Hacker Remix

First Successful Lightning Triggering and Guiding Using a Drone

166 points by gnabgib 21 hours ago | 70 comments

dhagberg 20 hours ago

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).

dogma1138 6 hours ago

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.

kjkjadksj 12 hours ago

And the prior art before that involved a kite and a key

aaron695 10 hours ago

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.

rkagerer 19 hours ago

This is really cool, but I'm super skeptical of their proposed use case for protecting cities.

Aren't lightning conditions often preceded by strong winds and poor weather conditions? Not a great time to be flying drones. And the approach seems more complicated than simply installing lightning rods.

I'd sooner envision people using the technique to get a kick out of throwing lightning around like they're Zeus.

wodenokoto 12 hours ago

My scepticism was more like “don’t cities already have lightning rods?”

Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago

Yeah I haven't heard of lightning actually causing damage to buildings or property in years, last times were old thatched rooves or homes that generally don't have lightning rods. But it mainly hits trees these days. It feels like a solution looking for a problem, however as someone else pointed out, a drone being able to withstand lightning strikes is pretty neat.

mbreese 9 hours ago

> Aren't lightning conditions often preceded by strong winds and poor weather conditions? Not a great time to be flying drones.

Well, the drone would be tethered by the ground attached wire, so it might not need to be that controllable. Elevation is the main concern, so as long as it can reach the right altitude, the tether could keep it reasonably in the right area.

prawn 16 hours ago

I've flown my Mavics in rain and strong wind before - certainly stronger than anything I'd associate with lightning. Most of the lightning storms I've seen haven't been especially windy, but it might vary elsewhere. And that's a consumer drone with negligible weatherproofing.

I assume if there's a business case, they'll eventually automate this with drone swarms that wait in cabinets on building rooftops.

binary132 15 hours ago

FWIW, where I live there are often intense thunderstorms during the spring and summer, and they are usually accompanied by windstorms, sometimes generating tornadoes.

bamboozled 11 hours ago

I've been in Tokyo in some massive storms (NTT is a Japanese company), the wind and rain is absolutely insane sometimes. Kind of like a 30 minute hurricane.

TheBigRoomXXL 11 hours ago

> Traditionally, lightning protection has relied heavily on lightning rods. However, their protective range is limited, and in some cases—such as wind turbines or outdoor event venues—it may not be feasible to install them. At NTT, we are exploring the use of rapidly advancing drone technology to create a new approach: "drone-triggered lightning"2.

I can't believe that's a practical solution. Surely just installing more lighting road is simpler et more effective. They just want to do something cool and try to justify it sideways.

tlb 9 hours ago

The expensive bit isn't the lightning rod itself, but the conductive path all the way to ground that has to handle 10^5 amps.

kranke155 10 hours ago

This probably has more value as a bizarre form of weapon than anything else.

ourmandave 4 hours ago

Load up a bunch of B-52 bombers with giant Van de Graaff generators to fly over the target and then send the drone down.

I'd be shocked if that worked.

inglor_cz 9 hours ago

Codename Zeus.

mrbluecoat 16 hours ago

> flying drones into optimal positions beneath thunderclouds to actively trigger lightning strikes, and then guiding the discharge safely away from vulnerable areas

From a military standpoint, I wonder what it would take to discharge into a vulnerable area...

foxglacier 16 hours ago

You could put the wire in the vulnerable area - perhaps using the same drone? But I don't think it would be any use. A lightning strike releases about 1 GJ of energy, mostly into the sky. So the effect at the target would probably be no more than a few kg of explosives which you could have delivered using the wire anyway.

pixl97 14 hours ago

Plausible deniability?

People tend to get mad when you bomb them, but if no one noticed the drone in the storm it's just a natural strike...

kjkjadksj 12 hours ago

Fire it at a transformer, take out power in an entire region and blame God. A perfect tool for the CIA.

nilamo 2 hours ago

A sniper rifle does the same, with a single shot, more reliably and without witnesses.

ceejayoz 2 hours ago

But it leaves pretty clear evidence of human action, which CIA-style actors may not want.

stronglikedan 16 hours ago

> I wonder what it would take to discharge into a vulnerable area

HAARP /s