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This was envisioned by the movie Interstellar where the opening scene shows them chasing an old autonomous Indian Air Force drone that had been flying for years
by ddoolin 1y ago
This was envisioned by the movie Interstellar where the opening scene shows them chasing an old autonomous Indian Air Force drone that had been flying for years, ostensibly after that agency ceased to exist. I'm sure it's been in other media as well but that's what comes to mind here.
Anyway, it should be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
- ahoka 1y agoProbably gets shut down due to being woke green technology.
- user____name 1y agoAnd then we'll restart the research into nuclear powered aircraft instead!
- jnovacho 1y agoThis was the central theme of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU
- m4rtink 1y agoI am still skeptical it would work out for regular aircraft due to all the moving mechanical parts, not o mention battery charge cycles for night flying. But I could definitely see it working for autonomous underwater drones that glide in the water, going up and down by changing their density. Few simple mechanical parts & some project already demonstrated very long endurance.
- atonse 1y agoregarding battery cycles, what if they used something like a bank of capacitors that would be much lighter?
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoI think capacitors would be heavier, they have less energy density than batteries. They have high power density and they last more cycles, but for a given number of watt-hours they'd be bigger and heavier
- calvinmorrison 1y agohow about a autonomous plane that mostly rides the air currents?
- jonasdegendt 1y agoI’m probably hugely oversimplifying here but let’s say you attach the electric motor directly to the prop, perhaps with some minor gearing, then what’s left in terms of moving parts? Some rudders, right?
- Mars008 1y agoUsually prop is directly attached to electric motor. If it's a flying wing then mechanical part is literally motor plus to ailerons. With little efforts thing cam be made hard to destroy even intentionally with heavy machine gun.
- throwaway31131 1y agoMechanical failure is usually a probability distribution and with a large enough population, you get outliers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light “ The Centennial Light is an incandescent light bulb recognized as the oldest known operating light bulb. It was first illuminated in 1901, and has only been turned off a few brief times since.”