Jul
8th
Thu
8th
Solar-Powered Plane… To Orbit The Globe?
A solar-powered plane just spent 26hrs in the air, proving that it’s possible for it to fly continuously, day or night. While the group behind it is planning to circle the globe in this solar plane, I think it would be more interesting to see this vehicle as an autonomous solar-powered plane — so that it could be an alternative to launching LEO satellites. If autonomous solar powered planes could “orbit” the Earth, then it would be a lot easier/cheaper to create a global wireless communication network (without the lag time that satellites have). Maybe there would be some real competition with wireless carriers… However, I’m probably vastly discounting the difficulty of making this plane autonomous.
