{"id":191671,"date":"2024-06-23T16:23:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-23T21:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/this-autonomous-solar-powered-aircraft-will-fly-for-90-days-straight"},"modified":"2024-06-23T16:23:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-23T21:23:04","slug":"this-autonomous-solar-powered-aircraft-will-fly-for-90-days-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/this-autonomous-solar-powered-aircraft-will-fly-for-90-days-straight","title":{"rendered":"This Autonomous Solar-Powered Aircraft Will Fly for 90 Days Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-autonomous-solar-powered-aircraft-will-fly-for-90-days-straight2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p> <span class=\"wp-smiley emoji emoji-face_with_colon_three\" title=\":3\">face_with_colon_three<\/span> year 2021.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yFPnT-DCBVs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The solar aircraft is made by a Spanish-American aerospace startup called <a href=\"https:\/\/skydweller.aero\/\">Skydweller Aero<\/a>. Based in Oklahoma City, the company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crunchbase.com\/organization\/skydweller\">raised<\/a> $32 million in its Series A funding round, led by Italian aerospace firm <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leonardocompany.com\/en\/home\">Leonardo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us, if you\u2019re flying 90 days with one aircraft, that\u2019s two takeoffs and landings versus \u2026 hundreds,\u201d Skydweller Aero co-founder John Parkes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aviationtoday.com\/2020\/06\/30\/ultra-persistent-skydweller-aero-announces-oklahoma-city-as-headquarters\/\">told<\/a> <i>Aviation Today<\/i>. \u201cBeing able to fly thousands of miles, persist over an area for 30\u201360 days and fly back is a differentiator. It\u2019s a huge cost savings to the US government when you look at the whole cost of doing a lot of the national security missions that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The plane will stay airborne thanks to 2,900 square feet of photovoltaic cells that will blanket its surface, generating up to 2 kilowatts of electricity. As a backup in case it\u2019s cloudy for a few days in a row, the plane will also be equipped with hydrogen fuel cells (maybe they\u2019re not as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yFPnT-DCBVs\">extremely silly<\/a>\u201d as Elon Musk thinks).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>face_with_colon_three year 2021. The solar aircraft is made by a Spanish-American aerospace startup called Skydweller Aero. Based in Oklahoma City, the company raised $32 million in its Series A funding round, led by Italian aerospace firm Leonardo. \u201cFor us, if you\u2019re flying 90 days with one aircraft, that\u2019s two takeoffs and landings versus \u2026 hundreds,\u201d [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2019,1490,6,1492,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elon-musk","category-government","category-robotics-ai","category-security","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}