Liquid Hydrogen Powers a UAV For a Cool 48 Hours

An anonymous reader writes "While liquid hydrogen may not be a mainstream fuel for drones, the aerospace industry has said it holds the promise of flight endurance on the order of days, seemingly just another far-fetched aerospace industry pitch ... until now. The Naval Research Laboratory just announced that the Ion Tiger, a diminutive 37-pound airplane with a 17 foot wingspan, flew for 48 hours and 1 minute on liquid hydrogen and a fuel cell (anyone else notice the oddly specific duration? Guess it's better than 47 hours 59 minutes). This is a dramatically different scale than the liquid hydrogen powered 150 foot wingspan Boeing Phantom Eye and 175 foot wingspan AeroVironment Global Observer, which have yet to live up to their multi-day endurance projections. Interestingly enough, the well-known Global Hawk only has an endurance of 33.1 hours, which barely cracks Wikipedia's list of notable UAV endurance flights. Of course, solar-electric airplanes have flown for two weeks continuously, but that sure seems like refueling!"

Comments

Two furlongs a fortnight...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you try to use units that make sense? Here's a diagram that illustrates the sillyness https://7chan.org/sci/src/132255181954.jpg

Re:Two furlongs a fortnight...

[maxwell demon]

Yes, they certainly should have used "172.86 kiloseconds" instead of "48 hours, 1 minute". Those odd factor-60 minutes and hours should die. It's not that hard to remember that a day is 86.4 kiloseconds and a year is about 31.5 megaseconds, after all.

Re:I think liquid hydrogen is dangerous as hell

[maxwell demon]

That is.... Water!

After the explosion, yes.

Re:Hate drones

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suggest some sort of catapult. Although I'm not sure Arduinos are the best type of ammunition.