Wow, getting a drone to survive the massive electromagnetic fields (and plasma!) around lightning strikes is quite an accomplishment. Prior art in the area used rockets trailing a similar light wire to trigger lightning - used by Dr Uman's team at University of Florida (https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UFE0047331/00001).
Aren’t lighting strikes on aircraft a pretty common occurrence and even without that the charge on the skin of an aircraft flying through the air is quite substantial.
Rockets triggering lighting with wire has been since the late 50's (M. M. Newman), what's cool about the drone is you can send back data before the strike. Obviously a kite or aerostat would work as well.
I'm sure someone in the 90's was using rockets without wires, the exhaust from the rocket made the trail. I cannot source it.
These guys charging cars shows they are not really serious, but a lot of forest fires are lightning, it's a worthy thing to control if possible.
“A patented new rocket design eschews the copper wire and chemically creates the lightning path. The rocket fuel is doped with small amounts of salt. Sodium chloride, calcium chloride, or cesium chloride is pulled through the motor, heated, and broken into charged ion components spewed out in the exhaust. The positively charged Cs, Ca, or Na atoms cool and bond with water molecules in the air, forming saltwater droplets. These droplets are far more electrically conductive than freshwater droplets, leaving a high-conductivity trail in the rocket’s wake.”
Historically, Maine had excellent recreation policies in cooperation with the private paper companies that owned the majority of land in the northern part of the state: areas not actively being logged were available for recreation access, as were vehicles on logging roads (though you best yield to the logging trucks that drive down the middle of the roads, even if it means you need to dive into the ditch). State recreation fees for snowmobiles, fishing, etc. would cover things like insuring the private landowners against liability.
However, starting in the mid/late 90's, much of the paper company land was divested and sold to private equity land holders (yay modern finance!) and those previous open access policies have been very much curtailed. It's a big loss to the community, but it sure must be making some money for shareholders somewhere...
Most DC fast charging rates are about 2x to 3x the local electric rate per kWh, though stations vary quite a bit based on other factors. Here in Colorado, my home power is about $0.125/kWh "normal" rate putting supercharger rates at $0.25 to $0.50/kWh. If I charge my Model 3 Midrange battery (62kWh) capacity from 10 to 80% (typical road trip percentages to minimize charge time) that would be somewhere between $10-15.
95% of the time I'm charging at home and on a net-metering Solar plan, so really only paying those $0.12/kWh rates in the dark winter months, basically charging for "free" off solar once we hit the equinox.
This new prototype is based on a Lightning Motors Transit to get useful range, rather than the Ford Transit EV that has a very limited range. Ford’s Transit EV design spec is for a local delivery/work van - a bigger battery in that case would increase cost and weight.
Don’t forget to calculate your egress network costs to download for restore. That could make the costs look a lot worse than other zfs backup services like rsync.net.
