Not Too Shabby
The BBC reports that the ‘Eternal plane’ returns to Earth
The UK-built Zephyr unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has confirmed its place in aviation history as the first “eternal plane”.
The solar-powered craft completed two weeks of non-stop flight above a US Army range in Arizona before being commanded to make a landing.
The Qinetiq company which developed Zephyr said the UAV had nothing to prove by staying in the air any longer.
It had already smashed all endurance records for an unpiloted vehicle before it touched down at 1504 BST (0704 local/1404 GMT) on Friday.
…Zephyr is set to be credited with a new world endurance record (336 hours, 24 minutes) for an unmanned, un-refuelled aircraft – provided a representative of the world air sports federation, who was present at Yuma, is satisfied its rules have been followed properly.
Its fortnight in the sky easily beats the 30 hours, 24 minutes, set by Northrop Grumman’s RQ-4A Global Hawk in 2001.
Zephyr has also exceeded the mark set for a manned, non-stop, un-refuelled flight, set in 1986 by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who stayed aloft for nine days (216 hours), three minutes. Their flight in the Voyager craft went around the world.
With the ability to maintain flight at 60,000 feet, above the weather, and to generate its own power for instruments, this really is a great stride for long term monitoring of, say, oil spills, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other disasters.
9 comments
This is all well and good, but where’s my ultra-futuristic dirigible? Seriously, if I had a time machine, a crossing on the Hindenburg would be high on my list of things to do.
Only with a gas change, PJ. Hydrogen is a bit too iffy for me.
With helium for lift and solar panels for power, a dirigible makes sense to me.
It’s also a great step forward for monitoring the border, your backyard and who knows what else. I’m pretty sure every police department in the U.S. wants a couple.
I’m fairly certain that the FAA won’t let them fly until they can respond to air traffic controllers and can sense other aircraft in their vicinity.
I don’t worry about my backyard as I have a canopy of evergreens over it and my house doesn’t even show up on aerial photographs,
They would interfere with the training and testing that goes on from Panama City to Pensacola and north into southern Alabama [NAS Pensacola, NAS Whiting Field, Hurlburt Field, Duke Field, Eglin AFB, Tyndall AFB, and Fort Rucker surround me. We have rather crowded airspace.
Based on reports of the UAVs along the border, I think the cops will give it up as a bad idea. The operational readiness hasn’t even reached the level of the Osprey. Apparently they aren’t very reliable, but there are so many that they manage to fulfill missions in Afghanistan. Rumor has it that a lot of them get pranged on landing because of the satellite delay and lack of 3D visuals.
“…this really is a great stride for long term monitoring of, say, oil spills, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other disasters.”
Aha. Dream on! 😉 😛
Like that would EVER happen there! 😆
I was looking for a laugh… and look at that! Got one right away! 😀 Ta muchly sir! 😉
It’s a good technological achievement however. 🙂
As for the current crop of UAV’s…
“…Rumor has it that a lot of them get pranged on landing because of the satellite delay and lack of 3D visuals”
Yeah… I heard that also. Reliability and real-time C3 are a big problems.
Can’t think why they couldn’t do 3D visuals if they wanted to. Off-the-shelf monitor and LCD glasses on the receiving end, extra camera and maybe control linkage on the UAV. Bandwidth issues maybe? Or eyestrain?
Those ultralight solar panels on the Zephyr would also be dandy for lighter-than-air craft, one would think.
As it happens, the Hindenburg itself was originally designed to use helium, but was retrofitted for hydrogen because of the U.S. lock on helium supplies. Did you know there was actually a pressurized smoking room on board?
PRANG!
What a wonderful word. Wiktionary says it’s “an aeroplane crash.” Or crack cocaine. Or a tower in a temple. I might add “a brand of watercolors common in Fifties American elementary schools.” Who knew we had crack cocaine in our paint boxes!
I guess a dirigible is great, as long as the direction you wish to go is straight down…
I can’t remember with certainty which of Neal Stephenson’s books it is, but one of them (The Diamond Age?) begins with a futuristic dirigible crash. Whichever novel it is in, it is a scene worth reading.
Actually… Dirigibles are definitely possible and safe forms of transport these days. While they would not be very fast, they would be faster and more efficient than an ocean liner and most rail or bus transit systems over long distances. They can easily use solar power and I know a solar powered ion-based propulsion system has at least been theoretically proposed (there was a proposal for a prototype… but I have no idea if it ever got off the ground… so to speak!) 😉 😆 It’s not practical for most other forms of propulsion because a large area of high-efficiency solar cells are required. A dirigible could have a large enough area apparently. 🙂 I think NASA were working on a system of solar ion propulsion, and have a working xenon ion thruster for spacecraft.
It will never happen of course. It doesn’t need oil in any form for a start, and uses free energy. Can’t be having any of that!! It’s downright unpatriotic, and heresy! 😈
Kryten, of course they’ll ‘prioritize for military apps, DoD and MoD funded the project, but the manufacturer will want to expand their market, and corporations make the actual decisions, not governments. 😈
It is a bandwidth and weight problem, PJ. They might solve the bandwidth, but the equipment needed would degrade the payload capability of the UAV. Then there is the problem of training the pilots to use the system. An automatic landing system would be a lot cheaper and easier to implement.
Steve, it is probably a primarily British term, a vestige of my wasted youth hanging around to with allies, like the RAF, RAAF, and CDF We would rent a lot of lager while not telling each other anything important.
The thing about dirigibles is that there is the possibility of room in the cabin, rather than the cattle car packing that goes on with airliners these days. The passage would be slower, but the cost of operation would be much lower.