The NASA ERAST program was a 1990-2000s effort to develop an unmanned (but remotely-piloted) drone. It used solar panels and batteries to fly for a day at a time, and several generations of prototypes were developed by Monrovia, CA company AeroVironment. In an effort to get continuous flight, the batteries of one of the last prototypes, Helios Prototype 03, were supplemented by a fuel cell system with high system energy density.

The original design concept was to use a paired electrolyzer / fuel cell system that could generate hydrogen and oxygen during the day and store it, and then feed the gases into a fuel cell to supply electric power at night. These are almost certainly the Giner stacks mentioned in a 2001 press release.

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There were some interesting talks at the Net Energy Analysis workshop at #GCEP #Stanford.

“The bandwidth for communications with policymakers is astonishingly low. For example, my father worked on communications with nuclear submarines. The bandwidth is very low, basically an antenna the size of Wisconsin is used to transmit 20 characters to the sub commander, who says ‘Yep, I guess I’m supposed to destroy the world’ “. – Howard Gruenspecht, deputy administrator of the EIA

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I’m in Stanford at a workshop on Net Energy Analysis. Quite an interesting discussion of energy inputs and payback. And check out the middle clip art – clearly an endorsement of Catalytic Engineering!

Below is former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu who gave the keynote. He’s very quotable. (These were paraphrases – some of them I didn’t catch exactly)

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