Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Two for the record books...

Yet another around the world record flight. SolarImpulse2 landed in Abu Dhabi yesterday afternoon. The plane left there March 9th. This was not one continuous flight. The plane made 12 stops over the past 5 months with total time in the air of about 600 hours and flying about 25,000 miles. It is powered solely by 17,000 solar panels set on its wings (which are wider than a Boeing 747’s) and fuselage. A 1,400 pound bank of lithium batteries provided power when the sun went down. The Solar Impulse project started in 2003 and also attained the record for the first solar powered plane to fly through the night and the first to fly between two continents.  But don't get too excited about flying solar anytime soon.  This "pilot project" can only carry one person and cost about $200 million over the past 13 years.  94,99,80,0,B
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6 comments:

Larry G said...

not sure solar flying is ever going to be anything more than a curiosity although Mr. Zukerman says they're going to be internet drones.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mark-zuckerberg-wants-beam-internet-access-drones

July 26, 2016 at 7:43 PM
John Wells said...

The problem with Zukerberg's drone idea is that they can get swatted out of the sky a lot easier than Google's balloons.

July 26, 2016 at 8:42 PM
Larry G said...

supposedly they use lasers to transport the broadband. that seems a tricky proposition with anything that is moving trying to maintain a lock on a beam but who knows -the military can use laser designators from aircraft.

meanwhile: " In its application filed Wednesday, Boeing said it planned to initially deploy 1,396 satellites into low-earth orbit within six years of the license approval.

Eventually, the aerospace giant said its system would total 2,956 satellites designed to provide Internet and communications services for commercial and government users around the globe."

My bet is on Boeing but Zuckerberg's billions will provides lots of temporary jobs for a while until Boeing gets rolling!

Agree about Google...

July 26, 2016 at 9:43 PM
Jussi Valanki said...

Who knows what future will bring. Maybe this solar powered flight was a beginning for a whole new era like Wrght brothers flight in Kitty Hawk.

July 27, 2016 at 1:22 AM
rj said...

The real issue is battery or more precisely energy storage technology. One "overnight" breakthrough that makes lithium look like steam power will revolutionize solar, wind and electric cars. And it will come, probably sooner than later.

July 27, 2016 at 8:10 AM
Unknown said...

Batteries are to heavy and expensive to give electric cars a decent range and acceleration, and make electric plane that can cross an ocean, and rockets could never carry any payload if you added fuel and equipment to land them back on Earth. All true, until the day that it suddenly was not.

July 27, 2016 at 11:33 AM

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