Alternative fuel UAV

[CSM]

Orion HALL UAV mock-up unveiled
Bill Sweetman Jane's International Defence Review Aerospace & Technology Editor
Farnborough

Aurora Flight Sciences has unveiled a full-scale mock-up of a hydrogen-fuelled long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that it is developing in collaboration with Boeing's Phantom Works.

Named the Orion HALL (High Altitude, Long Loiter), it is linked to the UAV project that was disclosed to Jane's in early July by George Muellner, Phantom Works' president of advanced programmes.

Orion HALL is described as a small-payload vehicle (180 kg) with a four-day endurance, while Boeing's planned High-Altitude, Long-Endurance (HALE) vehicle would have a 10-day endurance. The first vehicle is expected to fly in 2008.

The project is funded by the US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) as a platform for high-altitude sensor tests and a contract for two vehicles is expected shortly.

The aircraft will be operated for SMDC by Mississippi State University's Raspet Flight Research Laboratory. It is being built by Virginia-based Aurora in the company's Columbus, Mississippi, facility.

Details of the new vehicle have not been formally released, but it is a conventional design with tail aft, tractor propeller, a wingspan around 35 m and a single 5 m-diameter, four-bladed propeller. The large-diameter body houses the low-density liquid hydrogen fuel.

The forward segment of the body resembles a classic National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics cowling for a radial air-cooled piston engine, but probably houses a heat exchanger in which the hydrogen expands to a gas via a turbine, producing additional power before being fed into a conventional engine.

I know, I know....hydrogen fuel cells can't work...or so I've been told by some posters here.

 

[Mr. P]

Orion HALL UAV mock-up unveiled
Bill Sweetman Jane's International Defence Review Aerospace & Technology Editor
Farnborough

Aurora Flight Sciences has unveiled a full-scale mock-up of a hydrogen-fuelled long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that it is developing in collaboration with Boeing's Phantom Works.

Named the Orion HALL (High Altitude, Long Loiter), it is linked to the UAV project that was disclosed to Jane's in early July by George Muellner, Phantom Works' president of advanced programmes.

Orion HALL is described as a small-payload vehicle (180 kg) with a four-day endurance, while Boeing's planned High-Altitude, Long-Endurance (HALE) vehicle would have a 10-day endurance. The first vehicle is expected to fly in 2008.

The project is funded by the US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) as a platform for high-altitude sensor tests and a contract for two vehicles is expected shortly.

The aircraft will be operated for SMDC by Mississippi State University's Raspet Flight Research Laboratory. It is being built by Virginia-based Aurora in the company's Columbus, Mississippi, facility.

Details of the new vehicle have not been formally released, but it is a conventional design with tail aft, tractor propeller, a wingspan around 35 m and a single 5 m-diameter, four-bladed propeller. The large-diameter body houses the low-density liquid hydrogen fuel.

The forward segment of the body resembles a classic National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics cowling for a radial air-cooled piston engine, but probably houses a heat exchanger in which the hydrogen expands to a gas via a turbine, producing additional power before being fed into a conventional engine.

I know, I know....hydrogen fuel cells can't work...or so I've been told by some posters here.

Don't tell these folks that.

Shell Hydrogen and Amsterdam Transport Company (GVB) have signed a one-year extension of cooperation on the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Project in Amsterdam.

Since 2001 GVB and Shell Hydrogen have worked together on the Fuel Cell Bus project in Amsterdam, as part of the nine-cities Clean Urban Transport for Europe project.

The hydrogen is being produced on-site with an electrolyser, using green electricity for power. The project has been running for over two years and was intended to test the operation of fuel cell buses in dense traffic conditions, with the aim to demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative, energy-efficient, clean, urban public transport system, as well as to raise public awareness and test public acceptance of this new public transport concept.

Starting from 2003 three hydrogen buses took their turns on the regular public transport lines 35 and 38 in the centre and northern part of Amsterdam. General public reacted to the hydrogen trial with increasing enthusiasm and by the end of the second year over 90% of the passengers and over 80% of the neighbouring community expressed their wish to see more fuel cell public transport in Amsterdam.