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.

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?

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.

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.