![]() ![]() It is expected to be able to remain aloft for five days, in part because hydrogen has three times as much oomph, per pound, as gasoline. ![]() AeroVironment was never quite able to achieve that goal the latest iteration in its long-running quest for “eternal flight,” Global Observer, is powered by a hybrid system in which a highly efficient hydrogen-burning reciprocating engine drives a generator that in turn powers four electric motors. The eventual aim of the project was to circle for days as a sort of low-level observation or communications satellite, collecting and storing sufficient energy during daylight hours to sustain itself through the night. Today it resides, deservedly, in the Smithsonian.ĪeroVironment later built a series of ever-larger, unmanned solar-powered airplanes, culminating in the 247-foot, 14-motor flying-wing Helios, which, when it flew, resembled a phalanx of semi-inflated air mattresses bobbing on rough water. In 1979 it made a five-hour, 170-mile flight across the English Channel, consuming no fuel whatever. Solar Challenger had no batteries it collected sufficient energy from sunlight-4,400 watts-to take off, climb to 14,000 feet, and cruise at 40 mph. Boucher’s company, AstroFlight, whose principal business today is miniature motors and related gear for RC modelers, supplied the five-horsepower motor. MacCready’s company, AeroVironment, first tested an electric version of the piloted Gossamer Penguin, then went on to build Solar Challenger, whose two tandem wings were covered with more than 16,000 solar cells. In 1979, the late Paul MacCready, whose Gossamer series of human-powered airplanes had brought him international fame, began working with Boucher. ![]() The current renaissance began with Robert Boucher, who pioneered the use of electric motors for model airplanes and in the early 1970s built a couple of pilotless solar-powered aircraft under contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In the 1880s a couple of French army officers named Renard and Krebs gave a hydrogen-filled dirigible, La France, huge batteries and an 8-horsepower electric motor that enabled it to do what no balloon had done before: return to its launch site at the end of a flight.Īfter that early triumph, however, all went quiet on the man-carrying electric-aircraft front and remained so for about 90 years. It’s often said that every great advance in aviation begins with a new kind of engine I suppose that putting electric motors into airplanes is such an advance, but in a somewhat backward direction: toward lower power, slower airplanes, less noise and stress, and a return to those jolly early days when merely to rise up into the air made you feel like some sort of god.Įlectric flight goes back surprisingly far. Electric flying is going to be something like my flight this morning: not trying to get somewhere far off in a hurry, but just the beautiful sensation of being suspended in the air, of flight for its own sake. It’s an electric airplane-common enough in RC modeling, but still an oddity in the passenger-carrying world. I’ve come to talk with Buck about a novel airplane he’s developing. As we walk to his hangar, only our voices, and the occasional chirp of a bird, disturb the universal calm. The airplane seems to slide along frictionlessly, like a skater coasting, hands in pockets, on a pond of infinite blue.Īn engineer with a youthful manner and a day job at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, Buck, 51, is waiting on the ramp when I taxi in. I’ve pulled the rpm way back, so that the grumble of the engine, through earplugs and a headset, recedes into the distance. The hundreds of huge windmills that dot the ridges are motionless, the sky is without clouds, the visibility without limit. It’s just 55 miles from my home airport in Los Angeles to the Tehachapi gliderport where Pete Buck has his hangar, but it’s usually a jarring flight through torrents of wind that tumble eastward off the mountains like whitewater. ![]()
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