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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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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
Thermal != geothermal.
Nobody said anything about digging holes, or setting up fires. There exist natural regions of hot and cold air in the atmosphere that gliders take advantage of.
What everyone seems to ignore is that ridge lift has little to do with thermals.
Thermals are streams of warmer air rising up through colder air and caused by temperature differences, just as the parent mentions.
Ridge lift on the other hand is caused by wind encountering a slope and having to move up to get over it, thus creating an upwards vector that can be used by gliders to soar.
The wind that creates ridge lift is of course ultimately caused by air moving in to balance pressure differences, which are formed by air being displaced by temperature differences, but that doesn't mean that ridge lift is the same thing as a thermal.