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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
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The battery thing for dark hours makes me nervous.
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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.
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
At night, a grid of halogen headlamps mounted over the solar panels is activated.
Reminds me of the Looney Tunes and WIle E. Coyote. He would get a platform on wheels and put a sail on it and then a fan, also mounted on the same platform, would blow air at the sail and ... somehow this would get him moving.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Ah, the heat from the lamps causes the air to rise, providing upward suction on the wings. Brilliant!
Actually that might work... Sails on boats work like wings, that's how it's possible to sail upwind.
If the sail was positioned at 90 degrees and then the fan blew across the front of it, you'd create the Bernoulli effect, with the lower pressure air behind the sail pushing you forward. Of course in the configuration in the cartoon I expect Wile E. was just blowing it from behind, in which case it wouldn't work at all.
Captain PLAAANEEET!
'Cause the Planeteers had one, or something.
Bow-ties are cool.
Actually that might work... Sails on boats work like wings, that's how it's possible to sail upwind. If the sail was positioned at 90 degrees and then the fan blew across the front of it, you'd create the Bernoulli effect, with the lower pressure air behind the sail pushing you forward. Of course in the configuration in the cartoon I expect Wile E. was just blowing it from behind, in which case it wouldn't work at all.
Yes, the cartoon portrayed the latter case. The way Wile E. was doing it, any force acting on the sail (wanting to move it forward) would be entirely counteracted and cancelled out by an equal and opposite force acting on the fan (wanting to move it backward). Yet somehow he got moving, and quickly. Of course he didn't get the roadrunner...
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I haven't looked into this, but I would guess that probably wouldn't be much better than just the thrust provided by the fan, correct?
This space up for sale.
The plane is too slow. If they had a faster design it could fly around the world in continuous daylight.
I haven't looked into it either but intuitively it does seem very unlikely that you could improve on just having the fan thrusting behind you.
The article said they should fly at roughly 25 knots for the flight around the world. I assume this is so it can fly and recharge in the day, and fly on batteries at night, which leads me to believe it can fly considerably faster, but only if night travel is not required in the same flight.
I read this as "Soul Plane to make Public Debut."
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Good luck getting your moped to go across any water, or over rugged mountain ranges.
It's no good unless I can drive it like a car!
SOMEONE give me the flying car I was promised!
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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!
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Actually lower pressure pulls to toward it.
Doh. of course, you are right, I got mixed up with lower speed... the lower speed air means it's higher pressure. Thanks.
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!
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"Sails on boats work like wings, that's how it's possible to sail upwind."
You are wrong. If you were right then a sailboat would not need a keel. Remove the keel on a sailboat and the boat will not sail upwind, not matter what sails it has, it will sail downwind.
A sailboat sails upwind because the pressure of the wind on the sails causes the keel to press against water below the boat. These two forces acting against each other just aft of the boats centre of gravity force the boat forward.
Thanks for that. I was fearing a wash of links to "Wind-Driven Propeller Cart Goes Faster Than Wind". Though I have to admit it was counter-intuitive the first time I saw it laid out. :-)
Sails generate lift when sailing close to the wind(i.e. upwind) but that lift isn't going to be directly forwards, so you are right that the keel has to balance that to make the boat go forwards, but you are wrong that the sails don't produce lift. Obviously, sailing downwind is different and you can just have the wind push you.
See http://www.physclips.unsw.edu.au/jw/sailing.html for more.
Just follow the sun. "Heliostationary" relative to earth, if you will. :)
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