Comment on High Altitude Solar Cruise
aviationeast@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Sounds like a boat cruise with less space. Why not just use a helium blimp instead?
Comment on High Altitude Solar Cruise
aviationeast@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Sounds like a boat cruise with less space. Why not just use a helium blimp instead?
keepthepace@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
Oh this is just the dining Cupola, you should see the greenhouse and the swimming pool if you think it is cramped up!
Why use non-renewable helium when you can just use more elegant, more renewable, more steerable solar power?
(In all seriousness, I am trying to give an idea of a high-tech sustainable future that’s not just “small scale farming with solar panels”)
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Basically you’re making a plane so huge that the batteries you need will weigh a fuckton, increasing weight and need for power even more.
What’s the wing setup for such an incredible massive plane, and what kind of battery / solar do you expect to be available?
I’d like to remind you that the larger the objects volume, the smaller the surface area in relation. Like a mouse has vastly more surface compared to it’s size than an elephant or a blue whale does.
What I mean by this is that the larger you make the plane, the less surface area you’ll have for solar. Unless you add more materials and make it even larger.
I would like to see a thing such as you describe, but it doesn’t sound too plausible.
Blimps don’t need to use helium, btw. Technically you could have an empty blimp. (void is lighter than air, duh) It’d just be quite the engineering challenge to have it not implode at the sizes required.
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keepthepace@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
Just to be clear “eternal planes” exist today. They use solar during the day, batteries during the night. Unmanned they last forever and a 2-person plane like this already exists now.
What I am proposing is science fiction, but honestly the most straightforward and boring kind: I am proposing that from this current state, we will continue, percent by percent, improve efficiencies in batteries, motors, solar panels, we will improve material resistance and aeronautic designs.
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Just to be clear, the physical law of the surface area being smaller in relation to the volume in bigger objects still exists, and you’re proposing a plane with a greenhouse and a swimming pool.