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

Think of the possibilities...

[KennyP]

Hover over a nude beach and take hi-res pictures. It's every /.er's dream!

Visualize Whirled P.'s

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

[DieByWire]

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.

Clouds aren't the issue. There are lots of other ways to look at or listen to things than visible light. The problem with the solar version is payload. Helios had to be incredibly light to fly on solar power - it had a 247 ft wingspan, yet weighed only 1500 pounds. It broke up in flight two years ago. AV's Global Observer has a 1000 pound payload.

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

For endurance you need high aspect ratio wings. Think U-2, think Steve Fossett's round the world flight. To survive in the clouds near a hurricane, you have to be built like a P-3 - short, stubby, stronger than hell wings. This thing might fly high over a hurricane, but it would never survive in one.

A potential civilian use for this kind of technology would be in fighting wildfires. The late Red Adair...

Red Adair fought well fires.

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.

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.

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?

torrents and mirrors galore!

[xbmodder]

pictures: http://mirrordot.org/stories/aaf0c842dfe20788ff7a5 5f10aff4b6d/index.html
The main page:
http://mirrordot.org/stories/d1d8af49f65278e926452 b7286f69bcb/index.html

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-ob server/go_pictures.htm

torrent:
http://xbmodder.us/global-observer.torrent

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:Way cool

[cujo_1111]

Is it painted with an aluminium based paint on a canvas substrate?

What about my gas helium UAV?

[geekwithsoul]

Big deal! I took my kid to the circus the other day and got him a gas helium Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for free. They just handed it to him on a string, we untied the bottom, and whoosh! . . . it took off and flew all by itself.

Fuel and Payload in One Small Package!

[billstewart]

It's not a WMD with just hydrogen explosive, though there are UAVs that can carry a 50-kilo payload, enough for a US backpack-sized tactical nuke.

It wouldn't have helped the US avoid falsely accusing Iraq of making WMDs, partly because it's not good enough to tell a "baby milk factory" or "pharmaceuticals factory" from a "chemical weapons factory". But the big problem was that the US government *wanted* the conclusion to be "Iraq has SCARY WMDs" to convince the US public to let them invade again, and anything that simply flies over and says "no, didn't see anything suspicious on the outside of those factory buildings" isn't going to either change the propaganda policy or tell the military planners not to target a factory-shaped building.

On the other hand, better UAVs would help improve targeting for the things they did want to blow up, or at least let them see whether groups of people were wearing uniform-colored cloths or not.

Re:What about Commercial Aircraft?

[Sparohok]

What makes you think hydrogen has any advantages over kerosene (jet fuel) for commercial aircraft? Hydrogen has a lower energy density, it's far more expensive, and it's much harder to store. The only (debatable) advantage is environmental and that hardly outweighs the crushing disadvantages.

The press release is mighty short on details, but I assume this UAV uses electric motors. Presumably liquid hydrogen and a fuel cell is lighter than batteries. It's a great solution if your goal is to fly very slowly for a long, long time. Not so good if you want to move half a million pounds at 600mph.

Martin