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Gliders have existed for many years, and sometimes skilled pilots can fly for hundreds of miles riding thermals and updrafts. The problems are payload and reli
by alphapapa 10y ago
Gliders have existed for many years, and sometimes skilled pilots can fly for hundreds of miles riding thermals and updrafts. The problems are payload and reliability. The aircraft itself may not weigh much, but whatever you want to carry will likely be. And if you can't find a thermal when or where you need one, you have to land.
- peterwwillis 10y agoIf birds can maneuver continuously for over two months without landing, so can a machine. For me the question is can we both design the vehicle to have the correct physical properties, and an intelligent-enough automated flight computer? I think the former will simply require a very very large wingspan made of the lightest strongest material we have [currently Carbyne, formerly Graphite, with the metal alternative being "New Magnesium"]. Once this is accomplished, we could potentially make air transportation [in certain routes] much cheaper. This would have benefits like eliminating the risk of ocean pollution when a large ship crashes/capsizes, faster transportation of goods, and at the same time not be limited in transportation cost by oil market prices. And such designs, if made practical, could possibly be transferred to new aerospace engineering where weight-to-strength are at a premium. Designing an intelligent flight computer that can account for air currents could also make flight less turbulent, and potentially improve our understanding and prediction of weather patterns.
- tonyarkles 10y agoThere's also the pesky "refueling" bit. These birds run on fish; I don't think we've really designed effective ICE or fuel cells that run on fish yet.
- walrus01 10y agowe've developed robots that will 'collect' biological matter (slugs) and ferment it into gases which can be used for electrical generation, but it's incredibly inefficient and likely not suited for aviation. http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/47156?currentPage=all http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/...
- tonyarkles 10y ago> A prototype robot capable of hunting down over 100 slugs an hour and using their rotting bodies to generate electricity is being developed by engineers at the University of West England's Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory. That's both... disgusting and delightful!
- Xylakant 10y agoSince the whole idea is that the flight pattern uses extremely little energy, solar cells would be an option.
- charlessw 10y agoGlider pilots have told me about using the heated air up drafts caused by large mall parking lots as a way to stay elevated. Amazing to think of all the air that is moving around us, and then using it to "bounce" from current to current.
- WalterBright 10y agoThis suggests that more than a little bit of global warming is due to pavement.
- vacri 10y agoYou might be interested to read about Urban Heat Islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
- WalterBright 10y agoThanks. A roofing contractor told me once that putting a white reflective coating on flat roofs instead of the usual black tar would reduce the A/C bill by about 15%.
- charlessw 10y agoGlider pilots have told me about using the heated air up drafts caused by large mall parking lots as a way to stay elevated. Amazing to think of all the air that is moving around us, and then using it to "bounce" from current to current. It would be interesting to create a graph comparing an organism's weight versus passive distance traveled. Ie: a spider has low weight, but only travels 3,000 body lengths with a web as it's sail, versus this bird travels an amazing distance by using up drafts.