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Unmanned Aerial Telecom Relays
Brussel writes "SkyTower in collaboration with the Japan Ministry of Telecommunications (CRL/TAO) and NASA has successfully completed a series of commercial telecommunications tests -- the world's first from more than 60,000 feet in the stratosphere. The tests, which began three weeks ago, were conducted from Pathfinder-Plus, an unmanned solar-electric aircraft developed by AeroVironment." There's another press release here.
...will involve planes falling from the sky
Great, we can swap them out with modified Predator drones when nobodys looking.
Is it just me, or is the idea of unmanned machines communicating miles above the Earth kind of scary? With advances in AI and orbital weapons systems (thanks, Dubya), we could soon be living in a world monitored and "protected" by a group superintelligent, armed robots that orbit the Earth. Not a happy thought.
Anyone else feel like maybe we should hold off on these kinds of experiments?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
for any major projects like this..
granted it's cheap but if it crashed and burned it would affect service quite harshly and i'm no sure many coustomers will want to 'wait for the next flight' to get their buisness done
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
call it Skynet :)
We know what then may happens...
Could you guys please stop this? Thanks.
It seems to me that the airplane they are showing there could be weak. If you look at the second picture you can see it bowing in the middle. Looking on the page with the othe aircraft, I do really like the idea of the solar powered airplanes, bout time.
My other sig is an import.
Will these things emit microwaves? Our planet is really becoming polluted by these things
I wonder what the effect of a bad storm would have on the usability of something like this... wouldn't there be too much interference?
Wouldn't airships be so much better?
The real challenge will be to get this thing to work on batteries or a fuel cell all night.
This story doesn't sound like a giant leap, in that they already got these things to fly during the day.
I think that would be a really fun project :)
that or using it to power my house!
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Could these platforms be mounted with catalysts to remove chemical pollutants?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
They fly above storms, but they will need to time taking one up and down.
Not enough lateral thinking.
. ht m
http://www.airship.com/prod/stratsat_sub_frames
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
... will send that snooty , non-flying, stiff-beaked, penguin-suited quasi-bird into the Beverly Hilton awning. And that ain't no buffet overflow.
It seems to me that the airplane they are showing there could be weak. If you look at the second picture you can see it bowing in the middle.
Ever notice how trees bend without breaking? Or how buildings gently sway in the wind? The easiest way to ensure something will break is to make it stiff and brittle. Structures with a bit of leeway are more resilient in the end.
The much vaunted titanium is actually quite bendable, which is one of the reasons its so strong.
read about this back in the 1983... in a sci-fi book called 'Single Combat' by Dean Ing...
The man even included a basic sketch outline of a plan... called it a 'boucher relay'
Not only are they working on building a large, long-endurance airplane, they're also working on a small, short-endurance spy plane. The basic idea is you take a briefcase to where you're interested in looking at something, open the case, set up a small antennae and launch a little hand-held plane to go snoop around. There's a paper on how they built the plane near the bottom of this page.
These machines are environmentally friendly, inexpensive and makes the telecommunications infrastructure more resilient.
The plane doesn't even use stored power - it uses solar power to fly and power the telecom equipment. I am amazed, but also slightly skeptical that there will be enough power available to both fly for 6 months and power the payload, and store the surplus energy overnight. That especially applies to the extreme north and south where daylight is scarce and at an extremely low angle during the winter.
If this turns out to work, it's a major breakthrough. It will provide both urban areas with scalable telecom soluitions, and provide the less densely populated areas with modern telecom facilities. This applies especially to the developing parts of the world where the current infrastructure is abysmal.
All I worry about is if someone sees this as a threat, and manages to shut down the project in some ingenious way.
Stop the brainwash
Is it to be sent to a harem?
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
There are a series of amateur radio satellites in orbit sponsored by members of The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation and other organizations worldwide. They are free to use worldwide by anyone holding an amateur radio license. Most of these satellites are in low earth orbit, which means that they may make several passes a day. It does not take much to get started. You can communicate with other radio amateurs through these satellites with nothing more than a handheld antenna pointed at the sky and a handheld radio clipped to your belt. I use this antenna.
Yes, I know that I can whip out my cellphone and talk to anyone with much less effort. But I am a geek and this is much cooler (and fun!)
If you are in the U.S. check out the American Radio Relay League's web site for more information on getting licensed. If you are outside the U.S., check the above web site for information on getting licensed in your country. It's easy!
.... some idiot is going to combine this with an advertising banner. The skys, thirty years from now, will be filled with advertsising. Even at 30,000 - it would be economical to tow a *huge* fabric banner thats visible from the ground....
ugh.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
These machines are environmentally friendly, inexpensive and makes the telecommunications infrastructure more resilient.
Something that's desperately needed right now. The whole US internet infrastructure is only running now by the blessing of the court system, a court system whose wisdom is hit-or-miss at best. Not that I'm hoping WorldCom survives, I just want it to survive long enough for a bunch of smaller competitors to buy up the pieces at bargain bin rates.
Any technology that provides alternatives for getting on or running the internet gets a big cheer from me.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
NASA's Flying Wing Breaks 2 Records (Aug'01)
NASA Send One Up... (July'01)
'nuff said.
I'm sure one of you eggheads out there can translate that into latin for me. Please for the love of God just don't spell it wrong.
And don't use Mozlla, no matter what the version number. It leads to users losing the ability to spell
I don't know if the moderators can't keep up, but most trolls are not getting smacked to -1. I don't know if they are saving their points or just curled up in a ball crying, but I won't stop until they pronounce me ( -1, Troll ).
A while back I was able to go to Dryden Flight Research Center and see the Helios and talk to one of the head engineers about the project. The plane itself has a huge wingspan, larger than that of a 747. I don't recall the exact figure, but I'm sure you can find it on NASA's website. As several people have commented, it is better structurally for the wing to be very flexible. This allows the plane to absorb shock encountered in flight, with an instantaneous shock resistance of > 30g's. At that time, the idea was to operate the plane at an altitude of 120,000 feet, which would put it above most weather. There is some risk involved with takeoff and landing, but this is true for any aircraft. Besides, a Helios flight may last up to 60 days, which gives leeway to plan takeoffs and landings around weather conditions. The real advantage of the Helios over a satellite is maintenance. If the electronics in a satellite fail, there are few options for fixing or recovering the satellite. At a cost of over $80 million a pop, that's an expensive risk. With a Helios, which may cost around $3 million, servicing the payload is much easier. The plane itself has such a low glide ratio that in the original tests, they shut off the engines at night and let the plane glide. It only lost about 15,000 feet over an 8 hour period. In the morning the engines would come back on and the plane would regain altitude in a couple of hours. I am not sure if they still do that, but it's a great way to conserve electricity for use with a payload. Anyway, should the engines fail there is plenty of time to land the aircraft. I'm excited to see these successful test flights, as there are many benifits the plane could provide. The obvious application is cellular phone coverage, but at a much lower cost. This means extending cellular coverage to areas of the world that are underserviced by current telecommunications satellites (i.e., a large portion of the African continent). It is also possible to transmit power via a microwave radio signal, thus these could also be used to provide electrical power to very remote areas. The Helios won't, and shouldn't, replace current infrastructure but it may be a great tool for meeting the challenges of technological development in underdeveloped parts of the world.
as our need of bandwidth grow -- more and more of these will circulate the sky. not only will you be bombarded by the rediculous amount of ads -- something that has always been taken for granted: sunshine -- will now be a luxury.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Have you read about gyromils?w indmillsint hesky.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/science/tw/items/010328_
Team up the two. We can subsidize it as "homeland security." We put a ring of these around major metro areas, the steel cables should give the civies a flase sense of secuity while pumping out power and bandwidth.
i hope you're joking... do you know how absolutely huge a banner would have to be to be visible (much less legible) from 30,000 feet (5+ miles)?
remember, this is a very low-power aircraft, too. this design is basically the aeronautical equivalent of a solar-powered bicycle. long endurance w/ no frills, & that includes any sort of excess power.
So they decide to send only women to do fly the plane? Hey, that's SEXIST!!!
I AM TROLL, HEAR ME TROLL.
another purpose...
:)
satellite just suck for that.
Like how do you prepare for another higher speed standard? You don't!
It's like throwing your pc every time a faster processor comes out.. okay bad example.
also you need special expensive shielded electronic, stuff that handle extreme temperatures, and you pay the extremely developped tech of rockets, in a low competition market..
Nicolas.