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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."
At least give your audience a brief two sentence re-cap, state the goal of the endeavor, and give a reason why we should click the link (it's commonly refferred to as a "blurb" in journalism). Slashdot is now popular (and commercial) enough to have editors that can at least follow the basics of journalism. You are making OSDN look bad. Step up and be big boys, for Christ's sake.
This is really a cool project, and while it might seem like a geeky hobby thing, I think it's much more important than that. I think we'll se R/C helicopters that move around on their own used for surveillance and as a support for police and firefighters pretty soon. I mean, these things already exist. The flight over the ocean shows that they can handle long distance flights as well, at lest in 50% of the cases :-)
Martin
http://tam.plannet21.com/FAQs.htm#leader
It is nice to see that they finally made it.
Now, can they make it all the way around?
Now the leprechauns can escape to other countries!
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
Nope, the next step is to kidnap the baby of the guy who flew the thing. Using a remote control getaway car, of course
No but, yeah but, no but...
This is great news, but like all pioneering events, it's just the beginning of a brave new future. Someday, regularly scheduled model airplane flights over the Atlantic, as well as to other destinations, will be a commonplace occurance. In the future, everyone will have unmaned aerial vehicle service available right in their backyards. Soon, inexpensive GPS programmable reusable UAV's with automatic colision avoidance will be available to anyone for less than the price of an automobile at stores everywhere.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
That's a LOT harder than you'd think. Even over interplanetary distances there is a lag between transmission and reception that can be potentially catastrophic - radio waves can only travel at c, so as the distance to your radio controlled toy increases you get corresponding increases in the time taken to get a signal to or from it. In the case of the moon, you have:
Distance between the moon and earth(d): 384,500 km
Speed of light(c): 299,792,458 m/s
d / c = 1.283 seconds
So you end up sending a signal and a second later your rocket/whatever responds. Obviously not a situation in which tight maneuvering is possible.
The problem is even worse to other planets - delays to Mars run into several minutes. To do anything complicated things send out there have to be as autonomous as possible with any control from Earth being little more than "go here", "do this", "go there" and letting the machine work out how to do it.
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.
after landing, the plane went out with its mates, got royally pissed, and managed an altercation with the local constabulary.
Yet another slur on we humble Irish. At least, that's the way I'm going to take it. I'll just point out two things...
a) s/royally/republicanically
b) s/constabulary/gardai.
Typical bloody yank. Not only assumes that Irish stereotypes are correct, but confuses us with the Brits at the same time.
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!
...
Actually, if you nose around a little the site details the fate of all four previous attempts. In text it says that 1 and 2 were quickly lost due to mechanical problems or miscalculations. For 3 and 4 it actually shows on a map how far they had progressed before last contact. A different shot of the same map shows TAM 5 reaching its destination. All in all, a very cool project -- a substantial goal accomplished through ingenuity and persistence. Thanks /. for tipping us to the TAM project.
Now that Ireland is clearly within range to launch an UAV attack on the US, we can expect the invasion to happen shortly.
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.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
I cant see it surviving the return trip carrying loads of duty free Guiness
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
> yet all it can say on the site is 'the plane has landed' wheres all the info?
Yeah, they've been wasting their time on the technology and engineering rather than a REALLY COOL website.
Anyway, I'm sure someone reading this forum can donate them a Casio wrist watch running Apache that they can insert right into the plane for live updates.
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).
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
hmm, whats to stop anyone making one of these things and kitting it out with an explosive or biological warhead? can radars pick these things out as being targets without seagulls etc. raising false alarms?
Model aircraft engine $50
As above to JAN spec with testing $15000
Model aircraft fuselage $50
As above, built by Lockheed, say $25000
Home made navigation system $1000
As above, built by Martin Marietta... oh, just make the whole thing a round $100000.
Yes, folks, the threat from model aircraft carrying drugs could kickstart the entire US tech economy, just like Star Wars was going to in the 80s.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
This was a great project. I know we've all had daydreams of building autonomous flying machines, and I wonder how many of us have also daydreamed of a small autonomous submersible? I think that a tiny submarine would be just as exciting to see cross the Atlantic although a bit slower.
The primary benefit of a vehicle that uses the water as its transport mechanism is that it can't crash! It could stay a few dozen meters below the surface for optimum travel speed and emerge from the water at intervals to update its position by GPS and wire that and other data such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and the like back to the crew on land.
Once nice side effect of traveling in such a dense medium is that a great deal of instrumentation weight would be okay since it's easy to make things float in water. The same cannot be said of the air! That means it might be possible to use a device like a gyroscope to keep track of heading while under the surface. Try loading something like that onto an RC airplane and you'll need some big wings.
This would be the fifth plane they have launched, read the website:
#1. Crashed due to a steering servo issue
#2. Fuel system problem
#3. Bad weather
#4. LOST
Listen, lad, I built this plane up from nothing. All I had when I started was swamp ... other kings said I was daft to build a plane on a swamp, but I built it all the same ... just to show 'em. It crashed. So I built a another one ... that crashed into the swamp. I built another one ... That fell over and THEN crashed .... So I built another ... and that made it across the Atlantic. ...
It's a slow day at work...
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
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.
I want 2D games back.
I'm from Ireland and I mapped the precise gps coordinates to a map which seems to suggest the model plane actually didn't quite reach dry land at time of post. Maybe it has now but latitude 53 degrees, 27.67; and longitude 10 degrees, 4.20 is in the Atlantic ocean just a mile or so off the coast og county Galway - so close you could see the emerald hills (if it's not too misty)
in most areas means significant, UNCORRECTIBLE vision problems that are severe enough to be somewhat disabling.
If someone who is 'legally blind' is driving, then one of two things is the case. Either he's not truly deserving of the status, OR he shouldn't be on the road. Probably the latter. Someone who's 'legally blind' should not be able to pass the vision exam to drive, even with corrective lenses, but unfortunately cheating the vision exam in most US states at least is quite easy -- one can just memorise the chart, since the same one is always in use.
Someone who's legally blind may be able to read, but they will not be able to read the normal type size in a newspaper or book without a strong magnifying glass.
Yeah it's true. I saw it happen. The Harelip got angry at him for puking on her back after drinking too many Coors at happy hour. She chased him out of the Arvada Tavern with a pool cue. He hopped on his banana-seat bike and took off like a bat out of hell. I don't know if he shit himself or if he was just plastered (maybe both), but he definitely was swerving around a lot. Some blonde yuppie girl in a Ford Expedition (undoubtedly on her cell phone) broadsided him. He died instantly.