Solar-Powered Planes Take Flight (wsj.com) 32
The dream of perpetual, emissionless flight is getting closer to reality. Aviation giants, telecoms, investors, and military agencies are pouring millions into developing these prototypes, which could revolutionize aerial surveillance, emergency communications, and more.
Solar planes absorb energy via panels covering their wings and bodies, allowing them to fly indefinitely as long as the sun shines. Advances in battery technology now enable longer flights and overnight operation, albeit with less power than jet fuel. These slow, lightweight aircraft can fly at altitudes and durations impossible for humans, making them ideal for monitoring, telecom, and disaster response. Companies like BAE Systems, Airbus, and Skydweller are racing to commercialize solar planes, with hopes of offering services by 2026-2027. The unregulated stratosphere is a key focus, with planes acting as "steerable satellites." WSJ adds: Most of the companies trying to commercialize solar planes are building aircraft that are lightweight, autonomous and can fly at altitudes and for lengths of time that humans can't tolerate. Unlike balloons, solar planes are steerable, a big advantage for monitoring a target on the ground or providing telecom coverage without being blown off course. They are also cheaper and closer to Earth than satellites, putting them in a sweet spot for services that can't currently be offered by either, executives in charge of solar-aircraft projects say. The planes can capture higher resolution photos or video than satellites, or deliver broadband internet from the air, another thing satellites can't do.
Solar planes absorb energy via panels covering their wings and bodies, allowing them to fly indefinitely as long as the sun shines. Advances in battery technology now enable longer flights and overnight operation, albeit with less power than jet fuel. These slow, lightweight aircraft can fly at altitudes and durations impossible for humans, making them ideal for monitoring, telecom, and disaster response. Companies like BAE Systems, Airbus, and Skydweller are racing to commercialize solar planes, with hopes of offering services by 2026-2027. The unregulated stratosphere is a key focus, with planes acting as "steerable satellites." WSJ adds: Most of the companies trying to commercialize solar planes are building aircraft that are lightweight, autonomous and can fly at altitudes and for lengths of time that humans can't tolerate. Unlike balloons, solar planes are steerable, a big advantage for monitoring a target on the ground or providing telecom coverage without being blown off course. They are also cheaper and closer to Earth than satellites, putting them in a sweet spot for services that can't currently be offered by either, executives in charge of solar-aircraft projects say. The planes can capture higher resolution photos or video than satellites, or deliver broadband internet from the air, another thing satellites can't do.
Balloon can't do ... (Score:1)
... what about blimps?
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Far more expensive, require a vast hanger and mooring tower, and use helium which is increasingly scarce.
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What about a PARTIAL blimp -- just enough "lift" to allow a standard airplane engine to keep it afloat for 24 hours?
Or a combination of blimp and solar?
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Not sure what you're talking about. Hybrid blimps are a thing that some are working on. Airlander has been testing one. I understand they have had some setbacks, and the investment money isn't really there. I don't see any reason why it "wont work" other than economics and the cost of development.
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Yes there are some companies working on this. Airlander has what they call a hybrid blimp. The body's shape acts as a wing and generates lift while flying. Helium helps reduce the apparent weight.
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Take a look at Airlander [wikipedia.org]. This idea is in my opinion the most practical solution to fly sustainably with any serious payload. The electric version is underdevelopment.
Small electric aircraft are neat, but the Square Cube Law says it does not scale to freight or passenger aircraft: If you make the design twice as big, the wing surface (which carries the load), gets 4 times as big, but the volume, and therefore the mass, gets 8 times as big. So the bigger a fixed-wing heavier-than-air an aircraft gets, the mo
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For uncrewed blimps, hydrogen can be used instead of helium.
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The lightest of all would be to simply pump the air out and have a vacuum.
No known plastic or metal alloy has the strength to contain a large enough vacuum to lift its own weight.
The vessel would need to be made from Scrith [fandom.com].
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Blimps need to be tethered. Perhaps you mean dirigible.
Re:Balloon can't do ... (Score:5, Informative)
Any steerable and powered lighter-that-air airship is a dirigible.
A dirigible with a rigid framework is a Zepplin.
A dirigible without a rigid framework is a blimp.
Airships [wikipedia.org]
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and a blimp, i.e. "A dirigible without a rigid framework" needs to be tethered, or it won't stay where you want it to.
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Blimps need to be tethered.
Tell that to Goodyear.
Re:Balloon can't do ... (Score:4, Interesting)
They're OK if you're willing to forecast the winds and roll with them. You might be able to get around that with a remote-controlled version of what balloonists have always done, which is to find favorable winds at different altitudes. However, those winds might be out of your permitted or desired altitude, so then you're forced to give up. Then there's the helium problem which might be possible to overcome with a solar-powered heater, making it a hot air balloon; but I've never heard of that being done so I'm guessing the math doesn't work out.
A winged aircraft has a better chance of station-keeping against the wind since it has very little drag. The jet stream would probably still overwhelm these types of craft; but that's a relatively small part of the atmosphere that's more easily avoided.
1978 Future Boy Conan (Score:2)
The ultimate weapon in the 1978 anime Future Boy Conan is a large flying fortress that flies above all cloud and entirely powered by sun. In many ways, that series is a dry run on many ideas that will show up in future Studio Ghibli movies.
unregulated? (Score:2)
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some decades ago (Score:2)
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Probably NASA Pathfinder? [wikipedia.org]? Way back in 1994 no less!
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it *should* have been called "Icarus"!
And now this new Icarus, which will fly too close to the moon, and fall . . . . .
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Satellites are more expensive.
Satellites have higher latency.
You need a lot more satellites because they don't stay on station.
Satellites are in fixed orbits. They can't be temporarily reconfigured for an event, natural disaster, or war.
Satellites are effectively impossible to repair or upgrade. If one part goes bad, it's dead.
Satellites in LEO have a lifetime of only a few years.
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and one thing you can do to totally fuck with a drone is to scramble its GPS.
The Russians are doing that in Ukraine. There are several countermeasures.
One is to use dead-reckoning and a magnetic compass when GPS blanks out.
Another is to use ground-based beacons.
The most reliable is to use stored maps and vision to guide off the terrain. This is how Tomahawks found their targets before GPS existed, and is what Ukraine is doing now.
Ukraine drones navigate by sight [economist.com]
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