TAM 5 Has landed

bzant writes "TAM 5 The model airplane, (see our previous story), has successfully landed in Ireland. This was the second plane they launched. Other than some slow speeds and a concern over a lean fuel mixture the flight seemed to go as planned."

Comments

Good Job.

[ianjk]

It is nice to see that they finally made it.

Now, can they make it all the way around?

Re:Good Job.

[KoshClassic]

Agreed - the team that just accomplished this did so while trying to adhere to the size and weight limits for a particular class of aircraft as defined by one of the international aviation federations. One of the limits is that the plane could weigh no more than 11 lbs.

I know that the plane that just made the Atlantic crossing carried 1 gallon of fuel - not sure of the exact weight of a gallon of this fuel, but I imagine that the extra fuel required for a full circumnavigation would pretty much necessitate that the weight exceeded 11 lbs given today's technology. To circumnavigate the globe with an 11 lbs. plane pretty much at this point I think would be an excercise in aerodynamic and propulsion efficiency, or maybe even lightweight materials engineering, not in the technology of autonomous flight and navigation.

On the other hand - if they could adhere to the weight limits by doing autonomous mid-air refuelings, I'd be VERY impressed.

If you want to ignore weight limits, then you get into things like Global Hawk, which successfully flew across the Pacific on its own two years ago. Since Voyager proved that its possible to carry enough fuel to make the trip, it would just be a matter of combining the technologies.

great for drug/weapon smuggling

[Anonymous Coward]

now we know how to get 1-2kilos of cocaine or some of those lovely anthrax/botulism spores from USA to Ireland, iam sure the IRA will be most pleased at the developments there now
we have a nice non-radar detectable transporation method thats cheap and capable, nothing like a practical application of long distance remote controlled (cheap) devices for terrorists

Cool

[mao che minh]

It would be pretty cool to have your pizza delivered by a GPS guided helicopter droid, yes. I bet they would fly like how pizza boys drive though, which would be bad for telephone poles, birds, tall houses, etc.

Fantastic

[cybermace5]

After several thousand years of persistent research and development, we have finally upstaged the carrier pigeon. Too bad that, in the meantime, radio was developed.

Seriously though, it's a great accomplishment. Sure, the military or decent-sized corporation could and have done this without breaking a sweat. Yet the general public has an important role here: pushing technology further ahead. It isn't futile to do things the leaders have already done, because it forces them to keep innovating that much more. Inspiration for all the hobbyists out there!

R/C Vehicles

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

I saw this nifty R/C blimp at a tradeshow once. It was about 3 feet long. It could be moved in all three axis, and was perfectly content hovering as well. It broadcasted an image from an underbelly camera to a standard TV channel.

It was rather neat watching the blimp flying around the auditorium and spying on things from the air.

Ever since I saw the thing, I've been wanting to build one.

Re:R/C Vehicles

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

There are ways to overcome this problem. Between using an aerodynamic shape for the gasbag and larger fans, a miniblimp is quite capable of outdoor operation.

The one that I really like is the internal-rotor helicopter-style design. I actually helped someone test some ideas for one of these. We took a plastic toy propeller (from those pull-string toys), and attached it to a Dremel rotary tool. Fire the thing up to 15,000 RPM, and it rapidly lifted the tool, which was being held down by the AC cord.

If we had used a cordless version, it probably would have been capable of independant flight.

The real problem came from the fact that these little flimsy plastic rotors aren't meant for any more than, say, 1000RPM. After 20 or 30 seconds of flight, it promptly exploded.

Hell of an achievement.

[dr.Flake]

Reading some of the commentairies I get the fealing not everybody graps the full level of the achievements made here.

Imagine having to make / design one of these suckers yourself!

what do you need:

Plane (duh)
Controls: GPS, computer, satelite link!, electric controls + receiver, battery etc
fuel!!!: lots of it. its only like 3000 miles or so. (40 hours of flying)

now fit it within these specs to be able to call it a "model airplane":
max 5 kg
max size 2x2 meter
max engine cap. 0.6c
(there are several more limitations)

Hope every one graps the achievement here.

Landing most impressive

[mnmn]

I believe the landing part was the most impressive of feats whether it was automated by GPS or some smart sensors on the plane and runway brought it down smoothly. I'd like to know more on that.

The second most impressive part is maintaining a constant flight. The general altitude direction are set by a GPS sensor but constantly monitoring the devices, compensating for the temperature and winds, and sending the data back through satellite would be pretty complex. I'd like to know more about the on-board computers and the satellite uplink (and how much that cost).

Re:Wow

[paradesign]

the anime movie, Hoshe no Koe (sp?) aka Voice of a Distant Star deals with this. Two friends are separated over a growing distance as they attempt to keep their relationship going. its quite touching. The time it takes their text messages to reach eachother grows longer and longer. definately worth watching.

Usenet thread

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot more info on this usenet thread

Re:How about something marine?

[Angst Badger]

I wonder how many of us have also daydreamed of a small autonomous submersible?

Well, there's me, though I was only interested in submersion as a means of riding out nasty storms. Technically, it's almost trivial since, as you note, making something that floats isn't very difficult and you don't have the size and power constraints that you would in an airplane. The one thing I haven't figured out is how to send back large quantities of data -- like a jpeg every few minutes -- without getting into expensive stuff like satellite phones. Get around that problem, and you could mount a digital camera with a 180 fish-eye lens vertically, and use a script with panotools to create a navigable hemispherical panorama back at the base. How cool would that be?

Now, what I'd really like to do is build an autonomous zeppelin that stays aloft on solar power and replenishes its hydrogen supply by electrolyzing captured moisture, but that would be mind-bogglingly expensive...