What is Digg?22 Comments
- jayzDigga, on 10/15/2009, -1/+13It would have been 24, but "Balloon Boy" knocked it down.
- xXVenom77Xx, on 10/15/2009, -0/+11Ten bucks says the Mythbusters can do better.
- preppypoof, on 10/15/2009, -1/+12they'd have to fly fast enough to keep up with the sun...at the equator, the earth rotates at ~1000mph. Pretty fast for a solar powered plane.
i suppose you could fly closer to the poles, though. or above the Arctic circle during the summer. - Harabeck, on 10/15/2009, -0/+7Or they could store energy to use during the night. There's that.
- THMike, on 10/15/2009, -0/+7Pretty good, but will probably be beat by those solar planes with incredible wing-span. Above the cloud cover, they can stay in the air almost indefinitely.
- MAGZine, on 10/15/2009, -0/+6... or at least blow it up.
- maddHavoc, on 10/15/2009, -0/+5I can't find the article but they were saying how this aircraft's next test would be able to achieve 2+ days flight.
Soon the technology will advance and we could spend days, weeks etc. in the air.
Then! We'll have hotels in air, shopping centers etc. Although I would rather spend our $ on space travel, this may end up being more realistic. - macsox, on 10/15/2009, -0/+3Did they find Falcon?!?!?
- Shoebox639, on 10/15/2009, -0/+2Our UAV is online!
- cheddaro, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1All of these UAV developments make me excited.
Drug prices should be dropping globally as the big drug cartels figure out how to put this stuff to use... - terenceyap7, on 10/17/2009, -0/+1Technology never ceases to amaze me
- preppypoof, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1fyi the kid was never on the balloon. he was hiding in a box in the attic. (seriously)
- bringitontimx, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1ZING
- Kruse, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1Damnit, I came in here to make a "Balloon Boy" reference, but it appears I'm too late.
- Culyt, on 10/16/2009, -0/+1Problem is that they then have to carry the weight of whatever stores the energy (ie heavy batteries) in addition to the solar panels.
Unlike fuel powered planes they won't get lighter as they burn more off too (at least not by very much).
Those solar planes already seem very light weight, I don't think they have much spare payload.
Also I don't really see much point over them than blimps or balloons.
I wounder how beaming laser power to them would go. - BESTenemy, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1Up next: "Unmanned zero-emission killing machines armed with bio-degradable bullets".
- funkmunky, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1Good to see some CoD4 players making appropriate comments. My Jammer will hide me :)
- os01, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1Global Hawk for the win...33.1 hours for a full-scale operational UAV.
http://www.gizmag.com/global-hawk-uav-achieves-rec ... - digitalhair, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1off subject, but did anyone else notice the aerodynamic lift design of Dr. Swider-Lyon's hair in that video???
- richard67, on 10/15/2009, -0/+1They have a long way to go to catch up to what Dick Rutan achieved 23 years ago with his Voyager:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager
While it was not robotic, it did stay up for over 216 hours (9 days), and flew around the world. I imagine with todays technology, you could make it un-manned. - Ymeg, on 10/15/2009, -1/+1I'm sure the US killing machines (drones) have beat that.
- RandomStyuff, on 10/16/2009, -0/+0I'm not sure what they mean by robotic aircraft, because if it means UAVs, it's got to triple before it reaches the endurance of the Israeli IAI Eitan (exactly 70 hours of flight). The article also mentions greater payload possibilities "than ever before" but I'm pretty sure that the Eitan and many other UAVs before it have a greater payload, with engines of up to 900kW, when this has a relatively small, half a kilowatt engine.
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