Boeing Gets $89M To Build Drone That Can Fly For 5 Years Straight 271
coondoggie writes "One of the more unique unmanned aircraft concepts took a giant step toward reality this week when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency inked an agreement with Boeing to build the SolarEagle, a plane capable of remaining at heights above 60,000ft for over five years. Boeing says the first SolarEagle under the $89 million contract could fly as early as 2014."
batteries... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, "Google Maps Live!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait until Google gets these. Google Maps could be updated in real time.
Re:Summary Fail (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, not necessarily [slashdot.org].
Re:SEE! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's already *here*.
That is absolutely fantastic news. Could you point me at a place where I could buy one?
The reality is that the derivative technologies are not always things like "we need to invent a solar panel", they're not even "we need to invent light composites", they're "we need to figure out a way of quickly producing these exotic materials on a large enough skill to fill the demand that the military is going to have for these.".
Re:400 foot wingspan, no unimproved airfields (Score:3, Interesting)
Where the hell are you going to launch it from?
Do you realize how many airstrips worldwide are operated by the US? I'm sure they would have no problem launching from Diego Garcia, that was a fine place from where to launch B-52s, KC-135s, and B-2s for their missions to Iraq.
Re:Satellite replacement? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see these put into use for keeping communications operational, should the Kessler Syndrome come into play making LEO impassible (courtesy nations like China showing off their target practice skills and the resulting space debris).
Another use would be bandwidth for populated areas, so traffic wouldn't have to be bounced off a satellite just for region to region traffic.
Re:2014? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious to hear more about your concept for a solar-powered jet engine.
I don't see why a solar or electric Brayton-cycle heat engine shouldn't be possible. I'm actually curious that no one has done this for solar farms instead of Stirling-cycle engines. While the theoretical efficiency of the Stirling-cycle engine is ideal, the practical problems are large due the the number of moving parts and issues with heat transfer.
Brayton-cycle turbine engines inject the heat into the working fluid away from the moving parts, and one can imagine the air flowing through a heated mesh to perform the transfer. Not a winner for this applciation, where direct electric-drive propellers have compelling efficiency and possibly weight advantages, but for solar farms it might very well be competitive with Stirling engines.
Re:batteries... (Score:3, Interesting)
But There is Mostly Dead (Score:2, Interesting)
INIGO: what's that?
MIRACLE MAX: search through his pockets for loose change
Re:Now, "Google Maps Live!" (Score:1, Interesting)
hahaaaaaa... no, at least not without some SERIOUS backend. Aerial photography capture is quite a bit more complicated then most people seem to think. While technically with the right aircraft you can spit out a relatively (~20-100ft) accurate map with no ground control points it takes DAYS just to process the data into an uncompressed georectified image, and that's if you don't mind some pretty severe frame edge misaligns. I work for a county GIS (electronic maps) department in Lower Michigan, and on top of the week or so of work required to set up the two dozen ground control points (~2'x'2 white arrows) and high accuracy GPS them it took MONTHS before the PRELIMINARY images made it to us (Uncompressed, 400GB in thousands of separate image files), and after we confirmed them another month before we received the final compressed images. Now some of that of course was a queue, but the fact that there was such a long queue suggests the processing time involved. Now I suppose Google could build themselves a couple supercomputers and wiz through the things in a few hours but they would still have to get HUNDREDS of GB of data down from the drones, that would take some time. On top of all of this the summary says that this drone will fly at 60,000 ft. Pretty much all aerial photographs of any real useful resolution are flown at no more than 16,000 ft (ours were flown at ~10,000 ft for 1' resolution). Maybe in a decade or so with some pretty decent technological advancements (data transfer rates, camera resolution, processors) it might be possible, but I doubt it could be done now (for an uninsane cost). The fastest I've heard of a company getting aerial photography to a customer was a a couple weeks, in a disaster situation (hurricane, tornado, etc).
Re:batteries... (Score:3, Interesting)
Quoting wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "Fuel cells are different from conventional electrochemical cell batteries in that they consume reactant from an external source, which must be replenished - a thermodynamically open system. By contrast, batteries store electrical energy chemically and hence represent a thermodynamically closed system."
So AFAIK there is no way to "recharge" a fuel cell from solar cells, and it's weird they'd come into it since there are plenty of other rechargeable battery technologies.
Re:SEE! (Score:3, Interesting)
Concorde could reach 60k.
An SR71 got diverted once because of this. The SR71 was flying somewhat faster, but Concorde's passengers were munching canapés and drinking Champagne, and her pilots were only a little less comfortable ;-)
Sadly, both are now grounded.
There's still a few English Electric Lightnings flying in South Africa, they can do 60k, and they're demilitarised.