Aviation’s Next Quantum Leap – Solar Powered Aircraft
Bye Aerospace is a Colorado company involved in the design of a unique solar-electric powered aircraft that use solar electric energy, stored in batteries, to drive a propeller to both fly and stay aloft for long periods of time. A special combination of technologies and design will enable the current small UAVs to maintain station, with flight endurance of 8 to 12 hours at a time â several multiples of typical aviation gasoline fuel engine UAVs. A more extreme version of this capability will be engineered into Byeâs future aircraft (both civil and defense).
Next generation solar UAVs will be fully automated and built for extreme endurance, flying above weather pattern at altitudes of 50,000 feet for months, possibly years, on end.
Operating much like low flying satellites, 1,000 times closer than those in geosynchronous orbit, these aircraft will offer direct line-of-sight communications up to 300 miles in each direction, with 280,000 square miles of coverage.
Recently Google bought Titan, and Facebook bought Ascenta, similar solar powered aircraft companies to launch their own fleets of near-earth satellites.
Clearly this is a hot new technology, and Bye Aerospace is on the leading edge of these developments.
Source: DaVinci Institute
Read More: Future Aviation
