Slashdot Mirror
Liquid Hydrogen UAV
From the same company that brought you the Wasp MAV, Aerovironment announced yesterday that they have successfully completed the world's first liquid hydrogen powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight tests. From the press release: " AeroVironment's Global Observer High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) platform will be able to operate at 65,000 feet for over a week with a flexible payload-carrying capacity of up to 1,000 pounds." Applications include government and military surveillance operations, communication relays, and the potential for persistent real-time imagery of wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. More pictures here.
pictures: http://mirrordot.org/stories/aaf0c842dfe20788ff7a5 5f10aff4b6d/index.html 2 b7286f69bcb/index.html
b server/go_pictures.htm
The main page:
http://mirrordot.org/stories/d1d8af49f65278e92645
other mirror:
http://xbmodder.us/www.aerovironment.com/
my picture mirror (don't hit this) only do this if you can't get the torrent:
http://xbmodder.us/www.aerovironment.com/global-o
torrent:
http://xbmodder.us/global-observer.torrent
The trouble is that producing hydrogen needs oil either directly or to produce electricity. It's also harder to store and transport. There aren't any real benefits to the airline industry.
I'm at this conference right now (it ends tomorrow). Everything here is about spying. Every display booth here is about high resolution camera systems, hardened data storage, remote sensing, and a miriad other things useful for spying, whether it be over the next hill or over another country.
Even the student competition that I'm a part of has spying as its primary objective (autonomous navigation and target recognition).
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
"For Mars, there are no clouds to contend with, so solar panels would work a great deal better overall. EXCEPT in sand-storms, where they'd not only be useless during the storm, they'd be so etched up at the end that they'd be useless afterwards, too. If you plan on studying Martian storms up-close, carrying your own fuel would have some major benefits. (Remember, they'd need to carry their own oxygen, too, though.)"
The bigger problem with one of these on Mars is the thinner atmosphere. It's a lot harder to fly a vehicle like that on Mars than it is on Earth.
And, no, I'm not really that smart. I read about it in PopSci or something.
"Derp de derp."
Yeah, when was that? 1988? So the invasion of Iraq is justified because he gassed the Kurds in 1988? Boy, what a dipshit. Don't you think bin Laden was the bigger threat, especially to the US? Any why is it that Afganistan and bin Laden became a sideshow to Iraq again? Oh, that's right, it is because Hussein gassed the Kurds in 1988.
You would take a nice, stable telescope off of the ground and put it on a craft that vibrates like hell and your pictures would come out pretty bad (not to mention that your telescope would be so small that it wouldn't have near the resolving power that the ground scope would have).
Mind you the silver paint on that flaming blimp is now used as rocket fuel.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Easy.
You let some of the liquid hydrogen evaporate (called boil off gas) - that draws thermal energy from the remaining liquid like an evaporative cooler. You can then consume that boil off gas in your turbines/fuel cell/whatever.
This method is commonly used on LPG tankers.
1000 lbs, that's like 500 kg or half a ton, I think both the US and Russia has fusion warheads that small.
Think about the MIRW technology for the ICBM's, The sattelite versions of the missiles can loft a 5 ton sattelite into orbit, but at the same time can loft a MIRV (with multiple warheads) half way across the world.
After approx 1 min of googling i found this link to the W88 warhead with an approx weight of less than 800 lbs and a yield of approx 450 kton (a fusion device to be sure).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
In a forest fire the fire is completely surrounded by additional fuel. Between the heat of the explosion and the burning embers and such that would undoubtedly be thrown in to the air, you would be more likely to spread the fire rather than put it out.
Besides, I would think that in many cases forest fires may be tens of acres in size by the time they are finally detected, located, and the appropriate response teams are deployed. It would take quite the large boom to suck the air out of that kind of space.
In addition to Hydrogen's advantage of a very high energy to weight ratio, its very low temperature could be used to cool an airplane's superconducting electric motor to the required operating temperature. Such motors can be 1/3rd the weight of conventional motors for the same power, as well as being significantly more efficient.
Perfect for small UAVs patrolling battle sites.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!