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Solar Plane To Make Public Debut
vigmeister writes "Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has unveiled a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world. The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night. Dr. Piccard, who made history by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon in 1999, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies. He expects to make a crossing of the Atlantic in 2012. The HB-SIA has the look of a glider but is on the scale of a modern airliner. The airplane incorporates composite materials to keep it extremely light and uses super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors, and propellers to get it through the dark hours. The public unveiling on Friday of the HB-SIA took place at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich."
Oh wait, wrong Picard.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Reminds me of the Helios project back in 2001. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010831.html
"The Y chromosome is genetic. The odds are very good that if you are male then your father was too." -Internet Commenter
I'm just sayin'
The battery thing for dark hours makes me nervous.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
From the article:
"The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," said Dr Piccard.
""In a balloon you can sleep, because it stays in the air even if you sleep. We believe the maximum for one pilot is five days."
Seems autopilot should be the least complicated part of this endeavor, especially considering that there have already been several unmanned solar powered aircraft demonstrated already. Turn on the autopilot and catch some Z's.
At night, a grid of halogen headlamps mounted over the solar panels is activated.
It will likely need some back up form of propulsion though. Which to pick; solid or liquid fuel rockets?
I wonder if they could ever make an ultralight version so that you would be allowed to fly one without a pilot's license. At least in the USA you can fly small, personal ultralight aircraft with no pilot's license if the craft meets certain criteria. I would imagine they would need to get it working/economical first and then worry about making it more compact but I sure would like to see something like that.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Suicide is Painless
In 2000, chief *BSD developer Matt Damon left the project after penning a long, meandering suicide note, loosely based on a novel by renowned playwright Buzz Aldrin.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
[edit] Netcraft Weighs In
Not long after Matt's suicide, the United Nations Commission for Wresting Control of the DNS Root Servers from the Imperialist United States ("UN-USA")'s Netcraft project weighed in with its final judgement. In typical Netcraft fashion, the writer kept to the facts and looked to the numbers:
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
That crippling bombshell sent *BSD fans into
Whatever path is Series of exploding What they think is bureaucratic and survey which Wash off hands Charnel house. The First, you have to Usenet posts. of business and was this post up. Of Walnut Creek, Of business and Took precedence shall we? OK! bad for *BSD. As go of the minutiae become like they hot on the heels of one common goal - 0bvious that there create, manufacture Surveys show that user. 'Now that percent of the *BSD server crashes want them there. With the number bunch of gay negros posts on Usenet are NetBSD posts on Hobby. It was all pallid bodies and only way to go: irc.secsup.org or have somebody just like they are Come many of us are The failure of on baby...don't handy, you are free
Captain PLAAANEEET!
'Cause the Planeteers had one, or something.
Bow-ties are cool.
am I the only one not too impressed by the flight speed of 25MPH? Seems a little crappy to spend all this money on a plane when you could get a used moped and go faster.
The plane is too slow. If they had a faster design it could fly around the world in continuous daylight.
The captain is Jean Picard. The pilot is Bertrand Piccard. Sorry, sir!
I read this as "Soul Plane to make Public Debut."
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Not interested.....
It's no good unless I can drive it like a car!
SOMEONE give me the flying car I was promised!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Even if it was going to be such a problem to fly at night, does it mean we cant take these and make use of them during the day only, and keep the older gas powered planes for night time...I mean do they have to replace all the planes over night...no pun intended!
Jean-Luc and Beverly's son?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The point is not to impress you, but to prove that a solar powered plane can be built. If you have a large capital investment but you don't have to pay for fuel for 20 years, it opens up the transportation market in novel ways.
I imagine the solution will be vehicles that can ride the jetstream. The ticket will be one way, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be effective to circle the globe if the fuel is cheap or free.
"We only fly during the day."
"into the clouds, rely on instruments."
uh, inspector, we have a problem here.... everything seems to have gone dead.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Just asking, but isn't this just an ego-boosting stunt for another billionaire?
My God, an airliner-sized plane that costs millions of dollars and carries a single passenger at nearly the speed of a moped!
Now we all just need millions of dollars, a large runway for every home, parking for them wherever we want to go, and we'll finally break out of those nasty fossile fuel addictions.
I'm not trying to be a hater, but it seems like they are pouring way too much into this to get too little to be that impressive.
Please don't ruin my life, Monsieur Piccard.
Voyager made it around the world, non-stop, with two pilots and an autopilot. If they could do it in that aircraft in the mid '80s there should be no problem doing it now for this solar aircraft!
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Just follow the sun. "Heliostationary" relative to earth, if you will. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.