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NASA Exploring $1.5 Million Unmanned Aircraft Competition
coondoggie writes "NASA today said it wants to gauge industry interest in the agency holding one of its patented Centennial Challenges to build the next cool unmanned aircraft. NASA said it is planning this Challenge in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force Research Lab, with NASA providing the prize purse of up to $1.5 million."
Whatever you do, don't call it Shirley.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Or otherwise we'll never get it....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
BONSAI!!
Whatever you do, don't call it Shirley.
I propose they call it the Tereshkova. Well, either that or "Larry" Wachowski.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
An unmanned aircraft is *much* easier to program than a unmanned car.
No bumpy road, no complex wheel behavior, no forced curves, barely and obstacles, and nothing that can occlude them (assuming your sensors obviously go through clouds)... and you have only one axis to care for.
Every big plane already has automated cruising and landing for emergencies.
The navigational aspects also are already mostly automated away in regular planes.
Once you have the flaps and engines abstracted away, and have a working radar, a child could do it.
With all those automated drones out there, I wonder what's the big deal about this anyway?
Probably tested and guaranteed passenger safety.
Actually I expect you to be fooled again. Its probably a recurring thing in your life.
Clue: NASA doesn't do the war fighting stuff. They do the civilian aviation stuff. Aviation and safety research, keeping track of accidents and incidents, etc. See: http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/
Clue: That in no way means any tech innovations won't be immediately adapted/adopted by the military for their use. Or by DHS for domestic civilian population monitoring/control and suppression of dissenters, for that matter. New tech/discoveries/etc have always been shared both ways between NASA and the military throughout NASA's history.
You can rest assured anything NASA and/or groups working with NASA develop that the military/DHS/TLAs think might be useful they'll use.
Besides, the government isn't the only one that can build drones. If it came down to it, drones could be built in a garage that could intercept/down things like the Predator-class drones.
Take a look at this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU
It was laser-clocked at 586KPH/366MPH.
That's not even the largest engine the maker, JetCat, produces. They've got one that's rated for 52 lbs thrust.
http://www.sitewavesstores5.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=JetCat&Product_Code=P200-SX&Category_Code=TURB
Have it power a drone carrying a pound or two of HE, and a simple guidance system tuned to the opposing drone's uplink frequency. Launch it straight up to ~60K ft altitude so it's above the opposing drone (to be in the satellite uplink signal path from the other drone) and have the guidance system kick in when it acquires the signal and guide it straight to the other drone.
No more Predator-class drone.
Of course, bringing down an autonomous drone would be more difficult and require a different type of interceptor-drone, possibly one with remote-video and a remote pilot.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
patented Centennial Challenges
A quick search of uspto shows that no such patent exists under that name...
... from the military budget? I am very sure there is a possible dual use (this time civilian -> military) of easily and cheaply getting a payload very, very high...
While I do not want Space Warfare, Rods From God, or even only Very High Altitude Bombing... if those are the price I have to pay to get 1 or 100 billion more into the research of a civilan space program then at least I am willing to pay it.
Here's what it would sound like: "ngykhngykhkhwm" - all consonants.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
As a "cool" unmanned aircraft.
True fact.
Patented? I understand the journalistic need for spicing up stories (hell, I was an admin on Fark) ... but even if this was a patentable idea and doesn't fall as a "buiness method", NASA had to go through hoops to even be allowed to do it. (I guess there's no room for earmarks when you can't be sure who's going to get the money).
The NASA program didn't start 'til 2005, and was modeled after the Ansari X Prize (which was *awarded* in 2004, after years of effort by multiple teams). But even then, that was likely modeled after the Orteig Prize, which some guy you've probably never heard of (Charles Lindburg) won in 1927.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
How about building a manned mission beyond LEO?
Silence is a state of mime.
You can rest assured anything NASA and/or groups working with NASA develop that the military/DHS/TLAs think might be useful they'll use.
The same holds for anything made by anyone with possible military application. The real question is whether this research was done with at least partial intent that it be used by the military?
The first drone to assassinate the president wins the competition.
Figure out how to do See and Avoid reliably and bank millions. DOD ha been trying to figure this out for years.
... and are you hiring? :-D
Otherwise, I think I'll just slap an android phone onto an ARF R/C plane and go to town... it'd be funny if the platform ends up costing less than half of the $800 ADS-B receiver it has to carry :P
It's stupid easy to hit such an object from a guidance standpoint, heck, Iraqi air defenses in the Saddam years swept them from the sky with ease. UAVs largely fly in straight predictable patterns, they are not made to be maneuverable like a fighter jet. Any SAM that can physically reach them will blow them out of the sky.