Electric regional air travel is something I’m really excited about.
Your user handle complements the message perfectly
Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
31–40 of 170 posts
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
During certain hours of the day in California, electricity is essentially free due to solar overproduction, which sometimes causes negative wholesale prices.
I've never quite understood negative electric/gas/oil prices. Are you literally paid for agreeing to receive the energy?
Easiest to understand with oil. During Covid the price of oil went negative. So you’d be paid if you bought that oil.
Sounds like a great deal right? But now you’re on the hook for receiving and storing that oil. That costs money, it’s not free. That’s why the price went negative - the seller was trying to offload and there were no takers at $0.
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#33> Largest Electric Aircraft "Largest" is just straight-up a false claim. [Solar Impulse]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse ) and [Helios]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Helios_Prototype... ) were electric and had over double the wingspan, just to name a few of the ~dozen examples. Heart's engineers should be proud of this genuinely impressive accomplishment, but they need to rein in whoever i…
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Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#34VTOL aircraft have the same distance capabilities and make more sense in a lot more scenarios than this, with way more flexibility. It’s obviously larger but I’m just not sure of potential advantages over other modes of transport currently available and in the near future
Aren't VTOL aircraft significantly more complex and riskier to operate than fixed-wing prop aircraft? There's certainly many fewer moving parts and tricky transitions from hover to airfoil flight regime.
And there’s that whole pesky problem of not being able to glide to a safe landing when something goes catastrophically wrong.
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"Largest" is just straight-up a false claim. Largest in terms of takeoff weight. Wingspan is a pretty meaningless metric for "largest aircraft". By that logic the planes you linked are larger than a 737.
There is a word for that. It is "heaviest", not "largest".
It's largest based on length and mass as well. Why only look at wingspan/width?
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#36beta also seems to do their flight testing in plattsburgh, ny, anyone know why?
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#37could we relax the security around electric planes, because they don't carry as much highly explosive material? that could make it much more convenient and appealing as a travel method
You don't see megawatt-hours of energy in batteries as potentially dangerous?
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#38could someone explain to me how that $5 spend is lying to me. i know elec is cheap, but that cheap?
$5 does not make sense, and there must be some qualifer on that we're missing.
Napkin math:
(27 minute flight) * (25000 lbm TOGW) * (Earth gravity) / (~10 average L/D) * (160 KTAS average) / (70% propulsive efficiency) / (97% coulombic efficiency) * ($50/MWh) = $30
(Add residual kinetic energy upon landing too)
Side note: Heart also has a weight issue here they'll need to overcome if they want to certify under FAR Part 23 (as their 19-pax spec implies); TOGW limit for that is 19,000 lbm.
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#39At 120 miles of useful pure electric range, I can't imagine there are many US corridors where that pure electric range makes sense. That's still a range where the door to door time of a car can still win. I wonder why they don't push the idea of it being a hybrid more, as it seems to me a lot of useful routes are going to rely on the generators. I'd love to see something that can do around 250mi. It would be nice to…
Island hopping is the usual sales pitch for these planes.
Maybe from mainland to islands if there's enough range for the round-trip. Otherwise many islands are not going to have the electrical infrastructure to handle the charging demands.
Re: Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
#40VTOL aircraft have the same distance capabilities and make more sense in a lot more scenarios than this, with way more flexibility. It’s obviously larger but I’m just not sure of potential advantages over other modes of transport currently available and in the near future
VTOL will not have the same distance capability because the 'vertical' flgiht is the most energy intesive. It's why there's designs like the Beta which transition from VTOL to fixed wing forward flight as soon as they can.
VTOL have other advantages of course in terms of operational flexibility, but where there's existing airfields, fixed electric would be more efficient
Also, at the size/scale of this aircraft (thirty passengers) any type of VTOL wouldd be even less practical