Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Unmanned Aerial Telecom Relays

Posted by michael on from the it's-a-bird-it's-a-plane dept.

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.

1 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Airships by mikerich · · Score: 5, Informative
    Wouldn't airships be so much better?

    Yes they would; lower fuel consumption, much greater endurance, less risk of a catastrophic failure - and lots of area for solar cells that can help power the relay.

    You have to design a special ship, normal airships fly relatively low and their useful load drops off quite rapidly with altitude. You have to think about building BIG for quite a small payload. Then consider things like reliability, redundancy and UV light eating away at the envelope. But it should be doable.

    A British company, the Advanced Technology Group is prototyping just such a relay. It's called StratSat and the prototype could fly in the next year or two.

    Best wishes,
    Mike.