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Solar-Powered Ultralight To Try 24-Hour Flight
blair1q writes "When the solar aircraft Solar Impulse lifts off from an airfield in Switzerland on a sunny day at the end of June, it will begin the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled exclusively by power it collects from the sun. Former Swiss Air Force pilot Andre Borschberg and round-the-world balloonist Bertrand Piccard developed the aircraft, and Borschberg will be the pilot for this mission. 'The flight will require a lot of attention and concentration — the plane doesn't have an auto-pilot, it has to be flown for 24 hours straight.' For him, the most exciting part of the venture is 'being on the plane during the day and seeing the amount of energy increasing instead of decreasing as on a normal aircraft.'"
Today the answer to everything seems to be solar power. But before we all get swept up in this fad, let's consider. For every action, there is an equal opposite reaction, said Albert Einstien. Every time yu use up sun rays, you take away energy from the sun. Do these enviro-hippies want to burn out the source of all life and live on a dark ball of ice? They don't care, they are too hopped up on Italian marijuana to think about the consequences of their "innovations." Let's stick to what works, good, clean natural coal power. God bless America!
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How about soaring and using ridge lift? Ridge lift has been long used by glider pilots for cross-country flights. This planes seems to be a good enough sailplane. I has large aspect ratio wings and lift to drag ratio is probably decent as well, even though it does not look very streamlined, but it the ratio of the lift to drag that matters and this thing has a lot of lift.
Combined, solar and thermal energy (i.e. the energy of thermal air updraft) would yield a plane that could stay in the air forever.
I had a peek at TFA so I could comment. This thing would fall apart in a thermal. Ridge lift means flying fast to avoid flying into the rotor behind the hill. Its not uncommon to pull a couple of Gs flying into and out of a thermal and this aircraft doesn't look up to it to me.
My guess is they are waiting for still air before they fly it. Look at the size of those control surfaces. Sure it will have a high LD but at 30 knots or so.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The Official Solar Impulse website at epfl
Not that I mind a bit of ego-wanking.
But human flight in this is limited by the pilot's endurance, so a theoretically indefinite duration is good for no more than 48 hours or so in practice.
The same concept, but with remote/autonomous* control, yields really indefinite-loiter UAVs -- a much more practical creature.
*Yes, I'm aware full autonomous control isn't feasible now, and begs for skynet jokes. But some automation for station-keeping without 100% human intervention is possible and highly desirable....
I get tired if I drive for more than 4 hours straight. When you get tired, you make mistakes. I can't even imagine driving continously for 24 hours without making an error. Surely this is dangerous, both for pilot and anyone he might crashland on?
I can't believe that they couldn't allow even one of those inflatable ones because of the weight...
I just have this to say to you Mr. Picard, "make it so!"
Monstar L
Yes, you sound like one of those tin can pushing checklist peckers. We have some of those left in our club. While you guys sit day in day out in the bar, telling each other flight stories, we, the Ultralight MoGas Flyers ... fly!
Oh, and the chicks dig us more than they dig you ... ye know, bigger balls etc :P
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
How about a radio relay? Or weather monitoring? Hell those are the 2 blindingly obvious ones that I can think of in 30 seconds I`m sure anybody here could list off a dozen uses for these with a few minutes work.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
I'm guessing he's going to use the same method Superman uses to stay awake and vigilant all that time.
If it was not spelled out in the rules I would pick a place further to the north where the sun does not set at this time of the year. Then they could get a full 24 hours of sunlight to drive the motors.
When the sun goes down the aircraft will either need to glide or operate off of power from batteries. If the sun "did not" go down for 24 hours you could sustain flight without batteries or by depending upon gliding. Then the only limit is how long the pilot(s) could remain in the air.
Tisha Hayes
The Wright Flyer was hardly a practical invention, either. But if we'd just listened to the naysayers, we wouldn't make any progress at all.
A low power electric aircraft, even without the solar cells and a battery pack instead, would have a great deal of uses where local flying is needed - for example, traffic reporting, news gathering and reporting (replacing expensive, thirsty and (to many people) obnoxiously noisy helicopters), law enforcement, aerial photography, recreational flying, radio relay, fish spotting, pipeline patrol, powerline patrol.
Projects like this which push material and electrical power delivery technology may move us a step nearer to practical, usable low powered clean, quiet electric aircraft for many of these jobs.
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... it's magic!
Not in the sense it's something beyond the laws of Physics but something we could only dream of just dozens of years ago.
It's exciting to live in this era.
Who claimed the purpose of this project is anything other than a proof of concept and to push "awareness"?
Just like the rest of his family with all their explorations:
Auguste Piccard (aeronaut, balloonist, hydronaut) ...
Jacques Piccard (hydronaut)
Jean Felix and Jeanette Piccard (aeronaut, balloonist)
Don Piccard (balloonist)
Bertrand Piccard (aeronaut, balloonist)
There are only two energy sources on Earth - nuclear (fission/fussion) and solar (well, also tidal). The rest (including wind, biodiesel and even oil and coal) are just transformed and/or stored solar energy. We need to get closer to the source of all this energy technologically, so that we waste less of it - biodesel collects solar energy, stores it into chemical energy, that is then converted into useful mechanical energy via internal combustion. Solar cells + batteries + electrical motors are far more efficient than that. Even solar cells -> water hydrogen separation -> hydrogen fuel cells -> electrical motors is more efficient. Yes - we need to balance scalability and cost by means of mass production, but the end goal is end-to-end efficiency.
No kidding, they had the option to have it flown by Capt. Piccard, and chose the other guy. No way this is going to end well...I bet the other guy even wears a red shirt.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Sadly, the most thermodynamically efficient solution is not necessarily the most economically or socially efficient solution.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I agree this is cool, but I don't know if the radio relay is commercially viable (perhaps in emergency and military situations but not in "normal" times")
A single high altitude airship, it has been proposed, hovering around 60K (feasible but expensive) feet just inland of NYC would have line of sight over the entire NYC, Connecticut, Rhode Island Northern New Jersey, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas
Sounds great, but nobody has ever made the dollars and cents work out when compared with terrestrial towers and services like directTV
I'm guessing it only works when you launch in the morning and fly west, seeing how you'd get more daylight hours :)
--edfardos
They are planning the first night flight to be close to the summer solstice. I suspect they will conduct their initial testing during while the day's are longer, and continue testing as they get shorter.
If they can fly all night north of 22 degrees latitude, and past the fall equinox, I will be extremely impressed.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I imagine if you fly west during the day and east during the night you could stay powered a long time. I'd still like to see someone build an unmanned craft that can stay in flight indefinitely powered by Sun and battery.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
solar is also nuclear power. They just located the solar system's central fusion reactor 93 million miles away.
hmmmm, I would claim all power eventually comes from nuclear sources, but then you brought up tidal. That's just extracting existing potential energy, but damn if I can explain where it came from originally...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why not a high alt blimp? The military already uses them for refueling stations.
say what, now?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What part of this aircraft's electrical generation systems could not be replaced by a bigger lithium battery pack and ground charging? If it's flying through a significant portion of night, i'd imagine a bumped up battery pack would be able to power this thing on charge alone for atleast 6-7 hours.
The fact that it's going to be a full moon won't hurt! :-)
They could have built a drone, but no, they just had to put a human in it to limit endurance and increase weight. With thinking like this the collective will never get started...
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.