Now I really want to try an FPV drone. Former military pilot, I still think I’m hot shit, haven’t thought about aircraft in ages.

Yeah, and you just need an AI to command it strategically. Chat to it, if you will. About strategy.

Luckily nobody has invented such a chat bot, let alone a 4th version of it…

If Apple can’t turn this plus VR into a successful foray into gaming, then they really don’t want it.

In my experience, the military people that say “it’s not safe” when it’s a vaccine, are the ones that do the most dumb shit outside of work. And inside of work.

Yeah I’m Aussie, we mangled some people with experimental malaria stuff. East Timor. I get it.

Still, this ain’t that. mRNA had a huge rollout, and the stats supports vaccination. Benefit outweighs the danger.

Yes and no. I know a lot of antivaxxers (ex-military…) and they’re surprisingly cool with the mRNA cancer vaccine.

Then you tell them we need to implement mandatory EBV/CMV vaccination and they lose their minds.

Oh yeah, that’ll getcha

There is stuff that could work, but it has to be small and simple. And the UI has to be tailored to the mission.

For instance, smart watches are good. They’re even pretty durable and reliable these days. The smartwatch team should do AR, and if they say the tech isn’t there, they’re probably right.

Speaking of smart watches, if I was gonna do military AR, that would be my first product. Sunglasses with the time on them. Even if it’s just an analog hour/minute hand, I think people would find a use.

5 class-A’s, mostly older models. I don’t think the military minds writing off a couple old F-35s, the first production runs were kinda shit.

Yeah, but if you replace that with a distributed drone system, each TR module on something modern like a Wedgetail is waaaaay lower power. Just need data uplink.

You could essentially do the job with a collection of fighter jet radars on small drones. The power draw on an APG-81 from an F-35 would be well within the capacity of a small turbine engine.

Also, satellite AWACS from a low orbit constellation can do a lot. Expect to see these kinds of payloads launching in the near future.

Yes and no. Starlink and it’s future competitors will operate in a very low orbit that is safe from Kessler syndrome. Worst case, debris fills the orbit for a couple years, but it falls out quickly due to atmospheric drag.

It could definitely spit off debris that fucks other orbits. And it could prevent us from easily leaving earth. But very low orbits will never get too cluttered.

Yeah, cuz that’s how they get scientific data off the continent. Tapes.

Yeah. The crew processes the data. With their brains.

Ideally you’d get that data off board with zero crew and process it at home. But as you know, a modern radar produces a huge amount of data.

USAF is looking as Wedgetail, but keep getting cold feet because of cost. They’d rather use drones, but data rate is a problem. Which Starlink will solve.

I didn’t say only tapes. But think about it. Modern scientific datasets are massive. Thousands of gigabytes.

1mbps running 12h per day is less than 100 gigabytes per year. You’ll saturate it with day-to-day operational messages. No way you’re doing real science.

Not to mention quality of life for the staff. Nobody’s making video calls over Iridium.

https://www.pilotfiber.com/blog/antarctica-internet

This is a more accurate description of satellite internet in Antarctica. Current bandwidth for the whole base is 1-3 mbps, versus ~300mbps with Starlink.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2023/01/starlink-is-now-connecting-remote-antarctic-research-camps-to-the-internet/

It’s quickly becoming indispensable for science.

Capitalists aren’t forcing scientists to move data via tape. Physics is doing that.

How else are you gonna get large quantities of data off an oil rig? Or a ship? Or stream high speed internet to an airplane?

USAF AWACS jets still process all their data on board with a huge crew, because they’re stuck with very slow bandwidth connections.

Hell, Starlink will soon be serving Antarctica. Currently they send data back via tapes, flown on airplanes.

Fighting a lost cause on this one.

Satellite swarms are quickly becoming an indispensable tool for anybody working remotely. Military. Resource. Science.

This isn’t going away.

Yeah, alternate fuel stuff seems complicated but it's basically a scenario-based planning exercise. Like, I'm gonna do a long overwater flight to a remote destination, so I need gas for depressurization or single engine failure or weather holding/divert. I'm legally required to carry gas for certain things at certain times, and I can add extra if I want to. But I need to plan to arrive at a low enough fuel state that I can land below maximum landing weight.

That last point is gonna be most limiting for ammonia fuel in certain missions; because NH3 is less energy dense, it will require pilots to routinely land with a greater fuel load of unburned contingency gas. This will cut into usable payload.

So it's not a perfect solution, but it's got tonnes of promise.

That's true. The main advantage of this over a turbofan is size - efficient turbofans are quite large.

To be fair, small turbofans do exist, but they're not very efficient. For instance, a cruise missile engine might do 0.683 lb/lbf/h (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_F107).

Whereas Jetoptera claims as low as 0.26 lb/lbf/h (https://jetoptera.com/products/). FYI smaller is better, so Jetoptera is claiming better than 2x efficiency when compared to a small turbofan.

Have you done ATPL flight planning? Most commercial jets operate economically on routes that are much shorter than their max range.

Plenty of 787s are doing NY-LAX.

https://aviationh2.com.au/liquid-ammonia-is-the-carbon-free-fuel-of-choice-for-aviation-h2/

If you run the numbers for a typical jet design, carrying 30% more fuel for range is fine for medium range sorties. Anything over ~10h will probably require some kind of biodiesel fuel, but sub-10h in an A330 or long range private jet is very workable.

And as more countries force carbon emitters to pay for their negative externalities via tax, green fuel will become cost competitive. With cheap solar, ammonia should be similar cost to current jet fuel prices, so it'll be significantly cheaper. Western Australia and other places are setting up huge green energy projects for cheap ammonia and hydrogen fuel.

Also, given the increasing protest movement against private jet emissions, people will be willing to pay extra for green fuel. Hell, if I ran PR for an ammonia aircraft startup I would be doing everything I could to encourage protests...

I dunno, coming from military aviation it’s a good title.

Like, clearly it needs a power source, and clearly that’s a gas turbine engine. But putting power down, efficiently, without a gearbox or transmission is revolutionary.

Edit: also for people who are worried about that kind of thing, you can make this green / zero emissions. Solar powered ammonia production is ramping up quickly, and ammonia is an easy substitution for gas turbine engines. Loses about 30% energy density over jet fuel, but it’s workable when range isn’t a limiting factor.

Obviously it needs a compact, high powered engine. In aviation this means gas turbine.

However, this is absolutely an innovative way of delivering that power. Turboprops are efficient, but require complicated gearboxes. Jets are noisy and inefficient, unless it’s a turbofan, but those are big.

This is like halfway between a jet and a turboprop.

Okay but turning this around, if people don’t need to be running around delivering pizza, why should they?