NASA's Helios
electric-powered, robot plane has set a number of altitude records. But
until now, Helios has used only solar panels as a power source and
could fly only during daylight. Now NASA wants to add fuel
cells so Helios can also fly during the night, resulting
in an "eternal" plane that can fly 24 hours a day. For details, see the
NASA
press release. Meanwhile, in Japan, Sohgo Security Services Co. has announced
that they will be the first company to sell a fuel cell powered robot.
When their C-4 Security Robot
detects a fire it will activate the fire alarm and use its built-in fire
extinguisher. When it detects intruders it will sound alarms, flash
lights, shout words like "Thief!" at them, and shoot them with a
paintball gun that leaves identifiable marks.
I think it would be cool if they made the Helios more like a derigible
where it could use uncompressed (or relatively uncompressed hydrogen)
in their fuel cells so that it could aid in the aircraft's lift and use
also use the hydrogen as fuel and thereby cause the propellers to need
less propulsion at least part of the time. Instead of loading the
wings full of fuel causing it to be heavy during the first half of
flight, it would be just the opposite, the hydrogen fueld would cause
it to be light during the first half of flight. However, after the
airplane used up the hydrogen fuel it would drop like a rock. I
suppose the size of the craft would have to be huge to carry that much
uncompressed hydrogen. It would be an engineering marvel to have an
aircraft that could shrink and become smaller and less derigible shaped
and more airplane wing airfoil shaped during the flight to keep lift
efficiency as high as possible.