Re:The Tethered Uni-Rotor Network: Eternal Flight UAV
by sargun on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @11:27AM
(#19200080)
What's the current longest endurance, COTS (commercial off the shelf) flight platform?
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Re:The Tethered Uni-Rotor Network: Eternal Flight UAV
by curtis on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @12:10PM
(#19200569)
It's not at all COTS, but the Rutan Voyager [1] spent 9 days in the air on it's round-the-world flight.
Re:The Tethered Uni-Rotor Network: Eternal Flight UAV
by digikata on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @12:57PM
(#19201108)
Similarly not-COTS, but a series of UAVs, a Zephyr "7" made a record 336 hour flight - 14 days, with an unofficial runs of three minutes (!!) short of 26 days aloft for a recent Zephyr S.
Re:The Tethered Uni-Rotor Network: Eternal Flight UAV
by curtis on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @01:33PM
(#19201463)
The Zephyr is using Lithium-Sulfur batteries, which have a better energy-to-weight ratio ("Currently the best Li–S batteries offer specific energies on the order of 500 W·h/kg" according to Wikipedia [1]).
These aren't commercially available though. Twice the performance of currently available automotive batteries is a major advantage for aircraft applications.
Pretty cool.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery