This disclosure provides a solar rechargeable aircraft that is inexpensive to
produce, is steerable, and can remain airborne almost indefinitely. The preferred
aircraft is a span-loaded flying wing, having no fuselage or rudder. Traveling
at relatively slow speeds, and having a two-hundred foot wingspan that mounts photovoltaic
cells on most all of the wing's top surface, the aircraft uses only differential
thrust of its eight propellers to turn. Each of five segments of the wing has one
or more motors and photovoltaic arrays, and produces its own lift independent of
the other segments, to avoid loading them. Five two-sided photovoltaic arrays,
in all, are mounted on the wing, and receive photovoltaic energy both incident
on top of the wing, and which is incident also from below, through a bottom, transparent
surface. The aircraft includes hinges and actuators capable of providing an adjustable
dihedral for the wing. The actuators can be motors or control surfaces. Alternately,
the actuators can be movable masses within the wing, which may be capable of deforming
the wing to alter the aerodynamics of the wing, and thereby actuate the hinges.
Because of wing dihedral, the aircraft includes motors both above and below the
center of drag, and the aircraft uses differential thrust to control aircraft pitch.
The aircraft has a wide variety of applications, which include serving as a long
term high altitude platform that serves to link a ground station using radio wave
signals and a satellite using optical signals.