Unmanned Solar Plane Breaks Flight Record

A solar-powered aircraft has broken the world record for longest unmanned flight, sailing for 54 hours more than 50,000 feet above the New Mexico desert, said defense research company QinetiQ.

QinetiQ's ultra-thin "Zephyr" plane nearly doubled the current record, which stood at 30 hours, 24 minutes in a flight on July 23, 2007, the company said in a statement released Monday.

The company acknowledged the record might not stand because the test, held at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, was not witnessed by officials from the World Air Sports Federation, which keeps and certifies records.

Built from carbon fibers, the trapezoid-shaped aircraft is 59 feet long and weighs about 66 pounds - light enough to be launched, by hand, by a team of three. It uses paper-thin silicon panels to draw on the sun's power and the surplus is stored in lithium-sulphur batteries, which power the plane through the night.

QinetiQ declined to say how much the program cost, although it said Britain's Ministry of Defense had contributed several million pounds to the project.

Potential applications for Zephyr include surveillance and communications work.

[sjw1253]

I am not sure about all of the concern of being watched - it sounds too much like the 60''s big "My phone is being tapped" - theory.

Everyone was sure their phones were being tapped...

The funny thing is - if everyone is being watched every minute of the day and everything they say is being recorded - where is the man/woman-power to follow through with all of this surveilance?

In order to have your every move and word "recorded" and mean anything - you have to stand out in a crowd in order to have any meaning to it - otherwise - it would all get lost in the maze of information overload.

There are far too many people and too many seconds in a day/week/month/year/decade - etc.. etc.. etc...

I agree with the critics on this comment section that say get a life!!! If we worry about this - we may draw enough attention to ourselves so that we will warrant someone - somewhere - wanting to know what it is we are so afraid of...

tmho

[actornaught]

This thing some people have of being watched is called ''PARANOIA''!

get therapy.....

[PeterHeilemann]

Oh, get off it !?!

Without some kind of surveillance capability, we would be vulenrable to every kind of criminal and terrorist activity.

You need to stop watching ''Conspiracy Theory'' and get on with your lives.

Thanks!

PAH

[undermyboot]

Who exactly is going to be watching all of us? I''''m more concerned about telephone and Internet monitoring because supercomputers can do that.
Posted by rational_1 at 04:12 PM : Sep 10, 2007
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High resolution video is stored in massive data storage complexes. Hard drive space is so cheap now (especially when they use OUR tax money) that the government can store video surveillance of EVERY square inch of the country. This includes what they see through your windows and via other means (radar & IR) direct through your roof.

Pattern recognition running on massively parallel computers isolate people and "items of interest" from background. Pattern recognition and tracking software tracks and identifies every individual and their contacts day and night.

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinised."
George Orwell, 1984

[lochlan-2009]

Correct, the plane is being built for around the clock surveilance of everyone on the ground. How does everyone like where the future is bringing us to a day where everything you do is watched by the eyes in the sky?