Here Boeing Solar Eagle is a uniquely configured, large unmanned aircraft designed to eventually remain on station at stratospheric. People used to build airplanes to go faster, and carry more chicks on board. But apparently DARPA wasn’t in the mood to do that. No, they wanted to be on board for 5 freaking years! So, they’ve slid Boeing a cool USD$89 million to develop a plane that will stay in the air for five years, just so they can party nonstop. The 435-foot-wingspan’d SolarEagle will do just that. It will use photovoltaics to help keep it at 65,000 feet, where Boeing spokesman Pat O’Neil says it will “perform persistent communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions,” which we hope means it will just be hanging around doing “how’s the weather down there” tweets all day long. SolarEagle’s first demo flight is slated for 2014. Sadly there’s no seat for anyone.
via TG Daily
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