solar, and is well above clouds, it only need to stay on the sunny side of Earth to run forever. Perhaps a medium-sized battery and some smart remote pilot could keep this up during nighttime, goin only halfway down and climbing back up every morning?
Sooo, all I need to do now is figure out how to incorporate this research in my Lego Mindstorms robot, to help me get up to the ISS. Fantastic!
Perhaps a better name for the project would be Icarus ?
(On second thought, best not to jinx it
o/~ Join us now and share the software
The 20mph was at much lower levels while taking off. At the maximum levels it was flying much faster in order to have enough air moving over the wings to produce lift (you need lift enough to offset the weight) The peak speed listed is 170mph for this flight. It couldn't do that at sealevel, even in a straight dive due to the drag.
NASA breaking an altitude record?
I suppose it's better than breaking a Mars probe.
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.
As of 4:11 in Hawaii, helios was up to 96,500 feet!
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