Like most humans, I don’t particularly want a George Orwellian-like big brother watching my every waking moment.
However, I do like the idea of better voice and data coverage, live mapping, ready access to weather data, atmospheric monitoring for our scientists, agricultural yield monitoring for our farmers, disaster information for floods and fires and although I hope I never need it, awesome search and rescue support.
And I certainly like the idea of using our old friend (the sun) to help us do this in a more environmentally friendly way than perpetually launching ever more rockets, hurling ever more satellites into orbit.
Enter the Solar 50 by Titan Aerospace.
In what can only be described as “an incredibly bold vision of atmospheric solar electric vehicle propulsion”, the Titan 50 is a solar electric drone designed to fly in the furthest reaches of the earths atmosphere. According to their snazzy brochure, it has an astounding range of almost 5,000,000 kms, can stay aloft for 5 years and one unit could hypothetically provide voice and data coverage for an area of more than 10,000 square kilometres. It has a 7kW solar array, a cruising speed of just over 100kmh and weighs in at only 159kgs.
I don’t know much about Titan Aerospace or their Solar 50 beyond the preliminary press release, but it sure looks like the future to me.
Post expires at 2:51pm on Friday August 22nd, 2014
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