greennewfields.com
With all the advancement in technology and science, it is a shame that we don’t spend more time (and of course, money) on renewable energy, which is energy generated from natural resources. Since the recent price increase in traditional energy sources you are probably looking for good information on renewable energy solutions. Rising prices of oil, gas, electricity, and other fossil fuels has led to increase interest in the development of alternative sources of energy, ranging from fuel cell, hydrogen fuel, biomethanol, solar energy, wind energy, biodiesel, and many more.
I for one, welcome our new Predator automated solar flying overlords. (Imagine a UAV that never has to land and never has to refuel.)
Night time?
Solar power is getting more and more viable, efficient and available. Every advance such as this one gets us one step closer!
Well, except for more ammunition.
And another day has been saved by Capt. Obvious
I think cloudy weather would guarantee landing…
it has batteries for situations like that.
No landing in cloudy weather
That’s sweet. If they get their route right, they will be able to wave and thermal soar saving battery power, and even thermal soar at night.
But could it provide enough JIGAWATTS to run Crysis?
It’s notable to see someone somewhere looking beyond fossil fuels, just as Thomas Edison recommended in 1931 when he told Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
not all.
i think planes fly above clouds
Fail.
This gives the added element of ‘fear’ to flying in cloudy weather
booooooo
How about a solar powered monorail?
speeking of solar power, have any of you watched “what happened to the electric car?” it’s crazy…hopefully, things will change soon…
This is super cool.But it’s not much more than that. There’s no possibly way *scientifically* that you’ll ever be able to fit enough solar panels on something such as a passenger plane. I could see some cool spy plane stuff though done with this.
There could be lots of applications for this besides just carrying humans. It could be used as a spy plane or a cell phone tower or a cheap geo-sync satellite.
Solar-powered flight will always be a bit of a pipe dream.The big problems remain creating high-efficiency solar cells to capture the energy, and an efficient way of storing the energy for night flying (the batteries involved are generally one of the heaviest components).But then even if you could solve these challenges you’ve still only got an aircraft that can barely carry a single person, and the manufacturing costs to build/maintain such a craft would be huge.
I heard that they don’t use any alternative fuel or so, for world tour on this tiny one…is this correct?? if yes, how do they manage in case of emergency?~ramki
Yeah, remember this story on Digg recently about the Chinese ship being built with solar sails? dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/11/solar …That is a lot of solar sails just to supply 5% (!) of the ships energy consumption.Still a long way to go, but nice to see we are making progress.Bobby idlewordship.com
And the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to be flying on clean coal liquid transpo fuel by 2011.
Get back to me when you have a solar-powered airliner capable of carrying 400 passengers non-stop LAX to Sidney. I’ll be waiting.
In what police are calling “an incident bordering on the bizarre” a solar-powered plane making it’s inaugural flight across Iowa crashed killing 18 people. Among the dead were 17 children from Eagle Peak junior high and their eighth grade science teacher, Mrs. Shanner. Investigators said the problem started when a solar eclipse took place halfway through the flight, meanwhile on the ground, in preparation for the eclipse, Mrs. Shanner’s eighth grade science class put on their protective eyewear. Firefighters said they are still pulling limbs from the surrounding area.