Designed for a duration of four days at 65,000 feet. The first flight was just 28 minutes and it sustained damage on landing, but otherwise the mission was a success. ]UPDATE: This was a year ago, sorry for missing that. It's taken several flight since then]
Via RobotDreams:
Boeing's unmanned aircraft, Phantom Eye, completed its first take off and landing June 1. The autonomous aircraft, with its 150-foot wingspan and powered by energy-efficient liquid hydrogen, lifted off its launch cart and climbed to an altitude of 4,080 feet into the desert sky above Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
It's got skids that deploy for landing. The skids were damaged on that first flight. Apparently that flight was in June of 2012 and it's flown 3 or 4 times again over the last 12 months. Boeing received more funding, $6 mil or so, which is a really "mini" project for Boeing, but it seems to be moving successfully forward. Latest news is it will now fly with test payloads from a paying customer, the US Missile Defense Agency. See the link below:
http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/ain-defense-perspective/2013...
My apologies for the old link. I saw the month and missed the year!
Actually here's another link to a Boeing site with more information...it's pretty much a public relations site, but still has good info on the Phantom Eye.
http://www.boeing.com/stories/videos/vid_08_phantom_eye.html
Its the great endurance hope over there after they canned the Zephyr derivative.
Well Chris and Gary, you got my attention and I started searching around for info new designs for commercial large scale drones, and there is some interesting stuff going on, see the other new Boeing project link below on the Solar Eagle. That said, it's still much more fun to actually build, hack, and fly our own APM based stuff...
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/morning_call/2013/06/drone-sales...
http://www.boeing.com/Features/2013/02/bds_phantom_eye_02_26_13.html
They actually showed it landing. Can't wait for the next flight, in 2125.
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