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.

Comments

What I'm wondering is

[suitepotato]

how does it compare to the solar ones they wanted to fly which are supposed to stay up indefinitely? Also, are there applications for missions on Mars? Pretty neat accomplishment though.

Re:What I'm wondering is

[jd]

Solar UAVs for spying would have a problem - if they're over the clouds, the camera sees nothing but clouds. If they're below the clouds, the solar panel sees nothing but clouds. Either way, it's not really that useful.

The hydrogen-powered UAV would be good for exploring hurricanes over a prolonged period of time, as it could sit in the clouds near the eye and just monitor stuff, rather than having to return to base to refuel. That would mean weather centers would get some excellent continuous data, which might improve their forecasts of these types of system.

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.)

A potential civilian use for this kind of technology would be in fighting wildfires. The late Red Adair, and others like him, fought fires with high explosives, but those tend to leave a lot of very eco-unfriendly residue.

On the other hand, if you were to have a remote-control aircraft with a large amount of liquid hydrogen aboard, it could potentially have much the same effect (deprive the fire of oxygen) but with a lot less environmental impact.

Re:What I'm wondering is

[poopdeville]

Solar UAVs for spying would have a problem - if they're over the clouds, the camera sees nothing but clouds. If they're below the clouds, the solar panel sees nothing but clouds. Either way, it's not really that useful.

Don't be silly. These things cruise at 65,000 feet, higher than anything but storm clouds. And they're designed to stay up for a week at a time. Unless a storm stays over one spot for three to four days, these things will eventually do their jobs. The U2 flies so high that the pilot must wear a space suit.

Frankly, I suspect this announcement is related to the recent loss of a U2 in South East Asia.

Re:What I'm wondering is

[jd]

Now there's a great idea. Starve the fire of oxygen by having all of the oxygen combine with a bunch of free hydrogen, creating nothing but water vapor... oh, and a little bit of heat. Heck, you could just use a KC-135 and dump raw gas or jet fuel on it for the same effect, no new technology needed.

The heat would be immaterial, with no oxygen present, and the shockwave would displace air in the surroundings.

True, you'd cause a ruddy big hole in the ground. On the other hand, I think I'd prefer to deal with a hole in the ground (which can be filled) and relatively few trees pulverized over and above uncontrollable fires that devastate a few million or so acres.

In other words, yes, the local damage would be severe, but at present, firefighting techniques rely solely on containment and letting the fire burn itself out, which is completely useless until the fire reaches fire breaks, as there simply is no other point at which you can meaningfully contain a fire.

There really aren't that many fire breaks, and there would be no way to make enough without cutting down at least 10% of all the trees, possibly more if you want to really prevent the fire leaping the gap.

My suggestion of destroying the fire by explosion would - on the whole - be far less damaging to the forests than creating enough fire breaks to use the containment system effectively OR waiting until the fire reaches the edge of a forest, which is typically what happens now.

And even in the area of destruction, I would expect far more trees to withstand a brief explosion (plant matter is fairly tough stuff) far better than a continuous fire. After any devastating forest fire, you will see some burned trees that are still "alive" - they sprout new growth. If a tree is still upright, after an explosion, there's a good chance it will be largely unaffected and will grow perfectly normally.

Solar energy

[William Robinson]

The wings look really big. Why dont they think about including solar panels on the wings?

Article Unclear

[compmanio36]

So, is this vehicle running a fuel cell type setup? Or is there some other way of using liquid hydrogen?

Either way, is this something that can be put into cars? It seems if they can keep an airplane up for over a week, a car would really benefit from this technology.

Of course, cars tend to get into accidents a bit more often than unmanned planes. Would hydrogen be as volatile in a liquid state?

What about Commercial Aircraft?

[OzPhIsH]

Is this technology suitable for use in commercial aircraft? The Airlines are taking a beating right now, a large part to their own incompetence, but the $60 a barrel prive for oil is driving jet fuel costs through the room. It seems like if Boeing or Airbus could get some of this type of engine technology working in large commercial aircraft, they could make a killing.

More on Defense Tech

[noahmax]

There's more on this and other long-range UAVs over at Defense Tech -- including a solar-powered drone that just set endurance records.

Re:Weapons of Mass Destruction?

[evilviper]

Not a chance. The US has had UAVs for a LONG TIME, and that didn't change a thing. Where did you think they got the Aerial photos they showed to the UN, claiming it was a bio weapons lab? UAVs.

Re:Weapons of Mass Destruction?

[child_of_mercy]

satellites mostly.

High Altitude Telescopes

[pin_gween]

How about a purely scientific use? Week long telescope surveys of space. Would be high enough to lose atmospheric blurring and short enough to collect lots of data, return to earth, then be reconfigured for another mission.

Very funny, Your Majesty

[ashitaka]

The distorted views that maps.google.com gives are a great reason to get Google World. Buckingham Palace looks messed up.

I live a 15-minute bike ride from Wreck Beach which is actually here.

Do I got there? No. This is Canada, not Rio or the south of France. You get people looking at you. The wrong type of people. Wrecks everything. (so to speak)

Re:Insulation

[LordMyren]

The coolant chamber for the Saturn rocket was reported to be so efficient it would loose only 2.5 degrees over a ten year span, or some similarly perposterous metric. Course, that was space, but we are exceedingly good at erecting some magnificient thermal barriers.

Hydrogen has suh an energy content that for a significant sized ship (read: not this tiny thing)dumping a little bit of fuel into energy to refridgerate would not be in any way a problem. The only real problem as far as I see is safety issues of storing.

I seriously look forward to seeing future high speed hydrogen powered planes. I think we'll finally see a departure from the tuna can in the sky principle.

-Myren

Still not my favorite UAV...

[cryptocom]

...my favorite was the D-21 drone, code named Senior Bowl/Tagboard...originally launched off the back of an SR71 Blackbird, but later launched from the wing of a B-52 bomber. not much endurance, but holy shit could that thing fly...
PERFORMANCE
Maximum speed: Mach 3.3
Range: 3,400+ miles
Service Ceiling: ABOVE 90,000 ft.

Re:Still not my favorite UAV...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that it never completed a mission successfully and managed to destroy a M-12 Mothership SR71 during separation doesn't weigh heavily on your mind?

Aerovironment has a long history with alternative propulsion

The Gossamer Condor
The "GM" sunraycer
The "GM" EV1
Helios and Pathfinder Solar-electric UAVs
Pointer UAV
Dragon Eye UAV
Hornet UAV
Black Widow MicroUAV

Just another step it would seem.