When my country Turkiye was struck by two massive earthquakes last year one of the most crucial disfunction was the lack of communication. We made a grave mistake by installing majority of the cell towers on top of the residential buildings. In the earthquake most of them were collapsed. This is a remarkable platform for cases like that.
The more robust alternative is the solar covered and powered airships.. they can remain airborne carrying a greater payload.. longer and are less fragile caught in weather. BBC have also covered these previously. The idea of using hybrid air vehicles to provide emergency communications and disaster relief using aero stats goes back to Skycat if not earlier ... and the Banda Achai Indonesia Thailand boxing day Earthquake and Indian ocean Tsunami. DARPA initially funded the current flying prototype .. for use over Afghanistan .. Long endurance intelligence gathering and monitoring and ground coordination.
@@nikotakai8796 try looking Aviation. Stratoplanes . The aircraft that fly at the edge of space. . In case untube deletes the link. 🙄 The algorithm gets ridiculous.
I assume the Zephyr can serve as a mobile station or earth observation would weight far more than 75 kg, meaning current performance is defined by flying naked with zero payload.
@AlexusMaximusDE shouldn't matter, the solar panels probably don't account for much of the weight and aren't a limiting factor. Think of a phone that charges in 20 mins but only lasts 2 hours, not very practical
@@Imthefake He actually did, though maybe not by name directly. He also never mentions any other companies or brands... But he did say how expensive the whole space ordeal is, especially compared to this program... Besides, you need special equipment for Starlink - their dish.
It was fantastic to see our Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) covered in this BBC Click episode! Our Zephyr HAPS may look and sound very sci-fi, but it's very real, and we're excited to be commercialising the technology with an aspiration to help improve and save lives.
How do you communicate with the plane in order to control it autonomously over areas without cell cover? Is it by satellite? And do the altitudes the planes may use conflict with other planes? Like if 10 years from now, 30% of the US cell network demand is covered by zephyr planes, how disruptive is that to other planes and rocket launches
If it's solar array is so efficient that it charges the battery by noon and then relies on that battery to keep it aloft at night, then why not put another battery in for each wing and propeller?
@@atlasfeynman1039 Significant weight increase, more power needed to keep it aloft, and it isn't needed. What would adding batteries for each wing or propeller achieve? It doesn't need more battery juice, as it can recharge after every night.
The thing that really gets me about these is how similar they look to the Wright bros original plane, super efficient twin propeller design, thin long wing as light as possible, every piece optimized, skin covering over frame. Incredibly similar to that plane well over a century ago.
Aurora Flight Sciences had multiple models of unmanned aircraft flying 80-100,000 feet up for months at a time over 30 years ago. This one looks lighter and more advanced as it should 30 years later but this isn't that pioneering.
Okay I have one small problem with the whole "it will replace 200 cell towers" part. Will the phones be able to transmit back? It's a 2-way communication lol. If a cell tower is 1 unit away from you and that thing replaces 200 cell towers, which means roughly a 14x14 tower grid, you will be as much as 7 times further from a tower. The inverse square law tells you that 7 times increase in distance means 7^3 times increase in losses. Your phone will have to transmit at a 343 times higher power output for the same reception and that is not accounting for weather and you know things like... LIVING ON THE GROUND FLOOR OF A 20 STOREY CONCRETE BUILDING as that antenna will be transmitting and receiving straight down. I'm tired of people that think radio is just magic...
@@ThePalisky You seem to be ignoring the fact that ASTS BlueWalker 3 is 1500kg, has a phased array with an area of 64 square metres to allow for signal to be detected from phones, and the entire upper surface of that array is composed of solar panels to power it. Not to mention that this is just a test-bed, and the commercial satellite will likely be significantly bigger. This aircraft on the other hand, while at a lower altitude, will have strict size and weight limitations as well as requiring the majority of its battery capacity to power the props. It will be incredibly challenging to design it to be functional as they describe, and I hesitate to believe that current battery technology is at a state that could support such a system right now.
@@ThePalisky I'm not refuting ASTS's efforts. I assumed your response to the OP was challenging his opinions on the abilities of THIS aircraft by saying that their issues have 'already been solved'
@@TheMightyHams I said 'this problem' referring to the cell towers from far away (the subject matter OP is talking about) not 'their issues' you're attributing to the aircraft. Reading comprehension is a lost art.
Probably better than nothing in a disaster zone, especially if you're trying to enable people who might be trapped with ordinary cell phones to get help (and thus you can't just bring in a Starlink terminal).
The shape of the plane is so interesting. When I was a child, we built model airplanes like 'der kleine UHU' (the small UHU), a model Kit sold by Graupner for beginners: so without remote control... Even those small planes 60 years were so good in the air, that they needed a timer for not flying away too far. I flew my one without timer... and lost it somewhere 'up there', fading in the fog five valleys further maybe, ...we didn`t find it again. The hughe plane shown in this video looks so much more mature... it cries for raising into the sky :) I like that project, because I have a feeling, how effictive it will be in it`s element. You can start from everywhere, you can start 'at once', as needed... and it`s zero emission. Thank you BBC for these impressions.
This could become a highly localized star-link type network with flexible coverage depending on local usage. It would reduce the amount of space junk burning up in the atmosphere
Project Loon by Google already figured out how to do it with balloons without any active propulsion and semi-commercially at it too. Aand they binned it.
@@rkan2 I don't think baloons can stay at a designated place for very long, a plane can be somewhere specific for months, and then be recovered easily.
At 70,000ft it wouldn't be that localised, it would be a lot cheaper and could stay over a site unlike star link. If they can make it work I imagine star-link would just become space junk and these would take over the same task, for much cheaper and much better for the atmosphere and environment
@@DemsW Yes they can; it was the exact goal of project Loon, which they reached. They provided commercial internet access in Puerto Rico, Peru and Kenya. Look it up.
GPS communications if there's an outage it could use for mobile phone base stations as an engineer it sounds like a lot of fun to work on and make it better
4:40 The quick close up scene of the the flood, the house in the center has a quarter of its roof break down. The smoke resulting from that looks faked/CGI. I'm not saying it is, I'm saying the smoke looks weird. After all, I've never seen a scene like that for my brain to compare it. And nowadays, I've seen so much of both reality and movies that I can't always tell the difference between real and VFX. This is a stretch, but can anyone tell my why that smoke is either real or fake? It would be very helpful if I can find other footage of the same thing for reference.
Love this style of science coverage, feels like a lot of local projects are being shut down at the moment so it's reassuring to see one going strong pushing the boundaries
There is no reason it couldn't be used for Internet as well and if it were able to do that they it would make starlink obsolete, as it would be much cheaper, would not leave debris in the atmosphere and is better for the environment. It would also give more consistent coverage as it can stay over specific spots whereas starlink orbits.
@@Alex-cw3rz it could, but it would have to have really good battery technology which could power both the plane and the satellite internet service, plus have the scale to deploy it. Honestly I don't see these taking off like that, and in the case one of these crashes, there's a very real possibility of it damaging things and even killing people. Satellites burn up in the atmosphere.
It's just more flexible on where you want to put it. Starlink has best coverage, but it is in fixed orbit and much higher up which required a satellite dish, less localized signal than land based tower or glider like this which could talk to phone directly. Starlink phone isn't happening yet because it would need a big antenna, they couldn't figured out how to make it truly handheld yet.
The first aircraft of this type was flown in the 1960s by Bob Boucher in California. It was balsa wood and spruce had solar cells generation 1.0 and NickelCadmium batteries. It used a DC Brushed electric motor.
Satellites: consider the amount of energy expended to get those few kilos in space. (i.e. they don't stay above "without power": mega joules of energy were applied to get them them aloft... as well as speeds to stay aloft)
I can see a possibility of a modified aircraft like this in space exploration, specifically in the upper atmosphere of Venus where the temperatures are not so extreme. Imagine a capsule deploying this and being able to survey the surface, take atmospheric measurements, possibly look for signs of life in the Goldilocks zone of Venus. It's in the realm of possibility!
If this works then I would argue that having ultralight re-usable planes like these is cheaper and more environmental friendly than launching thousands of satellites into space that burn up every 5 years. Furthermore there have already been near accidents between space junk and satellites.
But it crowds up our orbit and greatly increases the probability of space junk ruining all the satellites. We're pretty fucked if that happens, this could be an alternative to some things
@@RicardoMusch | Satellites burn up completely when deorbiting. Cases when some parts reach the surface are very rare. Nothing is perfect, and if you populate stratosphere with tens of thousands of these planes they will sometimes fall due to malfunctions creating junk and endangering the regular air traffic and people on the surface. The specific payload capability of solar planes is extremely low, and they should be 100 times larger to carry a meaningful payload like cell-station. So you should add a whole plane with a wingspan of a regular airliner to each cell-station
Could you add a rechargeable extra removable stage to it ? So a stronger engine could run for an hour or so to get it up to the desired height and then detach and return to the launch site ?
If your country only needs a signal for a day! These batteries won't last and the plane won't be able to stay up. Meanwhile you need 3 satellites to cover the whole world. This plane is a tiny step towards making passenger plane's electric but that's about it.
kinda makes me wonder why they dont use a "fuselage/liftingbody" that includes lighter then air gases?! wouldnt that add surface area for solar & make the whole thing lighter overall?
It useless 😂 it can't carry anything and it batteries are horrible for the environment. If they can make it 1000s of times bigger then they could say they have something remarkable. Right now they have a paper plane with extra steps.
It's almost impossible to escape some form of surveillance in today's society... There are organisations that will find you whether you like it or not unless you have the means to hide.
At about 4:00 he says that power is the most expensive part of running a cellphone tower. Well if that is the case then put solar panels and batteries on the ground near the tower. Yes you may need more towers if you are on the ground, but overall I am willing to bet the cost is still lower than the zephyr at this time as ground based solar/batteries will be considerably cheaper than the zephyrs solar/batteries for any given power output and there is no power consumption for flying. If the the zephyr had power to spare then it wouldn't have such tight design challenges.
Don't say anything about the starlink sats failing all the time lol, or muskrat letting his politics screw his businesses. Zephyr could go where Starlink isn't allowed to, either because governments or militant groups prevent it legally and through jammers, also anti-sat weapons if war broke out, or because muskrat just does a racism.
@@ThePalisky Fact check: *BOTH* Starlink and AST SpaceMobile have demonstrated direct-to-cell voice and high-speed internet. But they are not equal: Starlink is faster and lower latency than AST. *Firstly, I dispise Elon Musk's politics, conduct, and power. The following is a compassion of technology.* The Starlink constellation is in low-earth orbit (LEO), giving it lower latency (~50ms). AST satellites will be in medium-earth orbit (MEO), and will have 3x higher latency (~150ms). AST currently only has 1 demo satellite in orbit in MEO (BlueWalker 3) used to demo direct-to-cell voice and data transfer, with download speed peaking at 14Mbps. Starlink has 38 and counting direct-to-cell capable satellites, and recently demonstrated a video call with a peak download speed of *17 Mbps.* Don't get me wrong, I think AST will likely be successful, especially with recent partnerships with major mobile providers like Verizon. More competition will hopefully keep prices from getting too insane. Ultimately, Starlink has an advantage with lower latency in LEO, unless Amazon's Kuiper constellation ever gets off the ground.
@@radfoxuk8113 Generally, I agree with your points. Although nothing would stop jamming either Starlink or Zephyr based radio signals. It's good to have options. But it seems that Zephyr has a long way to go to demonstrate its potential.
i'm afraid starlink has already achieved direct to mobile connection, so that's that avenue closed, it was a good idea at the time but I suspect has limited use now
odd how he admits that to handle the bandwidth of modern cell systems a low earth orbit satellite would need to be enormously big and expensive but plans to put the same capability on a 75 kg aircraft...
The big difference is in altitude which allows a standard cell phone the ability to have two-way communication with this unmanned aircraft. The plane would act as a super tall cell tower. You can't do that with a satellite. You would need a special satellite phone for that.
@@spinav8r Newest generation of Starlink is already performing direct-to-cell capabilities, with no different handset needed. So that kinda disproves that. And cruising at 75000ft already loses the line of sight benefit of cell towers by placing the receiver on the other side of the entire weather layer from the handset.
@@spinav8r A cell tower is less than 1000 ft, this cruises around 15 miles, LEO satellite constellations are around 250-350 miles, GEO are around 22,000 miles. This plane is kinda just another intermediate step in that chain of options, so it will have tradeoffs of both its lower and higher altitude alternatives. It can't magically do the same job and be lighter than both satellite or cell tower equipment packages
Why not a launch battery. It uses the battery to push the plane at full throttle through the weather and then when it’s depleted it’s dropped with a small parachute and retrieved. This would allow them to launch the plane anywhere and even from boats like for the military.
On UA-cam, many of those generic, non-specific comments are paid-for, AI-generated by site owners to generate more revenue. I don't see any of those here ... a couple of nonsense "Hi from xxxx", or those immature "First" posts are always scattered around ... but they're real.
It would be funny if some companies were able to do this permanently and put starlink out of business because these probably cost a fraction of what it costs to put a star link up
7:06 he says low earth orbit satellites could do a few kilobits per second starlink direct to cell is doing 3.3-7.2Mbit/s upload and 4.4-18.3Mbit/s download which is insane + they are getting close to having starship fully operational which is being funded mostly by starlink (albeit even with falcon 9 they are cranking out launches and satellites) but once they have starship, economics more or less goes out the window also extra thing with the persistent photo thing google geostationary satellites
Neil, when the smaller body is in the direct influence of the larger body, is the gravity of the smaller body changed temporarily? Is there a gravity sum taking place, or displacement? Since gravity is not spilling out into space (novice, here) does it pull back into itself based on density?
How much power would the aircraft need to serve it's communications function? The clip said cell towers use a lot of power so how does this thing work? Unless it's a passive reflector?
It should have a detachable batery and propellor unit... so that it can climb a lot faster and once it's depleted it drops off with a parachute landing... the Zephyr continues onwards above the weather...
6:50 LEO satellites actually need fuel to keep the orbit. Either you are in a very low orbit and have excellent cell reception but need frequent boosts or you are higher up, need less fuel and have poor quality cell service. Airbus has already received the first external investments to provide cell service with this. I also could think of mapping, earth observation and military applications. It could monitor what the Russians are up to from a safe distance with ease and at low costs.
How much power would it need to produce to cover the area for those ~200 cell towers/base station? And how much hardware would be required to be installed, increasing weight?
side effect, blocks a tiny amount of sunlight without creating a shadow (bc its in the stratosphere) and helps cool the earth the tiniest bit (by blocking a small amount of sun)
OK, you get the equivalent coverage of 200 base stations (towers), how do you power the electronics to service 200 times the traffic of a single tower, AND still keep the plane aloft?
Low orbit cube sate are still way higher with higher lag time for signals plus they do need power to avoid coming down too quickly from upper atmospheric drag.
My question would be : where is it after a certain period and "If it's in the stratosphere, what's filming it?" there's no other airplanes up there. or is it CGI ?
Imagine a line of these, connected by wire so that the sun never sets on the chain, the planes in the shade getting charge from the ones in the sunlight. Obviously, the weather will be a real challenge to solve, but a giant structure like that could change the world.
My mate Robert can also stay high for weeks, but nobody talks about this genius.
Good one!
Buddy 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 30% of the 20-35 yr old smoke cannabis more than3 a day
Bob sounds like a chill dude.
We all know a Robert
I’ve been up there for about 35 years (so far) and not a solar panel in sight.
My wife’s luggage weighs more.
‘Wife’?! Lol. She has my deepest sympathies! 👍🤣
@@titteryenot4524 Damn dude, no need to be that savage
For my American friends, that's 165+ lbs. What's she moving around?
LMFAOOOOOOOO
@@BLVCKSCORP Ach, it’s just a wee bit of good old British banter, son. Nothing ‘savage’ about it.👍
When my country Turkiye was struck by two massive earthquakes last year one of the most crucial disfunction was the lack of communication. We made a grave mistake by installing majority of the cell towers on top of the residential buildings. In the earthquake most of them were collapsed. This is a remarkable platform for cases like that.
Thanks I didn’t think of that aspect. I was stuck on how vulnerable they are in their own way.
The more robust alternative is the solar covered and powered airships.. they can remain airborne carrying a greater payload.. longer and are less fragile caught in weather. BBC have also covered these previously.
The idea of using hybrid air vehicles to provide emergency communications and disaster relief using aero stats goes back to Skycat if not earlier ... and the Banda Achai Indonesia Thailand boxing day Earthquake and Indian ocean Tsunami. DARPA initially funded the current flying prototype .. for use over Afghanistan ..
Long endurance intelligence gathering and monitoring and ground coordination.
Also, just LORAWan and alike - insane range, dirt cheap transceivers.
@@clivestainlesssteelwomble7665 I can't find something about solar covered airships from the BBC.
@@nikotakai8796 try looking
Aviation.
Stratoplanes . The aircraft that fly at the edge of space. . In case untube deletes the link. 🙄 The algorithm gets ridiculous.
the only gull shaped entity that's not annoying
The Alpha Gull
I dunno, the DeLorean is pretty cool.
@@concinnus Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. Was way ahead of it's time in styling.
@@Hebdomad7 Sure, but I've not see one in person, whereas I have seen (ridden my motorcycle behind) a DeLorean, so I can vouch for its coolness.
This one probably wont fly off with your sandwich too 😭
I assume the Zephyr can serve as a mobile station or earth observation would weight far more than 75 kg, meaning current performance is defined by flying naked with zero payload.
Yh for sure, the weight would increase. If the battery tech improves enough and they get denser it could be viable
Yes, but current performance as described in the video also means that they are fully charged "by noon". So there is some headroom.
@AlexusMaximusDE shouldn't matter, the solar panels probably don't account for much of the weight and aren't a limiting factor. Think of a phone that charges in 20 mins but only lasts 2 hours, not very practical
yep. telecom equipment are heavy and require good amount of power to function which means more batteries on board.
@@Asdfghjkl-ls1or every gram matters, as said in the video.
Am I the only one who thinks the interviewer and the interviewee look like twins
Glad you also noticed!
AI generate me a video where two completely different looking British men talk to each other.
AI: On it!
Yes
that would explain why the interviewer doesn't bring up starlink when eh talks about the limits of satellite communication
@@Imthefake He actually did, though maybe not by name directly. He also never mentions any other companies or brands... But he did say how expensive the whole space ordeal is, especially compared to this program... Besides, you need special equipment for Starlink - their dish.
There is something so peacefully about it
" A solution looking for a problem ". Nailed it!
I would love an FM broadcast transmitter on an aircraft like this. It would cover a huge region with no mountains or buildings to block the signal.
I'm no expert, but doesn't radio transmission for any significant distance require significant power? They're already 5-6 miles up
Or LORA
@@emmakai2243 The video was only 8 minutes and clearly neither you or OP watched it as these issues are discussed
@@emmakai2243Yes. Lots of power.
@@JBBost No I didn't retain every single bit of info, where did it refer to FM radio power needs?
"We have U2 spyplane at home"
U2 spyplane at home:
It's too light to carry anything not involved in basic flight / nav.
I met mr Kelly on a job…. He’s such a nice guy, he is what you see.
It was fantastic to see our Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) covered in this BBC Click episode! Our Zephyr HAPS may look and sound very sci-fi, but it's very real, and we're excited to be commercialising the technology with an aspiration to help improve and save lives.
California has mostly calm weather too 😊
How do you communicate with the plane in order to control it autonomously over areas without cell cover? Is it by satellite? And do the altitudes the planes may use conflict with other planes? Like if 10 years from now, 30% of the US cell network demand is covered by zephyr planes, how disruptive is that to other planes and rocket launches
Are they visible when satellite photographs earth map images?
If it's solar array is so efficient that it charges the battery by noon and then relies on that battery to keep it aloft at night, then why not put another battery in for each wing and propeller?
@@atlasfeynman1039 Significant weight increase, more power needed to keep it aloft, and it isn't needed. What would adding batteries for each wing or propeller achieve? It doesn't need more battery juice, as it can recharge after every night.
64 days was also the record for the longest continuous flight by man.
there is no man though
@@macccu no shit
Never heard of it. I do not trust your comment!
The thing that really gets me about these is how similar they look to the Wright bros original plane, super efficient twin propeller design, thin long wing as light as possible, every piece optimized, skin covering over frame. Incredibly similar to that plane well over a century ago.
I agree
My parents always told me I could have things when cows fly. 😊
Time to collect ❤😂
Pigs mate … pigs
🤣
I've been sitting here wondering how to make it jump over the moon! 😂😛
😂
If you look closely, you'll realise it's actually not a cow.
Proud of my country Kenya 🇰🇪 being selected as the launch station.
Daima mkenya.....but ruto must go
Congrats UK researchers. Hope it would be a pioneer to something amazing.
Aurora Flight Sciences had multiple models of unmanned aircraft flying 80-100,000 feet up for months at a time over 30 years ago. This one looks lighter and more advanced as it should 30 years later but this isn't that pioneering.
I remember watching a documentary about 15 years ago for the Helios plane which was the same thing
Okay I have one small problem with the whole "it will replace 200 cell towers" part. Will the phones be able to transmit back? It's a 2-way communication lol. If a cell tower is 1 unit away from you and that thing replaces 200 cell towers, which means roughly a 14x14 tower grid, you will be as much as 7 times further from a tower. The inverse square law tells you that 7 times increase in distance means 7^3 times increase in losses. Your phone will have to transmit at a 343 times higher power output for the same reception and that is not accounting for weather and you know things like... LIVING ON THE GROUND FLOOR OF A 20 STOREY CONCRETE BUILDING as that antenna will be transmitting and receiving straight down. I'm tired of people that think radio is just magic...
Research ASTS, this problem is already solved...5G broadband direct to unmodified cell phones from space.
@@ThePalisky You seem to be ignoring the fact that ASTS BlueWalker 3 is 1500kg, has a phased array with an area of 64 square metres to allow for signal to be detected from phones, and the entire upper surface of that array is composed of solar panels to power it. Not to mention that this is just a test-bed, and the commercial satellite will likely be significantly bigger.
This aircraft on the other hand, while at a lower altitude, will have strict size and weight limitations as well as requiring the majority of its battery capacity to power the props. It will be incredibly challenging to design it to be functional as they describe, and I hesitate to believe that current battery technology is at a state that could support such a system right now.
@@TheMightyHams you say all that like it refutes anything I said lol. Yes ASTS's solution is obviously superior and the sats are bigger.
@@ThePalisky I'm not refuting ASTS's efforts. I assumed your response to the OP was challenging his opinions on the abilities of THIS aircraft by saying that their issues have 'already been solved'
@@TheMightyHams I said 'this problem' referring to the cell towers from far away (the subject matter OP is talking about) not 'their issues' you're attributing to the aircraft. Reading comprehension is a lost art.
I grew up watching click & im realizing that my tech affinity started here
This is why we we need fund public journalism
It can replace 200 cell towers on the ground....
Until it fails and the equivalent of 2,000 square miles goes off line.
Probably better than nothing in a disaster zone, especially if you're trying to enable people who might be trapped with ordinary cell phones to get help (and thus you can't just bring in a Starlink terminal).
The shape of the plane is so interesting. When I was a child, we built model airplanes like 'der kleine UHU' (the small UHU), a model Kit sold by Graupner for beginners: so without remote control...
Even those small planes 60 years were so good in the air, that they needed a timer for not flying away too far. I flew my one without timer... and lost it somewhere 'up there', fading in the fog five valleys further maybe, ...we didn`t find it again.
The hughe plane shown in this video looks so much more mature... it cries for raising into the sky :) I like that project, because I have a feeling, how effictive it will be in it`s element. You can start from everywhere, you can start 'at once', as needed... and it`s zero emission. Thank you BBC for these impressions.
Finally someone listened to vincey and got eyes in the sky
It’s like an amateur model plane but solar powered. And capable of carrying a wide variety of instruments for scientific research
Clever people doing clever things. Good stuff
The only thing left when humanity is gone is the Zephyr, slowly sinking and rising with the sun, way above any old forgotten civilization.
This could become a highly localized star-link type network with flexible coverage depending on local usage. It would reduce the amount of space junk burning up in the atmosphere
Project Loon by Google already figured out how to do it with balloons without any active propulsion and semi-commercially at it too. Aand they binned it.
@@rkan2 I don't think baloons can stay at a designated place for very long, a plane can be somewhere specific for months, and then be recovered easily.
At 70,000ft it wouldn't be that localised, it would be a lot cheaper and could stay over a site unlike star link. If they can make it work I imagine star-link would just become space junk and these would take over the same task, for much cheaper and much better for the atmosphere and environment
@@DemsW Yes they can; it was the exact goal of project Loon, which they reached. They provided commercial internet access in Puerto Rico, Peru and Kenya. Look it up.
4:00 problem is that cell towers don't fully communicate using wireless tech, but also with cables, whether fiber optic or copper.
GPS communications if there's an outage it could use for mobile phone base stations as an engineer it sounds like a lot of fun to work on and make it better
So how will the plane navigate with a GPS satellite outage?
4:40 The quick close up scene of the the flood, the house in the center has a quarter of its roof break down. The smoke resulting from that looks faked/CGI.
I'm not saying it is, I'm saying the smoke looks weird. After all, I've never seen a scene like that for my brain to compare it. And nowadays, I've seen so much of both reality and movies that I can't always tell the difference between real and VFX.
This is a stretch, but can anyone tell my why that smoke is either real or fake? It would be very helpful if I can find other footage of the same thing for reference.
months is a little underwhelming, I thought he was going to say that it can stay up there forever 😂
Love this style of science coverage, feels like a lot of local projects are being shut down at the moment so it's reassuring to see one going strong pushing the boundaries
so it's basically a starlink for calling ur mum instead of gaming with your bros
There is no reason it couldn't be used for Internet as well and if it were able to do that they it would make starlink obsolete, as it would be much cheaper, would not leave debris in the atmosphere and is better for the environment. It would also give more consistent coverage as it can stay over specific spots whereas starlink orbits.
@@Alex-cw3rz true
itd be better for gaming as its closer to the ground so lower latency
@@Alex-cw3rz it could, but it would have to have really good battery technology which could power both the plane and the satellite internet service, plus have the scale to deploy it. Honestly I don't see these taking off like that, and in the case one of these crashes, there's a very real possibility of it damaging things and even killing people. Satellites burn up in the atmosphere.
These will have in theory better ping than starlink since they are much closer, 4G is enough to game 🤷
thank you BBC for brining back Spencer Kelly and BBC Click
Surveillance drone. Great glide ratio.
These cows..planes.😂😂 4:57
That was great from your end😂
Isn't this just Starlink but lower down? You'd need a helluva lot of these. I don't think they've quite found the problem to the solution yet.
Project zephyr
But if you can connect directly with normal cell phone without satellite connector and maybe faster speeds, that is much better.
It's just more flexible on where you want to put it. Starlink has best coverage, but it is in fixed orbit and much higher up which required a satellite dish, less localized signal than land based tower or glider like this which could talk to phone directly.
Starlink phone isn't happening yet because it would need a big antenna, they couldn't figured out how to make it truly handheld yet.
@@worawatli8952Correct. Boeing has satellites that can talk to cell phones and the antenna in space is huge.
But it doesn't burn 100s of tons of fuel to launch or clutter low earth orbit increasing the chance of a Kessler incident...
The launch really isn't a problem, you can launch from air at a high altitude if this was to serve in disaster zones etc
Thanks to pioneer Bertrand Piccard...
The first aircraft of this type was flown in the 1960s by Bob Boucher in California. It was balsa wood and spruce had solar cells generation 1.0 and NickelCadmium batteries. It used a DC Brushed electric motor.
Satellites: consider the amount of energy expended to get those few kilos in space.
(i.e. they don't stay above "without power": mega joules of energy were applied to get them them aloft... as well as speeds to stay aloft)
I can see a possibility of a modified aircraft like this in space exploration, specifically in the upper atmosphere of Venus where the temperatures are not so extreme. Imagine a capsule deploying this and being able to survey the surface, take atmospheric measurements, possibly look for signs of life in the Goldilocks zone of Venus. It's in the realm of possibility!
Starlink has already made this obsolete since it is able to connect with mobile phones.
Maybe these aircrafts will take Starlink out of business?
If this works then I would argue that having ultralight re-usable planes like these is cheaper and more environmental friendly than launching thousands of satellites into space that burn up every 5 years. Furthermore there have already been near accidents between space junk and satellites.
But it crowds up our orbit and greatly increases the probability of space junk ruining all the satellites. We're pretty fucked if that happens, this could be an alternative to some things
@@RicardoMusch | Satellites burn up completely when deorbiting. Cases when some parts reach the surface are very rare. Nothing is perfect, and if you populate stratosphere with tens of thousands of these planes they will sometimes fall due to malfunctions creating junk and endangering the regular air traffic and people on the surface. The specific payload capability of solar planes is extremely low, and they should be 100 times larger to carry a meaningful payload like cell-station. So you should add a whole plane with a wingspan of a regular airliner to each cell-station
6:41 they went over this.
Could you add a rechargeable extra removable stage to it ? So a stronger engine could run for an hour or so to get it up to the desired height and then detach and return to the launch site ?
With 5 of these,you can have full telecom company in a country.
And they'll still charge 5% of monthly median income for it 😆
problem is ASTS already solved this...5G broadband direct to unmodified cell phones from space
If your country only needs a signal for a day! These batteries won't last and the plane won't be able to stay up. Meanwhile you need 3 satellites to cover the whole world.
This plane is a tiny step towards making passenger plane's electric but that's about it.
kinda makes me wonder why they dont use a "fuselage/liftingbody" that includes lighter then air gases?!
wouldnt that add surface area for solar & make the whole thing lighter overall?
Oh look its the early stages of creating an arsenal bird.
This was my first reaction.
flat earthers will go crazy with this one
Like a microfilm glider.
It's rare to see a host so excited about their topic
This is remarkable.
Yeah, it’s being used to surveil us. Not so remarkable
This is prison
It useless 😂 it can't carry anything and it batteries are horrible for the environment. If they can make it 1000s of times bigger then they could say they have something remarkable. Right now they have a paper plane with extra steps.
It's almost impossible to escape some form of surveillance in today's society... There are organisations that will find you whether you like it or not unless you have the means to hide.
@@liamogorman3312 It's the Wright brothers of a solar type aircraft, in its infancy.
Holy crap. 3:12. Enormously significant if this becomes worldwide as a system, that's an enormous amount of resources that can be put to better use.
A business owner who actually knows their company and can answer questions, very refreshing.
Planned questions and practiced answers
I do love progress and testing new ideas
This technology feels 40 years too late. Should aim for low cost solutions for companies who can't afford orbit.
You're 40 years too late
Everything about climate change is 40 years too late.
We will pay dearly for our ignorance, arrogance, and greed.
At about 4:00 he says that power is the most expensive part of running a cellphone tower. Well if that is the case then put solar panels and batteries on the ground near the tower. Yes you may need more towers if you are on the ground, but overall I am willing to bet the cost is still lower than the zephyr at this time as ground based solar/batteries will be considerably cheaper than the zephyrs solar/batteries for any given power output and there is no power consumption for flying. If the the zephyr had power to spare then it wouldn't have such tight design challenges.
Don't tell the Zephyr folks about Starlink... high speed internet + direct to cell text, voice, and data anywhere in the world already exists. 🤷♂️
Don't tell you that Starlink can't do high speed internet direct to cell, but ASTS can at broadband speeds in addition to all that you mentioned lmao
Be interesting to see estimates for total cost of ownership for both.
Don't say anything about the starlink sats failing all the time lol, or muskrat letting his politics screw his businesses.
Zephyr could go where Starlink isn't allowed to, either because governments or militant groups prevent it legally and through jammers, also anti-sat weapons if war broke out, or because muskrat just does a racism.
@@ThePalisky Fact check: *BOTH* Starlink and AST SpaceMobile have demonstrated direct-to-cell voice and high-speed internet. But they are not equal: Starlink is faster and lower latency than AST.
*Firstly, I dispise Elon Musk's politics, conduct, and power. The following is a compassion of technology.*
The Starlink constellation is in low-earth orbit (LEO), giving it lower latency (~50ms). AST satellites will be in medium-earth orbit (MEO), and will have 3x higher latency (~150ms). AST currently only has 1 demo satellite in orbit in MEO (BlueWalker 3) used to demo direct-to-cell voice and data transfer, with download speed peaking at 14Mbps.
Starlink has 38 and counting direct-to-cell capable satellites, and recently demonstrated a video call with a peak download speed of *17 Mbps.*
Don't get me wrong, I think AST will likely be successful, especially with recent partnerships with major mobile providers like Verizon. More competition will hopefully keep prices from getting too insane. Ultimately, Starlink has an advantage with lower latency in LEO, unless Amazon's Kuiper constellation ever gets off the ground.
@@radfoxuk8113 Generally, I agree with your points. Although nothing would stop jamming either Starlink or Zephyr based radio signals. It's good to have options. But it seems that Zephyr has a long way to go to demonstrate its potential.
i'm afraid starlink has already achieved direct to mobile connection, so that's that avenue closed, it was a good idea at the time but I suspect has limited use now
British people are eccentric in nature 😃we invent things because we have enquiring minds and the usage usually follows…👍🇬🇧
how this aircraft would be overcoming turbulence (if any) or any kind of disturbance out there? Would someone need to monitor the aircraft 24/7?
odd how he admits that to handle the bandwidth of modern cell systems a low earth orbit satellite would need to be enormously big and expensive but plans to put the same capability on a 75 kg aircraft...
The big difference is in altitude which allows a standard cell phone the ability to have two-way communication with this unmanned aircraft. The plane would act as a super tall cell tower. You can't do that with a satellite. You would need a special satellite phone for that.
@@spinav8r Newest generation of Starlink is already performing direct-to-cell capabilities, with no different handset needed. So that kinda disproves that. And cruising at 75000ft already loses the line of sight benefit of cell towers by placing the receiver on the other side of the entire weather layer from the handset.
@@spinav8r A cell tower is less than 1000 ft, this cruises around 15 miles, LEO satellite constellations are around 250-350 miles, GEO are around 22,000 miles. This plane is kinda just another intermediate step in that chain of options, so it will have tradeoffs of both its lower and higher altitude alternatives. It can't magically do the same job and be lighter than both satellite or cell tower equipment packages
Why not a launch battery. It uses the battery to push the plane at full throttle through the weather and then when it’s depleted it’s dropped with a small parachute and retrieved. This would allow them to launch the plane anywhere and even from boats like for the military.
Starlink says hi....😂
I hope this contraption doesn't have a malfunction, drop to 30,000 ft, and collide with a passenger aircraft.
Are all the comments for real? :)
On UA-cam, many of those generic, non-specific comments are paid-for, AI-generated by site owners to generate more revenue. I don't see any of those here ... a couple of nonsense "Hi from xxxx", or those immature "First" posts are always scattered around ... but they're real.
@bbc news @ zephyr
how do you control the landing? also, the air traffic while picking up the altitude?
Starlink could be getting some competition.
This is one of the case that when you see it and know nothing about the project you'll think it's an alien
One super volcanic erruption brings it down.
😂
So one is lost every 100 years
It would be funny if some companies were able to do this permanently and put starlink out of business because these probably cost a fraction of what it costs to put a star link up
I heard mentions of keeping it in the air with batteries. What about the enormous power needed for transmission from the cell antenna?
When they use your name for a plane it feels weird... But I'm glad I'm so majestic
This is perfect for disaster zones !
We were there before you guys. 60k plus feet. Planning to fly and stay around for atleast 3 months. A happy note from india.😊
6:23 dear Video editor, please next time, kindly show the actual Kenya on the footage
7:06 he says low earth orbit satellites could do a few kilobits per second
starlink direct to cell is doing 3.3-7.2Mbit/s upload and 4.4-18.3Mbit/s download which is insane
+ they are getting close to having starship fully operational which is being funded mostly by starlink (albeit even with falcon 9 they are cranking out launches and satellites) but once they have starship, economics more or less goes out the window
also extra thing with the persistent photo thing
google geostationary satellites
Going Clean Energy and Sustainable is the way forward.. thank you Zephyr ❤
Neil, when the smaller body is in the direct influence of the larger body, is the gravity of the smaller body changed temporarily? Is there a gravity sum taking place, or displacement? Since gravity is not spilling out into space (novice, here) does it pull back into itself based on density?
Kenya. I was super excited about that bit. My homeland
How much power would the aircraft need to serve it's communications function? The clip said cell towers use a lot of power so how does this thing work? Unless it's a passive reflector?
I wonder how much more additional weight and power requirments will be added if you ask this aircraft to do more than just aimlessly fly
It should have a detachable batery and propellor unit... so that it can climb a lot faster and once it's depleted it drops off with a parachute landing... the Zephyr continues onwards above the weather...
6:50 LEO satellites actually need fuel to keep the orbit. Either you are in a very low orbit and have excellent cell reception but need frequent boosts or you are higher up, need less fuel and have poor quality cell service.
Airbus has already received the first external investments to provide cell service with this. I also could think of mapping, earth observation and military applications. It could monitor what the Russians are up to from a safe distance with ease and at low costs.
Why is the tip of one wing curled in?
How much power would it need to produce to cover the area for those ~200 cell towers/base station? And how much hardware would be required to be installed, increasing weight?
What is up with the curved wingtips (and the props too)
side effect, blocks a tiny amount of sunlight without creating a shadow (bc its in the stratosphere) and helps cool the earth the tiniest bit (by blocking a small amount of sun)
OK, you get the equivalent coverage of 200 base stations (towers), how do you power the electronics to service 200 times the traffic of a single tower, AND still keep the plane aloft?
I am impressed, especially that it can stay powered overnight, and battery Cycles being the only limiting factor 👍👍
Why are the wing tips asymmetrical?
Pilot: "Sit down and relax, we will arrive in 64 days." Enjoy the free peanuts."
KENYA - The country of all possibilities.
Low orbit cube sate are still way higher with higher lag time for signals plus they do need power to avoid coming down too quickly from upper atmospheric drag.
My question would be : where is it after a certain period and "If it's in the stratosphere, what's filming it?" there's no other airplanes up there. or is it CGI ?
So which Military application is this being built for? blurgh
This will create something incredible in the near future, I can feel it.
Am just proud to be a kenyan where the solar powered aircraft will be launched
若かったらこういう会社で働きたいですね。世界を情報通信で平和にできる気がする。
Depending on the velocity the Zephyr can withstand I could imagine a disposable launcher rocket or mothership.
Imagine a line of these, connected by wire so that the sun never sets on the chain, the planes in the shade getting charge from the ones in the sunlight. Obviously, the weather will be a real challenge to solve, but a giant structure like that could change the world.