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Solar Powered Helios Plane Destroyed in Test Flight
deglr6328 writes "NASA's solar powered Helios airplane has crashed into the Pacific off the coast of Kauai today during its first test using a regenerative fuel cell power supply. Helios held the record for highest prop propelled plane altitude at 96,863 (set 2 years ago) and was making preparations for a 96 hour continuous flight using its 62,000 solar cells during the day while electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen for use in its fuel cells at night. With the capability to carry 200 lb. to near 100,000 ft. for months on end, Helios was eyed with great anticipation by scientists and RF telecommunications buisnesses alike."
the obligatory obnoxious ebay post....
I always wonder what the engineers feel like after a shitload of work and money that went into these things....are no more.
I mean...the right answer would be...Built a new one! But, you have to get depressed.
-Rob
...because our history is full of science which worked as expected from the start. If it's too complicated to get right the first time, it's not worth doing. Failure depresses people, so only fund guaranteed successes. It's obvious, isn't it?
All in the name of science after all. Good thing whatever went wrong happened in the prototype phase, before anything but monetary anticipations were relying on it.
I'm very interested to know exactly what went wrong. From what I briefly read, I'd imagine it was the actual construction which had a problem, not the technology. Unless this was a pre-flight damaged part, this could be valuable information as I'm sure this plane used the latest designs, as other planes will be using.
Two major Mars exploration missions ended in failure. One of them because somebody couldn't tell the difference between the English and metric measurement systems. A second space shuttle was lost due to a problem that was pointed out by a journalist during a post-launch press conference and arrogantly dismissed by NASA. Now this. I think it's time to reconsider the validity of spending billions on disaster after disaster when so much needs to be taken care of at home. And no, the answers to all the world's problems are not necessarily in space, unless Tang and pens that can write upside down can stop war and famine.
Not trial and success. There's a reason for that.
The odd 747 full of paying commercial passengers has been known to fall out of the sky as well.
You pick up the pieces, figure out what went wrong, start over and hope to do better next time.
Those who refuse to fail will never achieve any measure of success.
KFG
" It is not suprising that Congress would cut funding for the space program, but it's against the will of the people."
Not in my experience. Sure, this is the case among the more scientifically minded people I know - programmers, physicists, chemists, mathematicians - and a few of the more (how to put this without sounding elitist.. oh, this is slashdot..) intelligent members of the general population. But on the whole the "normal" people I know are all dead set against any form of space exploration. The usual reason is that the governments could spend the money on making life better. When I attempt to point out that they could achieve such aims AND have a decent space program by redirecting as little as a tenth of global military budgets, and if they don't there's a good chance the human race will either be gassed, asterioided, roasted or otherwise placed in the "extinct" category of species at some point in the not-distant future, I either get moaned at for being an idealist of I get the sort of look usually reserved for UFO ethusiasts and people who ask difficult questions at public meetings.
The general populace don't want space - unless it means better satellite reception. Hail the sheeple!
Also, it should be noted that NASA did not build Helios. It was built by a private company with NASA funding. That's like saying that Because someone has funding from DARPA, it's a DARPA project. I saw a documentary on Helios (actually, it was on the head of this company, who is quite an unmanned-flight pioneer, from what I gather.) The designers have also designed mini-planes, including one the size of a deck of cards! This is only a minor setback, as Helios is a smashing success in this field.
Isn't that a little like saying "With so many kids failing in school, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on improving education..." or "With so many people dying from these new diseases, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on researching a cure..."
You don't launch a plane expecting it to crash, which is to say if it hadn't crashed you're not learning anything, you're just turning the crank. Progress comes not when the expected happens but rather when the unexpected happens, and there are lessons to be learned from the burnt and twisted wrekage of every fallen bird.
On a different topic...
The counter to heat is not cold; the counter is resiliance. The weight of the coolant, the tanks to hold it, the tubes to deliver it, equipment to keep it cool, etc, would add significantly to the weight of the shuttle (which means it takes more fuel to get it into orbit, which means a larger external tank, which means even more styrofoam insulation, etc...). Besides, the shuttle's been in space for a while at that point. LN2 would be more likely to warm it up than cool it down.
No, "Baked Alaska" was the proper strategy here.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
In science, if you demand perfection, don't expect any advancement.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
> With failures like this mounting up, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on NASA projects. We need a victory of some sort to convince the government to give NASA the money they need.
/.ters are pro- space exploration in general. And there's a lot of ppl like us who don't necessarily visit /. everyday. Most people under 35 (may be off +-5 years) are in one way or another in touch with tech, and "get it" when it comes to why space is important, unlike trying to explain it to someone who's 80 and has never left their home state.
I think we first need to get The Chimp and his people out of office. As long as we have greedy people in office NASA won't get $$$, since that money can be spent on semi-automatic guns for "hunting."
I would venture to say that most of us
Problem with people like us is that we're pretty lazy when it comes to do anything to speak up for ourselves. Some of us are deeply into tech (i.e. kernel hacking) but completely miss out on making a political stand of any kind. Until that changes, we'll have more Chimps in the White House that will cut NASA's funding.
Must-not-watch TV!
I simply can't understand this line of reasoning. Bush cut income, estate, and dividend taxes, targeting the cuts disproportionately at the wealthy investor class. He did not cut payroll taxes. Certainly people who pay payroll taxes are also "PAY[ing] TAXES", are they not? And isn't it true that payroll taxes generate a huge surplus in the social security trust fund, while income taxes don't pay anywhere near enough into the general account to pay for basic governmental services? Are we not running a deficit?
Now you may argue that payroll taxes are collected strictly to pay out social services and are not collected for general revenue or spent on general services, as such they shouldn't be cut. However, this isn't the case. In fact the HUGE SURPLUS of $200B/yr is siphoned off to reduce our general account deficit. In fact, the currently stated $450B (4.5%GDP) deficit would actually be $650B (6.5%GDP) were it not for the surplus generated from payroll taxes. Note that payroll tax collections are capped at $86K/yr, meaning that any income above $86K/yr is not taxed; this is called a regressive tax because collections don't continue linearly across all income streams. The rich pay much less proportionally for payroll taxes than do you or I.
Realize that general revenues pay for basic government services such as the military, infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, rail, etc), NASA, and government overhead - NOT social services. So, I wonder how anyone can defend a tax cut that reduces revenue from a general account which is already $650B/yr in deficit? And the gall of claiming that it is done on the grounds that income taxes are somehow 'real' while payroll taxes don't matter, when it is the payroll tax surplus which covers 1/3rd of our current account deficit.
Whatever you may think of the rationality of providing social services (I support them, you may not, either opinion is legitimate political debate), certainly you agree that general services slated for payment through income taxes should collect enough on their own to pay for those services. We should not be running a 6.5% GDP deficit (or even a 4.5% GDP deficit) while at the same time cutting the very taxes slated to pay for those services. That the current administration claims to cut these taxes for the people who "PAY TAXES", while at the same time cutting no taxes for those who pay a regressive tax, is simply disingenuous and offensive.
And I haven't even begun discussing our current foreign trade deficit, which is another +5% of GDP. Frankly, if this continues Bush's administration may well take America over the brink into bankruptcy. We're already printing money to prevent 'deflation', the Treasury Department has signaled it's willingness to let the dollar continue to depreciate in value against other foreign currencies, and our manufacturing base is running 1/4 idle.
IMO, these tax cuts are a policy mess. Bush and the fed are 'pushing on a string' with their policy blunders by flooding the investment streets with money while there's nothing left to invest in. We should be pushing the money down to the individual low income tax payers to stir consumption, not further investment and development with no buyers in sight.
Cheers,
--Maynard
That's a very reckless and naive belief. When you move into a house, do you trash it and ruin it and then simply flee to the next available house? Our maturity as a species depends on our ability to gain wisdom through maintaining our own home and then work on expanding to new homes, not burning our current home to the ground and spreading on to the next suitable habitat for us to exploit and ruin.