Top TechTop Tech #204: Largest Aircraft, Widest Glider, Hydrogen-Powered Drone
Important Innovations in Science and Technology
By Paul Worthington
Thursday’s Top Tech:
• World’s largest aircraft is 300 feet long
• Glide on Mars
• Hydrogen-powered drone takes flight
World’s largest aircraft is 300 feet long
Next month may see the first flight of the Airlander 10, billed as the current largest aircraft.
The vehicle can stay airborne for up to five days if manned — and for more than 2 weeks unmanned.
British Developer HAV (for Hybrid Air Vehicles) says it combines the best characteristics of fixed wing aircraft and helicopters with lighter-than-air technology to create a new breed of hyper-efficient aircraft. The Airlander produces 60% of its lift aerostatically, by being lighter-than-air, and 40% aerodynamically, by being wing-shaped, as well as having the ability to rotate its engines to provide an additional 25 per cent of thrust up or down. This means the Airlander can hover as well as land on almost any surface, including ice, desert and water. It will fulfill “a wide range of communication, cargo carrying and survey roles in both the military and commercial sectors,” the company says, “all with a significantly lower carbon footprint than other forms of air transport.”
Here is a British news report on the Airlander.
Glide on Mars
Can a glider work in the slight atmosphere of our neighboring planet? Commercial jet plane maker Airbus is testing a sailplane at the edge of Earth’s stratosphere to finds out.
The Perlan 2 glider’s “will attempt to reach its optimal cruising altitude of 90,000 feet as early as this coming June in Argentina,” Forbes reports. “When it does, it will be the highest that any winged vehicle, powered or otherwise, has gone in sustained, level flight.” It will be at a higher altitude than even the U-2 and the SR-71 spy planes, and has an 84-foot wingspan.
Airbus has filed a patent for hypersonic passenger craft that will go to suborbital space and back down again.
Hydrogen-powered drone takes flight
The first flight of an aircraft powered by hydrogen lasted 10 minutes, New Scientist reports, at an altitude of 80 meters.
It could have gone for two hours with the fuel it had on board, says one developer.
The experimental drone runs was developed at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Argyll, UK. It runs on solid hydrogen pellets that emit only water vapor when they burn — fuel that is one-third the weight of a comparable lithium battery.
