71–80 of 169 posts
A trick question. How heavy is your gearbox , and not a motor? Getting ridiculous power to weight ratios on electric power is not that hard if you opt for super high RPMs. By my standards, what matters in electric motors are their torque per weight.
A trick question. How heavy is your gearbox , and not a motor? Getting ridiculous power to weight ratios on electric power is not that hard if you opt for super high RPMs. By my standards, what matters in electric motors are their torque per weight.
It’s integrated in the motor as specified in the post
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The big advantage of using existing airframes is that you dramatically reduce certification costs and commercialization time. If you can "retrofit" an existing airframe with electric propulsion, then you can get to market a lot faster. You're absolutely right though - changing the airframe design and moving to distributed propulsion can lead to improvements in aerodynamic efficiency, L/D, and fault tolerance.
You may know this, but your motor will likely (should) be certified separately from the aircraft.
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The big advantage of using existing airframes is that you dramatically reduce certification costs and commercialization time. If you can "retrofit" an existing airframe with electric propulsion, then you can get to market a lot faster. You're absolutely right though - changing the airframe design and moving to distributed propulsion can lead to improvements in aerodynamic efficiency, L/D, and fault tolerance.
Why aviation? Why design first (solution looking for problem)?
Electric passenger aircraft are not and will never be viable, but I would sure like to see super lightweight electric sustainer motors for gliders. Paired with regenerative braking and/or solar cells on the wings you could probably keep a glider in the air indefinitely.
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It’s integrated in the motor as specified in the post
What are gearbox servicing requirements?
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Silver is crazy expensive compared to copper, and the tradeoff isn't worth 6%. Also, 3d-printing pure copper is relatively new, and I'm not sure there is as much of a business case for 3d-printing silver (from the perspective of the companies making these metal AM machines), since the demand is lower because of the cost. Lastly, there are actually some loss mechanisms in the motor where the lower resistivity of silve…
Silver is heavier than copper. That's why people were so upset when carbon nanotube yarns happened to be poor conductors. People were thinking of super light motor windings.
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A simpler alternative could be to just have an electrified runway. The plane draws power from power rails embedded in a runway, or something like that. So, it doesn't switch to batteries until it's in the air. You could even have a long cable that hangs behind the plane and keeps an electrical connection until you're a few hundred feet up. (I'm picturing it connected to something like a slot-car that travels in an el…
> You could even have a long cable that hangs behind the plane and keeps an electrical connection until you're a few hundred feet up. I can assure you this will never ever happen. It’s wildly impractical, improbable, and sounds extremely unsafe. Sure, it’s theoretically possible, but that’s about it. The NFPA is not going to add a code section in the NEC for hundreds of feet long live electrical conductors being pull…
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haha yeah, 100% I'm sure someone is already considering it... (looking at my co-founder eric, he loves motorcycles) We have received significant interest for high performance ground and marine applications, which we plan to leverage in the short-term as a way of getting lots of in-situ run-time for our technology without the hurdles of certification. We will be pursuing the long road to certification in parallel.
Hey, my neighbor had a small home built plane that was powered by an old 2 cylinder generator engine. Maybe you should sell yours as generator engines too? (Yes I'm kidding. I know. I'll stop trying to trick thermodynamics.)