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Those Magnificent Googlers and Their Flying Machines
theodp writes "To paraphrase Sean Parker: "Flying your fleet of planes using NASA-discounted fuel isn't cool, you know what's cool? Flying your fleet of planes using zero-cost fuel." Having piqued CEO Larry Page's interest with its solar and battery-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse is partnering with Google to promote its goal of circumnavigating the globe in 2015, a Green Movement take on Wiley Post's 1933 achievement."
As fat, spoiled Westerner, I am all for it as long as there's conventional fuel backing up the redeye I'm traveling on.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Didn't I just read that circumnavigation was no longer considered a moral or medical necessity?
Solar Impulse is doing all the work.
Google is just using this for publicity for their products.Yahoo! or Facebook could just as easily been the "partner".
So let's concentrate on the folks who are doing the real innovation here, shall we? Instead of getting sucked into the PR horseshit like the little lemmings we are.
The kids of Slashdot who were once the innovators have become the lazy old leeches, so it's natural for them to admire the biggest online leech of all.
Of course, no "one man feat" is impressive when you have billions of dollars and dozens of top quality engineers to back up your effort. Pioneers are impressive precisely because they have none of that, and try as they might, these spoilt kids aren't going to enter the history books for anything more than "largest advertising platform on the planet, and a good variant of Apple's iPhone".
It really pisses me off that these billionaires like to get these sweet deals at our expense and have the nerve to blame us when we unemployment is high.
The billionaires are getting richer and in the meantime, our wages are stagnant at best or are going down - and it doesn't matter how hard you work or what your educational background is.
Those people rigged the game in their favor and then make it sound like it's our fault. And then you have people who go out and protest to allow the game to be further rigged in the billionaires' favor - Tea Party.
The numbers ARE showing that the billionaires are getting the bulk of the pie and it's all because they've rigged the system. I went and did the right thing and went to school - a state school - got a graduate degree because more education is always better, right?! and I'm worse off. And yet assholes like those people get cheap Jet A subsidized by you and me.
Remember that when you hear Rush, Hannity, or some other Fox News/Talk Radio asshole condemn the progressives for wanting wealth redistribution and for acting on class warfare.
Yeah, there's wealth redistribution all right - from the poor slobs like us to the billionaires - and it's NOT because they work harder or are smarter. They CHEAT!
Its a great achievement and all, but only for the record books. I don't think there is any conceivable way that a the technology could ever result in a real world passenger/cargo solar powered aircraft. They simply don't have the durability, capabilities & reasonable maintenance necessary. Even (possible) aircraft with low fuel consumption high surface area like that Aeroscraft zeppelin in development probably wouldn't be able to completely power their flight using solar. If solar panels are made light, cheap and durable enough though pasting them to aircraft & cars could at least be used to increase their efficiency/range.
Nobody gives a crap about some unwieldy gossamer solar-powered plane that's built solely as a publicity stunt. If Google really wants to change the world, they need to focus their resources, brains and dollars, on making the über battery.
Real innovator? What innovation? Solar powered aircraft will never be a viable means of transportation, so this is nothing but a publicity stunt.
It looks like you just saved them a pile of money and effort! Thanks!
What about solar cargo zeppelins? Yeah they have all their usual known drawbacks vis-a-vis weather but it's cool if it takes a long time to ship some kinds of cargo
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Solar Planes are all ready possibly using 20% efficiency solar cells, with new cells able to hit 40% efficiency that are entering production never may come very soon. With battery weight going down it's a very good possibility that in the next 10 years a solar powered plane will be able to transport 4 people across the country. Add in the fact that maintenance costs will be less and there will be no fuel costs these planes could very easily compete with the Pipers.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
If they want to equal Wiley Post's achievement, they have to do it with one eye.
Proverbs 21:19
Powered glider, sure, you could make solar powered. Conventional aircraft for moving people or cargo don't have the surface area to be solar powered, even with 99.999% efficient cells. Too much power requirements for too small of a space.
And there we have a shining example of what happens when you extrapolate a small dataset without regard for externalities.
How about this: instead of claiming that PV cell efficiencies will climb to some magical number and simultaneously a massless battery with infinite charge capacity will be invented, try some simple calculations. Pretend that 100% of all solar power (roughly 1kW/m^2) is converted to electricity, calculate the amount of lift required to carry 300 to 350 kg (four medium sized people), and figure out just how large the aircraft's surface area would have to be.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The truth is that the fuel that they are getting is not NASA, but NSA discounted fuel. That is a slight and subtle difference. The fact is that NSA gets much more data from Google, than NASA and the real sponsor needs also to be pointed out.
Solar powered aircraft will never be a viable means of transportation
Transportation is not the only use for aircraft. Solar powered planes would be ideal for surveillance, and as communications relays. For these applications speed is not important, but long loiter time and low maintenance are big benefits.
Sure, and there is no value sticking a person in such an aircraft.
"New" cells exceeding 30% efficiency have been around for decades. The trouble is that they are obscenely expensive multi-junction cells, and it's only worth the cost for spacecraft and concentrated solar power. When used in concentrated solar power, increased quantum efficiency brings thermodynamic efficiency closer to 40%, but this is not available to aircraft for obvious reasons.
The trouble is merely one of power. Aircraft require it, and solar cells need lots of area to provide much of it. Consider a 737. It's a convenient size considering it's right at around 100 sq.m. At 40% efficiency, you're looking at some 40kW, or 53HP. A 737 is somewhere around three orders of magnitude higher than that. 53HP is the high end of what you would find in an ultralight aircraft. Considering the fact you're only actually going to hit about half that with modern technology, what you've produced is basically a powered glider. Just as with gliders, they are pleasure craft, but not really good for anything else. While there is nothing wrong with some form of battery that is charged by a solar array on the ground, the only productive use for a solar powered aircraft is for unmanned and extremely long endurance.
The term "aircraft" typically refers to [heavier than] aircraft, relying on aerodynamic lift rather than buoyancy. Still, the same surface area that gives an airship more power gives it more drag, requiring more power to resist weather. Now you are better off with an airship than an aircraft. If you covered the entire surface of an airship with solar panels, you would actually produce about half as much power as those airships would otherwise have. On the other hand, there is no way in hell you're going to get the thing off the ground covered in solar panels. You might be able to using one of the "thin film" technologies, but then you're only going to end up with about a third as much power.