Robotic Scout To Survey Arctic Ice

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Meridian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a single-engine research aircraft with fixed landing gear designed by engineers at the University of Kansas. According to Technology Review, it will be used to see what happens beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Two units are currently being built for a cost of about 3 million US dollars. The Meridian will fly for up to 13 hours over a distance of 1,750 kilometers. The first flight over Greenland is forecast for next summer, and a second flight will take place over the Antarctic later in 2008."

ohnoitsroland

[Anonymous Coward]

get tagging, this is your daily dose of roland. if you are unlucky, there might be another roland story in a couple hours.

Re:Melt the ice?

[matelmaster]

That may be true, but maybe it is this kind of thinking that lies at the root of the problem. A single car trip (drone flight) doesn't make a difference. If enough people think like this (it seems that currently a lot of people still do) and you've got a pretty big problem at your hands. In this special case however there may be a point to be made of the reward in understanding justifying the cost in environmental impact.

I'm no expert, but...

[Scrameustache]

a single-engine research aircraft with fixed landing gear designed by engineers at the University of Kansas. According to Technology Review, it will be used to see what happens beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

Wouldn't that work better with a research submarine?

Re:I'm no expert, but...

[thatskinnyguy]

Submarine would work below water. But since Greenland and Antarctica are land masses... no.

Re:Melt the ice?

[calebt3]

Seeing as the planes will be launched in the summer, when daylight hours are the longest, why not refit that solar-powered plane that flew 52 hours straight (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/10/1917254) for cold-weather flight and mount the survey equipment on it as well? I assume that the researchers don't need the plane to fly for more than a full day at a time. Unless maybe the sun is too low in the sky for solar panels to get enough power?

Re:Melt the ice?

[ScrewMaster]

Unless maybe the sun is too low in the sky for solar panels to get enough power?

No idea, a lot would depend upon the time of year, of course. But when you're sending a multi-million-dollar aircraft over a few thousand square miles of ice, you would probably want a more reliable power system. I don't know how much power the radar equipment on the thing needs, but that alone would probably eliminate a solar-powered craft.

Re:ohnoitsroland

[UbelievablyLame]

I thought the beef we had with Roland was that all of his posted links went to his blog and not to the real source. It doesn't appear that he does anymore. Why still with the hate?

Re:ohnoitsroland

[heinousjay]

Because there wasn't really a legitimate beef in the first place. This is just a group of nerds playing at "fight the power."