Solar Craft Flies Through Two Nights

An anonymous reader writes "A solar-powered, unmanned craft has flown for 54 hours — a record for both unmanned aerial vehicles and solar craft. None before has managed to store enough solar energy to fly through more than one night. There is also a video showing the 18m carbon fiber wing craft being launched."

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[stoolpigeon]

This BBC article has good info.
 
It should not be a surprise that the Global Hawk record did not stand. Look at the two craft. If a global hawk hit the zephyr it probably wouldn't even notice.

engouh solar energy

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

From Wikipedia:

"Engouh Solar Energy (ESE) is a newly-discovered form of solar energy capable of lighting even the darkest parents' basement to the point where the average nerd can neither see his keyboard nor the inevitable typos he'll make on internet discussion boards."

Re:What good is it?

[stoolpigeon]

it's good for learning things to be used in later vehicles that will accomplish, you know, stuff

Re:What the...?

[Gertlex]

engouh

What the hell kind of spelling mistake is that? A typo?

What constitutes Solar Power?

[mweier]

Obviously solar panels feed it to maintain energy stores; however since it must store this energy in a battery of some sort, is it required that the batteries be empty when launched? If not, what's to stop someone with a major pile of pre-charged solar-rechargeable batteries from tacking one solar panel on top & calling it a solar vehicle even if it could never fully charge those during use? Not accusing these folks of doing that but just curious about how they classify solar vehicles...

Re:An idea

[everphilski]

Depending on the time of year it wouldn't have to do that... you could have it do loops around the north or south pole at a much higher latitude and still get sunshine 24/7 (or damn near close) and not have to travel as fast as they would near the equator to keep up with the sun.

Innovative solution to the nighttime problem

[Anonymous Coward]

A series of halogen lights mounted along the wings are illuminated at night to power the solar array.

Re:An idea

[dougmc]

Or even better go a bit further than that during mid summer and then it makes no difference how fast you go because you'll be in 24 hour sunlight.

The problem with that idea is that as your latitude goes up, the angle of the sun goes down. It approaches 90 degrees at the equator, but it's much lower above the arctic circle. So solar cells on top of your plane will be *much* less efficient. You might be able to make a second giant `wing' of solar cells that you can adjust the angle of (but it generates no lift, so you still need your main wing), so it's nearly vertical to catch that sun at midnight above the arctic circle, but in that case you've greatly increased the weight and drag of the plane, and even then the sun you're picking up is greatly reduced in intensity because it's gone through lots and lots of atmosphere.

Storing energy is the key. You might be able to store it in batteries like these people have done, or store it in your altitude and just let it glide down at night -- but that would require a really efficient plane. This looks to be a really efficient plane, but it's obviously not quite efficient enough to do that.

That would be cool if they'd try to fly it across the Atlantic -- it would be the first electric plane to do so, and the first solar powered plane to do so. TAM 5 took 39 hours to cross the Atlantic, and this plane was up longer than that -- but it's a lot slower too. TAM 5 averaged about 48 mph, and I'll bet this plane is less than half that.

Glass houses...

[billbaggins]

Looked at your /. username lately?

Grousing about submissions

[kwerle]

Not only did I submit this story with no type-o's, last night, but I also made reference to the previous solar powered flight that lasted 2 nights, which this submission implies never happened before.

Though the previous one also did gliding/non-powered flight part of the time. Still, up for 48 hours.