The idea is obvious to everyone. The problem is in the implementation.
When you travel to LA and get there in a few hours shorter time than you get
back to Sydney, you soon realise what the problem is with putting balloons, or
sunlight-powered fixed-wing aircraft up into the jet stream.
The best idea I've seen yet is for a large tethered kite. It had dozens of
thin wires, so that if an aircraft flew through one, it would break, but the
others would hold.
They were going to make it out of aluminum coated mylar, and it was to be the
size of a football (US) field.
Then there was the carbon fibre parachute, to be held aloft by the force of
radio signals (like a ping-pong ball in a vacuum's blower stream)
Then there is Craig McCaw's manned aircraft, and a group in Washington who
have plans for an unmanned solar powered sailplane that drifts down slowly
overnight from great height before the sun rises, and takes it up to enormous
heights again. The design was based on the U2.
I'd like a dollar for every article written on this subject.
--
Stewart Fist - writer and columnist
See http://www.newsit.com.au/index_opinion.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/ (some archives)
http://www.electric-words.com (main archives)
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