I could easily see something like this being the next big thing, instead of satellites (or maybe in conjunction with satellites) we would have this.

Built by Qinetiq (a UK defense firm), the Zephyr is an unmanned aerial vehicle. During a recent test it flew non-stop for 54 hours. Meaning that it flew straight through the (sunless duh) night, twice. This is rather cool. It is efficient enough to charge up all the energy it needs during the day to not only power the plane, but store up enough energy for the flight all night long as well.

The 54 hour flight unofficially smashes the previous record of 30 hours held by a jet-powered air force Global Hawk surveillance aircraft. The Qinetig team didn’t notify the record keepers so they will have to do this again if they want an official place in the record books.

The plane was originally developed in order to take pictures of another record breaking attempt, this time a giant helium balloon trying to go higher than any other manned flying device in 2003. The Zephyr can go pretty high itself. With a wing span of 59 ft, it reached a height of more than 58,000 feet.

The plane is so light, that it is launched by hand, and this lightness allows it to be so efficient, but also means that the current model has problems with any kind of inclement weather. As material science, and solar panel efficiency improve, we could easily see larger versions of this kind of aircraft. Perhaps one day you could visit a large permanently flying solar hotel in the sky.

I am sure the military would love to use these to spy on whoever. But I think a much cooler use of things like this would be for communications devices bringing internet to places that don’t have it already. I am sure you could come up with a lot of other fun uses for a plane that only has to land every could of days/weeks. If you had enough of them you would never be without service.