Solar Plane Breaks Endurance Record

calmond writes with this excellent snippet from CNET News: "QinetiQ Group PLC claimed Sunday that its propeller-driven aircraft called Zephyr flew for 83 hours and 37 minutes non stop, more than doubling the official world record set by Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk in 2001. The Zephyr is much different from the Global Hawk, which is about the size of a fighter and requires runway for taking off and landing. Zephyr, on the other hand, is an ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber aircraft that weighs less than 70lbs and is designed to launch by hand. The little aircraft flies on solar power generated by amorphous silicon arrays covering the aircraft's paper-thin wings. It is powered day and night by rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries that are recharged during the day using solar power."

Comments

The record is only for unmanned aircraft.

[LWATCDR]

Manned aircraft still have that record beat. Humm several days in an airplane... What fun.

Re:The record is only for unmanned aircraft.

[uhlume]

>

So I guess that the rules for flight now specifically excludes orbital flights in order to disqualify MIR. Eppur si vola.

"Orbital flight" would be a misnomer at best. An object in orbit isn't "flying", it's falling.

And no, I don't think that's nitpicking. Once you're in orbit, it's not much of a feat to remain there, supply logistics notwithstanding.

Re:The record is only for unmanned aircraft.

[antirelic]

Is this informative because of its "anti-american" bend or because it has information? If its because of the provided "information" than the Moderators should actually check out these "factiods" before modding the post. For example:

"Valeri Polyakov did a 437 day flight, with a flight distance covering more than 7 thousand times the circumference of the earth.

Of course, his flight being disregarded isn't surprising, him not being an American."

Yeah... 437 day SPACE FLIGHT....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriy_Polyakov

No one was talking about "manned space flight"... because in that case, no shit sherlock, 60 odd days isnt shit.

The Americans didnt "change the rules". The reason the above mentioned individuals werent given credit for the "discovery" of flight is because their inventions simply did not translate into successful reproducible air travel. I mean, those guys dont have anything on... BIRDS... that were flying long before man. Why were BIRDS given credit for the discovery of flight...

"So I guess that the rules for flight now specifically excludes orbital flights in order to disqualify MIR. Eppur si vola."

Yes sparky... RTFA... This is about UNMANNED SUB ORBITAL flight... because if you werent then you would have to talk about VOYAGER I and II... which are have been going for 30+ years and are unmanned and again... American. Oh snap...

Re:...and this isn't a new one...

[poopdeville]

If I get to set my own rules, I can break records, too.

Maybe. That doesn't mean their record isn't legitimate, especially if the "rule" they disregarded was irrelevant, and especially since they have flown further than anybody else.

Qinetic not very upset at all

[Duncan Blackthorne]

If my hunch is correct, then QinetiQ isn't very upset by not being listed as a world-record-breaker with this flight. Qinetic is a military contractor. Unless I'm completely mistaken, this plane being constructed with so much carbon fiber, wouldn't it have a very small (perhaps non-existent) radar signature? I'm sure it could carry a small payload, like reconnaisance cameras, for instance? All that plus no need to refuel, and I'd say that the military would be very interested in contracting QinetiQ to build a fleet of these for them. I'd also imagine that you could include a satellite uplink to the payload, and never have to even have the thing land in order to download it's recorded recon data.

Verification

[mcrbids]

Don't confuse a "feat" with a "record". Feats are what people do. Records are feats that can be proven to have happened. If an achievement is not properly documented, there's no way to know for sure whether it was done.

So it's not whether or not the feat was surpassed, it's whether the feat was surpassed in a way that can be verified. I can say to you that I've got a cure for cancer, or tell you that I can run 30 MPH barefoot, but neither claim means anything there's some verification of the process - some official body (EG: the American Medical Association in the United States) has performed testing to some standard process to verify that the cancer cure I claim actually works at least most of the time. (In medicine, almost nothing works 100% of the time, not even aspirin)

You and I have no particular doubt that they flew the time they're claiming. But if it has not passed the most widely recognized process for validating this record, the RECORD still stands, and will stand until the proper process has been followed to record the fact that the old record has been broken.

However, they have a plan, which entails aircraft like this flying for MONTHS ON END. So they probably don't much care about documenting the record, since their numbers are likely to improve dramatically over the next year or so. Why go through the effort of documenting what is, for them, a rather minor, incremental step, solely to prove a record?