Solar-Powered Plane Makes First Successful Flight 118
lilbridge writes "The Solar Impulse, a solar-powered plane covered in 12,000 solar cells, took its maiden flight today in Switzerland. The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing. With the first test flight behind them, the developers can focus on gearing up for their around-the-world solar powered flight set for 2012."
Re:Around the world (Score:4, Insightful)
They won't come close to matching Earth's rotation, so I don't see a point to dragging out the length of night and thus requiring larger batteries.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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They will fly it above the polar circle latitude...problem solved!
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Or study some weather. It is called the Coriolis effect (if I'm spelling that correctly).
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Sorry, but you've not thought through your objection. The plane isn't jumping straight up, for one thing, and for another, the winds generally blow in a given direction at a given latitude. [wikipedia.org]
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So, when you jump in the air the Earth rotates under you? Yeah, I didn't think so
What an extremely funny comment - obviously you've never taken a long flight. Take off from San Francisco in the morning and go to somewhere in SE Asia on a commercial airliner and the sun will be up the whole way thanks to the plane's speed. BA a few times had "new year's eve around the world" flights because the Concorde was faster than the Earth's rotation with time to spare for refueling.
That's what the G
Re:Around the world (Score:4, Insightful)
"an average speed of 70 kph" - "won't come close" is an understatement.
I would think you'd aim to build something that can act as a glider (and the long narrow wings in the picture look like they are) at night. With batteries giving engines when you need them, but not requiring batteries big (and heavy) enough to last the 18 hours or so when the sun is either not visible too low for the solar panels to generate much power.
Either way, you are going to east with the jet streams - that's going to have far more impact than day length variance.
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I'm not assuming, I'm trusting what the builders/designers state:
http://www.solarimpulse.com/en/documents/challenge_gamble.php?lang=en&group=challenge [solarimpulse.com]
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though I should state that I did make a typo, read 16 where I wrote 18.
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So they don't really fly at night.
They often don't fly at night, but since a record was set in 1952 [statemaster.com] for a 56h 15m flight, I don't quite think you can say they can't stay aloft after dark (although I suspect Messr. Atger was probably using ridge lift rather than convection to keep airborne during the night).
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That's soaring not gliding...
You want a large glide ratio so you can lose as little altitude as possible (for distance traveled) at night (or alternatively use the engines as little as possible to maintain altitude).
Get as much altitude as you can during the day when power is plentiful, lose as little as possible at night.
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Actually, for flights which would take a little longer than 12 hours, it might be possible to take off on the morning and land on the evening several time zones westward, thus gaining a few hours of sunlight. while it would not match the rotational speed of the Earth, except near poles, it could still be effective.
There is also the fact that taking a plane to go a short way eastward, it would make no sense to go westward and fly around the Earth, so this applies only to long flights.
I'm way more concerned a
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They won't come close to matching Earth's rotation, so I don't see a point to dragging out the length of night and thus requiring larger batteries.
Was't sure about that, so I crunched the numbers:
s = Circumference of the earth = 40 041.47 kilometers
t = Period of orbit = 1 day
v = s/t = 463 m/s = 1 667 km/hr
Actual speed achieved in article: 70 km/hr
If they can increase the power by a factor of 24, they could do it. Given that this is a proof of concept, it'll probably be feasible in a few decades.
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Earth's circumference = 24,900 miles.
They have to keep pace with the sun, to have the sun directly overhead to get maximum panel output, which means covering 24,900 miles in 24 hours, or 1,037 mph. In other words, they need to be mucho supersonic - good luck with those propellers.
Even at half that, they end up in the dark and out of power - and there's no way that they can get to 500 mph with that design (and we're ignoring that the sun
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equatorial circumference. Move very near to the pole and you can manage to stay in sunlight (unfortunately oblique, so you might not get enough energy) permanently.
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Well, if you move TO the pole, you can send a paper airplane "around the world" ... cover every single longitude ... with one throw.
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You should probably email them so they don't miss any of your brilliant tips, since they probably haven't considered any of those points in their design and analysis.
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So go to the north or south pole - you can throw a paper airplane so it passes through every line of longitude.
But nobody would count that as going "around the world."
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"At the equator only... If you fly "around the world" at a higher latitude (longitude?), the diameter is much smaller and the required speed to stay in the sunlight is much lower."
Everyone assumes to fly around the World means flying at a constant longitude. At any latitude you can fly "around the world" equal in distance to the circumference of the Earth (assuming the earth is a sphere) at the equator by flying the arc of a great circle (remember your spherical trigonometry?).
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Correction, constant latitude.
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Well, it doesn't have much to do with "Your Rights Online" ;)
Re:Hardware? (Score:4, Funny)
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Round the world flight attempt in 2012. (Score:2)
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Are you kidding? It'll keep them away away from the waves/radiation/zombies/whatnot. It's brilliant!
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Are you serious? Every household should have one of [ning.com] these [flickr.com] around!
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Who needs a giant boat made in China when you can be flying with unlimited fuel?
Just need to have a speed to keep you in sunlight all the time, which is about 1100mph at the equator in flight, less if you go north/south or fly lower to the ground. Being how this s in Switzerland, looks like the craft can operate in less than ideal solar conditions (far from equator) plus at their latitude they wont have to travel as fast to stay in daylight. Or can use battery power when not in daylight.
In any case, an air
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Only if the seats are wide enough.
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Just need to have a speed to keep you in sunlight all the time, which is about 1100mph at the equator in flight, less if you go north/south or fly lower to the ground.
Don't forget its zero MPH for certain times of the year around the poles, and you can glide airplanes.
Lets assume a healthy, perhaps overoptimistic 10:1 glide ratio. And they get up to a rather optimistic 53k feet aka 10 miles over a roughly sea level surface. So, they can glide 100 miles. Lets say it handles like an alaskan bush plane and stalls at 33 MPH. That means 3 hours of glide time, assuming no thermals (at least shortly after sundown) or ridge lift.
I suppose a big enough solar panel might gener
Reminds me of the Voyager (Score:2)
I get the same giddy enthusiasm that I got back in the '80's with the Voyager.
But that is a very interesting question about which direction they would fly.
I would venture they might take tradewinds/jet stream into account, perhaps some thermal updrafts too, over merely following the sun.
Weather (Score:1)
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I recall reading about the weather issue for solar panel on roofs. The study said the solar panel kept most of its efficiency when it is cloudy. I wish I have a pointer to the article.
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Secret Stealth Version (Score:2)
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They would likely be flying above the clouds, if possible, so rain would not matter much, except for avoiding the major storms.
That's all well and good, but it raises a new issue: how do they plan to bring enough breathing oxygen for a trip that's likely to take weeks? Hypoxia might not be an issue for a few hours, if you're acclimated, but it IS going to be a problem.
Today's weather forecast.... (Score:5, Funny)
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What's the point of flying around the world? (Score:3, Insightful)
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And a little bit of legroom, please.
And some fresher Oreo crackers.
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No! What we NEED are rainbow-colored machines that turn tap water into oreo cookies. Why aren't they working on THAT???
Have We Already Forgotten? (Score:2, Informative)
This [nasa.gov] represents the first solar-powered flights ever. Not the plane in this article.
I guess we've forgotten:
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The title isn't saying that this is the first solar-powered plane to have a successful flight. They are saying this is the first successful flight that this specific solar-powered plane has taken.
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There is, but I left of Centurion and Helios because I couldn't get any dates or flight data from my source. I'm sure a little more checking on that would have provided that information (and thank you for the link) but I felt it was beyond the scope of what I was going at.
There's a Business Insider article where the author makes the claim for "first solar-powered flight" without any caveat of it being first for that plane/company. I sent him a polite email informing him of his error with a request for corre
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This [nasa.gov] represents the first solar-powered flights ever.
And we're still working on them. [darpa.mil]
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I'm sure we are. That's not really the issue here. The title came across (at first) as sounding as if this was another (false) claim of making the first ever solar powered flight.
Even so, the submission is little more than a shill for the company. It's neither impressive or nerdy and really doesn't matter. Seven years for their maiden test flight and now no more big demos until 2012? Puh-lease. I could have lived my entire life without hearing about this. Now if it was, as someone else suggested in another
Re:Have We Already Forgotten? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you an idiot?
They aren't claiming first ever solar flight.
They aren't claiming that the solar thing is new and amazing.
They aren't claiming it is impressive in itself.
They are claiming it's a significant milestone on the path to their goal.
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No, but the submitter sure is a troll.
The company who has this "milestone" isn't making any of those claims that I can see. The submitter is being a bit disingenuous though.
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Really? And this is impressive how? Seven years to reinvent existing technology? Puh-lease.
Yeah, the first thing I thought was "that looks like every other solar plane I've seen since I was a kid."
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It's not even the first one this millennium. Business Insider had an article about one last year.
http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-plane-finally-flies-2009-12 [businessinsider.com]
The author of that article is clearly ignorant of NASA's achievements since 1974.
According to this site
http://solar-flight.com/ [solar-flight.com]
They are already working on a two-seater that appears to take off under its own power.
So the only thing the Swiss having going for them is making a 'round the world flight in 2012 (please, keep any end-of-days comments to yo
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From what I read, yes.
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So, then, what impressive thing have you been doing for the past seven years?
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Not wasting my time trying to build something that's already been built. If they would have taken existing technology they probably could have cut down their development time.
Want to fly around the world in a solar powered plane? Fine, that's all well and good. No one else has a manned flight around the world in a solar powered plane. But, it's just not that impressive. I've spent the last seven years shooting for the stars, but I've not run and told every Tom, Dick and Bjorn about it when I reach a small s
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My mistake, but the title of the submission could have been worded better.
Either way, we seem to have forgotten the early history of solar flight.
44mph (Score:3, Interesting)
The article says the plane averages 44mph (70kph). At that rate it will take about 24 days to circle the earth if they tried it in a single flight. Hopefully they will be able to get a little more speed before they try that.
thats great (Score:1)
it didnt say that in TFA
Can I upgrade the legroom? (Score:1)
Nonsense (Score:2)
Yeah but... (Score:1)
I fail to see what this has to do with iPad but now that YOU brought it up... Can I charge my iPad while flying in this thing?????
Why is this so big? (Score:2)
This thing is nearly as big as a bomber. Seems to me the square-cube law (with power going with square and weight to be flown going with cube) would favor smaller machines - unless the density of the solar cells combined with a fixed thickness, and/or the weight of the control computer and hardware, imposed a limit.
Not good until (Score:1)
It's not good until it can also be driven on the roads. I WANT MY FLYING CAR.
Re:Swell, but it's a miserable vehicle. (Score:5, Informative)
As one of the designers of the system, I have just this to say... gosh, we never thought of that. Looking at the designs again in light of your insightful, informed comments it's clear that we're all insane and or incompetent for designing this thing. We should have realized sooner, but I guess we were all to drunk/high to notice.
END SARCASM
This was designed by engineers with experience in the field. They know all about power to weight ratios, wingspans, and surface areas. The fact that you were able to come up with your objections with about 30 seconds of thought should make you realize that the engineers involved probably came up with the same concerns somewhere along the 7 year development cycle. As for it being miserable to fly... of course it is, this isn't a sport plane or even a transport plane, it's a proof of concept at best (and I don't really see how the concept could ever really be made into anything other than a gee whiz toy).
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I don't see any reason for the vituperation. I did not attack the designers, I just mentioned some obvious facts to compensate for people's superficial understanding of flying objects. Slashdot tends to be a bit too gee-whizzy in its enthusiasms. I think there's room and need for a little factual balance.
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It's just an underpowered and fragile disaster waiting to happen.
Saying this about a project an engineer has devoted 7 years of their life to is an attack on that engineer. It implies that they don't know what they're doing, that they're uninformed, that they're idiots. Thinking that you can outsmart someone who is demonstrably more knowledgeable and experienced about the subject (unless of course you happen to have a solar powered plane in your garage) insults that person.
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Moreover, what kind of elite engineer spends time on Slashdot flaming people? WTF? Don't you have something exciting to do? You sure you're an engineer and not some kind of coffee-fetcher or janitor on the solar plane project?
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No, it doesn't really do that. His comment may have been blunt, rude even, but there's no evidence that he was attacking the engineers personally, only the project's effectiveness in developing a practical application.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with you. His comment was in poor taste. But strictly speakin
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I think there's room and need for a little factual balance.
And you did a fantastic job of failing to provide any.
Saying the plane is a "disaster waiting to happen" is wrong, stupid, and yes, an insult to the designers for implying they'd make something that some random /.er can see in two seconds is going to be brought out of the air by rain.
Oh lol right, you're Ancient Hacker, the guy who trolls by claiming to be a 'hacker' who is nearly universally wrong on every technical subject.
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>Saying the plane is a "disaster waiting to happen" is wrong, stupid, and yes, an insult to the designers for implying they'd make something that some random /.er can see in two seconds is going to be brought out of the air by rain.
I'm sure the designers did not intentionally make something so un-airworthy-- they're just constrained by the very low power available. You can't change the basic amount of power available, so you have to compromise on everything else. The wing is going to have to be long
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> A 15 horsepower plane is a really, really unsafe and miserable vehicle. It's
> just an underpowered and fragile disaster waiting to happen.
15hp continuous is not 15hp peak. It has batteries.
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>15hp continuous is not 15hp peak. It has batteries.
Yep, and it's going to need them for situations like takeoff, climb, rain, downdrafts, clouds, night, or icing.
But that means the rest of the time it has *less* than 15hp to work with if it's going to use some of its sun power to recharge the batteries. No free lunch.
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Not saying there is a free lunch, but with the light weight and wingspan it has, it has a 40:1 Glide Ratio so if I power up my engines to climb really high. This extra altitude becomes potential energy that I can play out at a 40 to 1 ratio, 40 miles travelled forward for every mile I drop in altitude. Since its travelling ~44 mph, that's about an hours worth of travel just on gliding, can an hour's worth of charge make up for the energy spent gradually climbing 1 mile in altitude?
Do you climb during the br
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The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing.
Gosh, that is novel. So first it flies for 87 minutes, does several maneuvers and THEN even manages a successful takeoff. Didn't see that one coming. I thought it had crashed on takeoff, but no.
Pedantic? You bet.
It as bad as, "he died from his injuries which are believed to have been lethal". No kidding.
Less is more editors. Some of us can read between the lines, especially when they are written in editor crayon. What next, "the red firetruck was red"?
You must be a lot of fun at parties.
Did it not cross your mind that there was the possibility that such a plane was dropped from a carrier aircraft, and hence it was necessary to specify in the article that this thing took off under its own steam?
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Riiiight. And then you'd be complaining about the redundancy of saying that it wasn't dropped from a carrier plane, it would have been easier to just say that the plane took off itself (which is what TFA actually says).
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The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing.
Gosh, that is novel. So first it flies for 87 minutes, does several maneuvers and THEN even manages a successful takeoff. Didn't see that one coming. I thought it had crashed on takeoff, but no.
The expression "as well as" does not imply when this successful take off occurred within those 87 minutes. Reading between the lines as you stated and applying a touch of logic would imply that the take off was the first thing to happen within the time mentioned. Also, just because an airplane is capable of powered flight, does not necessarily make it capable of an unassisted take off. If only 87 minutes of powered flight was mentioned, the plane could have been dropped from a balloon and crashed into a
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The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing.
I assumed the editor knows nothing about what the journalist is writing about. Usually, this is a correct assumption. In fact usually journalists know nothing about what they are writing about. He probably "corrected" it from "successful landing and takeoff" to make it sound better. What they were dancing around was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch-and-go_landing [wikipedia.org]
Re:Do editors have a brain? Do they think we got o (Score:3, Insightful)
Pedantic? You bet.
No, not really.
What passes for pedantry on /. has really gone down hill over the years in my crotchety old opinion. It's gone from nitpicking the usage of words that actually have highly specific technical definitions that it actually makes sense to be pedantic about, to trying to find the stupidest way to fail to understand everyday English sentences.