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Boeing Hummingbird Drone Crashes In Belize
garymortimer writes "Still not reported elsewhere, Flight International reports another crash of the Boeing Hummingbird helicopter UAV. The Hummingbird A160 is in development, but test flights already demonstrate successively greater endurance, higher altitudes, more extensive autonomy, and greater payload. The program has ambitious goals of a 2,500-mile (4,000 km) range, 24-hour endurance, and 30,000 ft (9,100 m) altitude. Flights are largely autonomous, with the aircraft making its own decisions about how to fly itself so as to meet certain objectives, rather than relying on real-time human control. Maximum speeds are over 140 knots. The aircraft is 35 ft (11 m) from nose to tail and has a rotor diameter of 36 ft (11 m).[2] Until recently it was powered by modified Subaru automotive engines, but newer versions fly with the Pratt & Whitney PW207D turboshaft."
According to Wikipedia: "In August 2010 the A160 Hummingbird is undergoing jungle test flights in Belize". So it wasn't just having a joy ride in open skies, it was in a tricky terrain to navigate, for *any* kind of autonomous vehicle.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Until recently it was powered by modified Subaru automotive engines, but newer versions fly with the Pratt & Whitney PW207D turboshaft.
There's your problem. Everyone knows that automotive engines aren't involved in aerial crashes. That's why the previous design was so safe.
but test flights already demonstrate successively greater endurance, higher altitudes, more extensive autonomy, and greater payload.
Don't let the fact that it crashes bother you at all, this is the drone you want!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
further bankrupt the U.S.
A great vacation spot for diving, but flight testing?
Most test flights work fine over a desert. Trying it in a jungle is much more elucidative.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Therefore we shouldn't develop this weapon any more. After all, one failure means the whole project will never produce a useful tool, ever.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Why don't the editors just link to the original source rather than sending bucketloads of traffic to these sites?
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/09/10/347201/a160-hummingbird-crashes-during-testing-in-belize.html
Even contains MORE information like how it failed (in this case, something caused it to go into autorotation and basically didn't succeed with the landing).
"So if I am to understand correctly, these things are on full-time autopilot."
You understood wrongly.
Hey, but don't let that making you to read TFA.
"If it doesn't pick me up on radar or other sensors, BOOM?"
What do you think that happens if you are flying in a colliding trajectory to another human-piloted aircraft and no one of you pick the other on radar or other sensors? Yes: pilot eyes are sensors.
I don't see other posts about this but they had 2 of those Hummingbirds here. Both were equipped with some new radar technology that is able to 'look' through canopy and see people. http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=17648&frmsrch=1 - The oval shaped box underneath the bird is the radar. It rotates to be perpendicular during flight. The point was to test the radar and also the bird at the same time. It's supposed to be quite enough for 'bad guys' not to hear it when it's flying at 10,000 feet. Belize was chosen for the testing because of the ideal canopy we have here. Word on the street is that the first one crashed because it ran out of fuel.