Timeline for Dramatic orbital spotlight feasibility and price
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 18, 2021 at 18:10 | comment | added | RBarryYoung | Much cheaper than a satellite network. | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 13:35 | comment | added | Hobbamok | What @VaradMahashabde says. Everyone here is thinking about quadcopters, but those are indeed quite limited in uptime. However, a "drone" is just any automated flightcraft. The Israeli made de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Heron for example has an air time of over 24 hours in the cheap (old) version, with 250kg of payload (enough for a big spotlight, focusing mirrors and energy plant), and that is the small/cheap version. Yes, OP didn't want an "obnoxious plane" overhead, but we can surely find a smaller/more stealthy one, especially if we don't need to go that high | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 13:02 | comment | added | Varad Mahashabde | @Dragongeek Military drones exist. Not every drone is an RC quadcopter. | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 8:17 | comment | added | Dragongeek | I don't think a drone would fulfill all my requirements. First, there's the technical: a spotlight consumes an enormous amount of energy and is rather heavy (so a single drone would need to be extremely beefy to carry it), and I want the imagery of a single beam piercing down from the heavens--people should be able to see the beam all the way up until it disappears from sight like spotlights in Vegas. | |
| Feb 17, 2021 at 21:53 | comment | added | Willk | @Sobrique - my cursory research suggests it is battery life. The really bright lights are hungry and eat the battery in 10 minutes. But I am sure a savvy engineer could rig an alternator to generate electricity off of the drone engine. | |
| Feb 17, 2021 at 21:30 | comment | added | Sobrique | I have wondered before why something like this doesn't exist already. I mean a modern drone is more than capable of 'hover above this electronic device' level of flight logic. And bright-ish LEDs aren't all that expensive or heavy. | |
| Feb 17, 2021 at 9:37 | comment | added | John Dvorak | @Tortliena maybe steal the wing design from owls, and use a mini-glider instead of a 'copter? Extra bonus, a pair of orbiting spotlights will look more awesome than a single static one. Another extra bonus: Robotic owl familiar will rack up tons of style points, even in full daylight. | |
| Feb 17, 2021 at 9:24 | comment | added | Tortliena - inactive | I've seen people play with commercial and custom-made drones, and while they're not noisy, they're not completely silent either. You should either make a special breed of drones (shouldn't be too hard), or/and make it float quite high above. Also, don't forget that batteries don't last long on them, so make sure you have some spares for 24/24 coverage :). | |
| Feb 16, 2021 at 22:01 | comment | added | Sal | Absolutely this. You avoid the problem of all that atmosphere scattering light between a satellite and the Earth's surface. | |
| Feb 16, 2021 at 19:42 | history | answered | Willk | CC BY-SA 4.0 |