Zephyr Solar Plane Tops 7 Days Aloft

chichilalescu writes "The UK-built Zephyr solar-powered plane has smashed the endurance record for an unmanned aerial vehicle. The craft took off from the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona at 1440 BST (0640 local time) last Friday and is still in the air. Maybe we can attach some netbooks, and extend the Internet to the clouds."

Comments

Re:cool, but..

[Xtense]

Remember these are just baby steps of solar powered flight. This in itself is quite an achievement, but there's still room for improvement. As solar panel technology gets better, so will the capabilities and usefulness of such projects in real life. However, i think just waiting for a better panel won't cut it - the rest can still be optimized, like internal circuitry, materials, the design and so on. That's why IMO it's important to keep making such prototypes. If (when?) we finally get better panels, we'll be all set with a proper aircraft architecture and, if we're lucky, it'll be able to sustain itself in every climate.

That said, the military will probably never release the specs to the public, so meh ;) .

Re:What's with the dumb summary?

[chichilalescu]

I submitted the story, and I made the pun. I thought it was funny...
and in principle I think in the future aircraft of this kind could perform some functions that are currently performed by satelites.
anyway, I don't know a lot about this stuff, so maybe it was a bad joke, sorry.