61–70 of 149 posts
It’s just a question of the energy density of batteries vs. fuel. We need a couple more battery breakthroughs before we get a fully electric commercial airliner.
For short-haul flights, this matters a lot less.
Norway is in an ideal position; a surplus from oil money and excessive access to hydro power. I would hope they can use their current oil prosperity to prepare for a hydro (and other green energy) powered future, in all kinds of new places. After I typed that I realized that the whole world could be said to be in oil prosperity still, so the same applies to us all: with less evenly distributed oil prosperity, and not…
It’s just a question of the energy density of batteries vs. fuel. We need a couple more battery breakthroughs before we get a fully electric commercial airliner.
[0] https://www.amevoice.com/blog/1058/airbus-a340-fuel-system-d...
Norway is in an ideal position; a surplus from oil money and excessive access to hydro power. I would hope they can use their current oil prosperity to prepare for a hydro (and other green energy) powered future, in all kinds of new places. After I typed that I realized that the whole world could be said to be in oil prosperity still, so the same applies to us all: with less evenly distributed oil prosperity, and not…
But that will never happen in the USA due to the influence of the oil industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okkupert
The premise is that Norway develops thorium reactor technology and ceases all fossil-fuel production. And then is clandestinely and later openly invaded by Russia, with the blessing of other countries, to seize oil and gas production facilities and forcibly re-open them.
As a first step, they could make at least the take off and landing electric, that would help a lot with the noise and pollution around cities, i.e. where people live. I guess the batteries could be recharged during the flight for landing.
Landings are mostly idle power until they lower landing gears in the last few miles; Take-off with fuel load is the most demanding leg and also the hardest to electrify.
Batteries don't provide that kind of mass reduction as they discharge, which means long-range flight using only batteries as a power source is rather unlikely.
Take a conventional Dreamliner or A320, and add batteries and electric engines. Plane takes off using fossil fuel (hard to electrify), and then switches to electric engines once at cruise altitude. This is best of both worlds, and provides additional redundancy...
The stat that really woke me up to how popular travel was when an aviation magazine once posted that at any second of any day, there are at least one million people flying in an airplane somewhere. That's an entire good sized city full of people who are not in contact with the ground at any point in time you care to pick. And that article was quite a few years old, I wouldn't be surprised if that number has increased…
This doesn't sound right. Would like to see the numbers.
A bit of Googling only turned up data for passengers on commercial airlines, so let's just do those for now.
At the end of 2013, according to the IATA, there were 8 million commercial passengers per day [1]. It looks like it has grown to about 12 million a day since then [2].
If the average flight is 2 hours or more, that would give an average of 1 million commercial airline passengers in the air at a given time. I didn't find any reasonable looking average world flight time data, but the impression I got is that 2 hours is probably in the ballpark.
But that's just an average. At times it will be above that, and at times below it. Given the number of people and flights we are dealing with, I think that variation above and below would be fairly narrow. Thus, I think it is plausible that if cargo, military, and others were included that would be enough to push it to always over 1 million.
[1] http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2013-12-30-01.aspx
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
As a first step, they could make at least the take off and landing electric, that would help a lot with the noise and pollution around cities, i.e. where people live. I guess the batteries could be recharged during the flight for landing.
Now that electromagnetic catapults are becoming a thing, perhaps they can be adapted for airliner takeoff. One supposed benefit is the ability to adjust the acceleration profile to reduce airframe fatigue, and probably improve crew comfort at the same time. If it's smooth enough for passengers, it'd save carrying quite a bit of fuel and batteries. I would have thought landing to be far less energy intensive (except p…
Article says that the electric powered planes need shorter runways, why is that?
I guess they are assuming equal or less weight for the plane