A solar-powered drone designed to take on the multimillion-dollar market for satellites in space has set a record by staying in flight at high altitude for nearly 26 days. Airbus has plenty of plans for its so-called pseudo-satellite, including possible military reconnaissance and monitoring the spread of wildfires, among other activities.
The European aerospace consortium Airbus announced that the latest model of its Zephyr drone had landed near Yuma, Arizona, late last week, after staying on the wing continuously for 25 days, 23 hours and 57 minutes, and breaking a world record for long-endurance flight.
The drone was driven by electric power from solar panels on its wings during daylight, when it flew at altitudes above 70,000 feet (21,300 meters), Airbus spokesman Alain Dupiech told Live Science.
At night, the drone used stored battery power, dropping to around 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) by morning — well above any clouds and bad weather, and higher than regular air traffic, except military spy planes , Dupiech said.
Previously, the endurance record was held by an older prototype of the Zephyr drone, which stayed airborne 14 days in 2014.
Airbus hopes the latest Zephyr drone will take on some of the commercial market for satellite launches into Earth orbit, by carrying out tasks like high-altitude photography and environmental monitoring for weeks or months at a time.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:24AM (6 children)
- Already?
Consider that we nuked Japan with the technology of the early 1940s. What can we do with the technology of 2018?
"Killer App" indeed.
I see a very basic moral problem here. For me personally with my background in Physics I'm heavily into nuclear weapons. I think they're quite cool, they really are. Especially that what they called a "Computer" during the Manhattan Project was some really smart guy with a Table Of Logarithms and an Adding Machine.
Now consider that today we have AI and Nanotechnology going like gangbusters. Ooh! Ooh! He come here Dave, this is soe kewal. I know what to do, let's sell this LOOK SHINY! to the United States Marine Corps.
Defense industry engineers are paid quite a lot more than even most Generals. They certainly work in much nicer environments - at the worst it's a cube farm, at the best it's Google where none of the lunchrooms have cash registers and there are sushi fridges all over Creation with someone working full time to biff the old sushi rather than give it to the poor then restock with fresh sushi.
The other day I came across a whole bunch of declassified photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as many from Nagasaki that were taken by a Japanese photographer the day after the blast and I expect while not classified were never published until recently.
I was at first fascinated by many of the photos for example concrete posts along the edge of the bridge had cast shadows of the blast onto the roadway. You could still see those shadows because between them the top of the roadway had been vaporized.
Then I started looking at some of the bodies.
Let's for a moment not worried about WON'T SOMEONE THING OF THE CHILDREN? and pause but for a moment to think about your cat, or perhaps your dog.
It happens that if you're not directly exposed to the blast you won't even be deafened if a Bomb goes off right on top of you. By "not exposed" you'd have to be shielded by something strong and thick.
Actually there were at first lots of survivors. I first learned of this when my eighth grade English class read John Hersey's Hiroshima [powells.com]. Of those that were killed many weren't from the blast but either being hurled around or having something else hurled against them.
Fires started all over the place.
In the Spring of 2011 I saw in the Tacoma paper what I expect were some declassified photos. While it's commonly said that Hiroshima was of no military significance whatsoever, actually it was Japan's most-industrialized city. It's not like those people were making Tesla Roadsters.
One photo that I spent quite a long time gazing at in quiet, sorrowful contemplation depicted mostly shredded pieces of sheet metal. Imagine one such piece of sheet metal coming your way.
Now I want to know: what became of your _cat_?
I bring up cat's specifically because I read a story by a Palestinian guest worker in Kuwait who at the time of Iraq's invasion let his cat out the door then fled the country. What will that cat have to eat?
Dead soldiers I expect.
One of the very-most precious photos in my possession are those of some animals at a Guatemalan wildlife rehabilitation center. That most-precious photo is of what I expect may will be the world's smallest wildcat - smaller even than a housecat. Someone captured it unlawfully from the jungle, kept it as a pet then I expect it ran away from home.
It was found rooting through a pile of garbage.
Cat's don't _understand_ war.
They don't know what that bright flash was.
They don't know why the feel so weak. Why they vomit so much.
Why all their fur is falling out.
How do you explain Pearl Harbor, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Midway Island, Iwo Jima, the Manhattan Project and radiation sickness to your _pets_?
A while back a great deal oh Hullabaloo resulted when a bunch of Syrians were killed by Sarin gas. Let's for a moment set aside with it was the Syrian military or the rebels who actually employed it. One thing we have always known - because it's always been well-documented by International arms controlled agencies - that Syria has vast quantities not only of Sarin, actually what I understand is a volatile liquid but also VX which I personally find far-more horrifying than Sarin.
Wikipedia says it has the consistency of motor oil. It's classified as an Area Denial Weapon because what you do is spray a fine must up in the sky then everything gets coated with this thing layer of oil which slowly evaporated. That it's an Area Denial Weapon means you can't go there anymore because you'll breathe the fumes.
And Wikipedia's article on VX... let me check if it's still there... yes, the VX article still has its laboratory preparation [wikipedia.org].
I looked into the Talk page flame-fest about that synthesis. The defense posited by the folks that feel the synthesis should remain in the article point out that there's lots of other chemisty that's not discussed and also that one particular precursor is _heavily_ controlled. I expect it would be just like it would be for me were I to try to purchase Fuming Nitric Acid to clean a telescope mirror But Good before I chemically silvered it.
Kids. These. Days. Haven't they even heard of Alchemy?
If you can't purchase the precursor at Canadian Tire or Whole Foods then JUST SYNTHESIZE THE PRECURSOR'S FUCKING PRECURSOS.
Look NASA says that the very-most basic requirement for life are something like Hydrogen, Oxygen, Potassium, Phosphorus, Carbon and a couple others.
More or less what you do is swill those ingredients around more or less at random for a billion or two then quite suddenly and completely out of nowhere you have Fuck Beta [warplife.com] and Slashdot Media Dot-Com [slashdotmedia.com].
Look if G-d can swish some elements around and come up with Kim Kardashian popping a champagne cork with the resulting fountain pouring neatly into a goblet carefully balanced on the every-so-sexy ass of hers then surely The American NAZI Party - which was established _well_ before World War II then continued to exist all the way through it - can wipe out all the brown, yellow, red and black folk just by hanging out in a library.
Lorenzo's Oil is a quite-definitely Hollywood movie that's based on a very true, and very cruel story of a very rare genetic illness that caused so much of a specific fatty acid to build up in Lorenzo's blood that it dissolved away all the Myelin sheaths that previously coated all of his nerves bundles thereby rendering the entire lengths of _all_ of Lorenzo's nerves to become electrically conductive with his blood.
To have that as Peter Ustinov's character said "Most-Cruel Disease" is not only inconceivably painful but it only happened to young boys, none of whom lived past the age of twelve.
Lorenzo's father was an Italian diplomat. Hit mother was for the most part a housewife but I expect had a university degree. As portrayed in the movie she was quite intelligent.
Moms and Pops CURED Lorenzo's disease JUST BY HANGING OUT IN THE SAME KIND OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THAT WOULD ENABLE ANY DAMN WHITE SUPREMACIST TO FIGURE OUT THE COMPLETE PREPARATION OF VX.
HOW FUCKING HARD DOES IT HAVE TO BE?
My fuck this gets on my nerves sometimes.
Let's get back to Syria's nerve agents. "Agents" because they're not always gases.
Obama threatened Syria with all manner of overdraft fees unless Assad handed over all that Sarin and all that VX to international arms inspectors. Syria also committed to destroy not just all of its chemical weapons factories but also all of its research laboratories. These would only posses very small quantities of nerve agents but were advancing Syrias's knowledge as to how to make the stuff, I expect they were coming up completely new Bags Of Tricks as well.
A couple years later I read in the news that less than one percent of Syria's chemical weapons stocks had actually been destroyed. I don't think any of its chemical plants or scientific labs were destroy it all.
It Gets Better!
Syria was a Soviet Client State during the Cold War for no particular reason other than that Israel as a US Client State.
The Soviets supplied Syria with a whole bunch of SCUDS, each of which can strike anywhere in the Holy Land.
The Syrians are no slouches - they're an ancient culture, in a great many ways Arabs and Persians put American education completely to shame:
The Syrians souped-up all those SCUDS. They didn't need longer range but I expect they're no far-more accurate.
And they've still got all that Sarin and VX.
Were Assad to give the OK, all those SCUDS would be launched all over Israel or possibly - I really don't know what their range is - over Europe on just the right time of the year that the weather conditions are just right so that when you spray a fine mist of all that VX it coats the entire Holy Land - or perhaps the Parisian Metropolitan Region with a fine mist of Motor Oil.
You just denied A Whole Bunch Of Area to all forms of life for the next five years.
KTHXBAI! ;)
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:19AM
Air-Breathing Electric Thruster Tested; Could Enable Long-Lived Satellites in Low Orbits [soylentnews.org]
This drone or the air-breathing electric thruster could easily have peaceful applications. Extremely low latency "satellite" Internet service, for example. Military satellite surveillance is already better than anything you've ever seen. They take a Hubblesque telescope, and they point it at Earth.
The future of targeted strikes probably involves tinier drones. Maybe pack some antimatter into it [wikipedia.org]. Is that a dragonfly or are you about to die?
I just tell them, "Don't look into this laser pointer with your remaining eye."
There are a lot of easier ways to kill someone that don't involve VX. You use VX when you want to send a message. Kind of like Polonium.
Nitrogen! [wikipedia.org]
---
If you read this recent story [soylentnews.org] and others, you'd know the swilling could lead to abiogenesis pretty quickly. Maybe as fast as tens of millions of years. Planet cools off, and boom, there's life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box [wikipedia.org]
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-israel-lake/israel-attacks-syrian-launcher-that-fired-rockets-thought-to-have-landed-in-sea-of-galilee-idUSKBN1KF2OF [reuters.com]
Israel has attacked Syria multiple times. What's Assad waiting for? Maybe for Iron Dome to not exist, since Israel has claimed that it can shoot down Scud missiles. If it is as effective as they claim, the "suicide by attacking Israel" option doesn't look as rewarding.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 22 2018, @03:52PM (1 child)
That "Human Computer" guy, you refer to. Was probably a Woman. https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa [history.com]
Also, specifically relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer [wikipedia.org]
"Wartime computing and the invention of electronic computing
Human computers played integral roles in the World War II war effort in the United States, and because of the depletion of the male labor force due to the draft, many computers during World War II were women, frequently with degrees in mathematics. In the Manhattan Project, human computers, working with a variety of mechanical aids, assisted numerical studies of the complex formulas related to nuclear fission.[9] Because the six people responsible for setting up problems on the ENIAC (the premiere general-purpose electronic digital computer built at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II) were drafted from a corps of human computers, the world's first professional computer programmers were women including Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas.[10]
Following World War II, the NACA used human computers in flight research to transcribe raw data from celluloid film and oscillograph paper and then, using slide rules and electric calculators, reduced the data to standard engineering units. Margot Lee Shetterly's biographical book, Hidden Figures, documents the contributions of African American women who served as human computers at NASA.[11] One such computer was Dorothy Vaughan who began her work in 1943 with the Langley Research Center as a special hire to aid the WWII effort.[12] "
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday August 23 2018, @07:20PM
However I don't have any details other than that from time to time an agent would knock one someone's door then ask their parents if their smart high school child could serve their country's requirement for math whizzes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @05:43PM (1 child)
Off your meds? On crack? Psychological breakdown?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:31AM
"Yes."
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @09:06AM
My guess is the USA has enough military reconnaissance. Stuff like this just brings the cost down and there's no U2 to be shot down etc.
For a similar reason my guess is a fair number in the US Gov/Military know where MH370 is. They're not revealing that they know because there's no benefit to them[1] and there was far more benefit to wait and see whether China will reveal that they had that capability (lots of Chinese citizens were on that plane).
But if they really don't know where MH370 is then the US DOESN'T have enough reconnaissance. And the US Gov really has crappy reconnaissance and surveillance for all those trillions spent.
1) That area has some strategic significance - Malacca straits and South China Sea.
2) There was a joint military exercise going on at the same time that included the USA. So it's hard to believe no one was watching that area close enough. (BTW there are some theories that MH370 was shot down by mistake during that exercise...).
[1] They probably only looked for it after the it became news, found it and figured everyone onboard was probably dead already.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:57PM (2 children)
For scale, this is about the same lifetime as a Cubesat in ~300km circular orbit.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:23PM (1 child)
The cubesat can't be reused, but it goes around the world a lot of times during that span.
Different applications.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday August 23 2018, @03:05PM
You are correct, of course. The kit is billed as a pseudo-satellite. I thought it would be helpful to compare the two.
Additional data point: Wikipedia lists the cruise speed of this as 35 miles/hour. That would make the time for equatorial circumnavigation just over 29 days ignoring the very real concerns of winds aloft. At a higher latitude and leveraging the jet stream it should be able to make it around the ball two or three times in 22 days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @05:25PM
This would be really cool for ham radio applications. Especially if it's relatively cheap and reusable. Ham radio people have put satellites up but it's super expensive and hard to replace when they break. Plus they usually go on an orbit so you might see it for 5 or 6 minutes every 1.5 hours and then not at all for some passes. Give me a high altitude drone that can hover over roughly the same area 24/7 for a month or so at a time. Put a high frequency transponder on it that can do high-speed data and it could let hams do long range data links. Imagine an entire digital/analog radio network linked through one or two of these things that could stay up even if conventional Internet methods go down.
Would be really cool for Internet applications for non-hams as well. Figure out a way to do a bunch of spot beams to different areas. Maybe a mom&pop HADrone Internet service would be possible. Since it's in the atmosphere ping times shouldn't be very bad either. Not like a geosynchronous satellite that is far enough away that it takes half a second for a signal to reach it and another half to come back.