Solar Impulse 2 Breaks Three Records En Route To Hawaii 37
Zothecula writes: Solar Impulse 2 has started smashing records even before the longest leg of its round-the-world flight is complete. At around three quarters of the way to its next touch down in Hawaii, the single-pilot aircraft has broken the world records for longest distance and duration for solar aviation, with the record for longest ever solo flight of any kind thrown in for good measure.
Is it fair to compare it to previous solo records? (Score:3)
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Records are almost always broken due to advances in technology, or at least knowledge. Better equipment or better training are consequences of improved knowledge. But it still counts. Even track records are due to better shoes, and new knowledge of how to train the human machine. The four minute mile was once the holy grail of track, now it is routinely run under 4 minutes. Technology plus knowledge.
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i don't think it's even psychology or training programmes, it's the extreme tails of human genetic ability, and finding those really really fucking rare individuals who have the traits necessary to break rcords.
If a sport becomes popular (basketball in the USA, track in Jamaica), more individuals are drawn to those activities. And as a result the odds of finding someone who's genetically gifted for that event increase.
Human beings are not different in a genetic sense before or after Bannister broke the 4 m
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Since you can't be bothered to actually read the article (yes, I know, who does that?), here is a quote:
"Solar Impulse 2 took off from Nagoya, Japan on Sunday for its audacious five-day flight across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii with Swiss pilot and Solar Impulse co-founder André Borschberg at the helm. It has since stayed in the air for three days and nights without using a single drop of fuel, grabbing the distance and duration records, 5,663 km (3,518 mi) and 80 hours respectively, in the process."
Ho
Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that doesn't seem to be what is happening:
This isn't some jet engine which does this in a few hours.
You can whine all you want, but the records are real.
They're for solar aviation, which means it's a lot harder and a lot slower.
Call us back when you've done better.
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It's going to take several days to fly from Japan to Hawaii. In the process he's beaten the record for longest solo flight ever.
Are you asshole? Or do you just play one on the internet?
It's a single person aircraft, travelling at an average speed of 50 to 100 km/h (31 to 62 mph) [gizmag.com].
Yes, it's not a continuous flight. But it will, nonetheless, be the first time a solar powered aircraft will do it, and ev
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The terminology being used is intentionally misleading.
The way its being said, most people who aren't that interested think its one single continuous flight, which is impressive.
There really isn't anything particularly impressive about this once you take that out of the equation.
Voyager was impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
IT actually DID fly around the world without stopping, and it did the entire flight in 9 days, and they didn't stop to take breaks to avoid weather, they flew AROUND a Typho
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And everyone is even less impressed with your accomplishments.
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Apparently there's no correlation between intelligence and low slashdot user ids.
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Apparently there's no correlation between intelligence and low slashdot user ids.
The only correlation between intelligence and Slashdot UIDs is not having one.
Longest delay before take off ? (Score:1)
Does it count as a record ?
More elegant: arctic tern (Score:5, Funny)
Birds too fly around the world using clean solar energy. Arctic tern fly twice a year
half the globe with no huge ground navigation and support team
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_tern [wikipedia.org]
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They convert photosynthetic energy into mechanical energy.
How is that different, other than the way we convert it?
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They convert photosynthetic energy into mechanical energy.
How is that different, other than the way we convert it?
It's not... But by that definition jet aircraft are also solar powered as the jet fuel is a fossil fuel.
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solar energy->plants->dinosaurs->oil->jet fuel
Just the long way around.
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Hey dipshit. Second sentence.
"The two principal abiogenic petroleum theories, the deep gas theory of Thomas Gold and the deep abiotic petroleum theory, have been scientifically discredited and are obsolete.["
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Birds are not solar powered, they are powered by carbon sequestered in plants and other animals. If birds are solar powered, then by that definition so are jet planes.
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For sure birds *are* solar powered, where do you think the energy for making plants, other animals, and for moving air is coming from?
The point with clean energy is that the time interval between the arrival of solar energy on earth and the moment we use it, it transforms into heat and is finally released into space as infrared radiation should be short with respect to the longest time-scale of our ecosystem, so as to not disturb it too much. In this way the carbon released into the atmosphere remains boun
looking forward to a bath and sit-down meal (Score:2)