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The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

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Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#281

Post by PaulRobinson »

ddlsmurf wrote: post #226
dmichulke wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the fact that there are also things that China does better or equal than Western companies. Like robots, solar panels, electric cars (?), AI models, electronics. They must be good at something, otherwise China wouldn't be where it is. So flat out dismissing anything from China is not enough of an argument. Mind you, I'm not saying you're generally wrong, just your "generally" is wrong. ;-)

I'd dispute they do any of those better, they stole the IP, then used public funds to make cheaper versions in the hope of leading the markets, including by being artificially more affordable while there is any competition. Besides electric cars and solar, it's very debatable wether those will actually be ecological in the end. For ex. they are still opening massive amounts of fossil based electric plants, so the tru…

You're making a lot of assertions without citations here.

If I look at a BYD at my local dealership, and compare it to a comparable spec German car (I live in the UK, so tariffs are not the thing shifting the needle here), I can see where the cost savings are and the trade-offs.

I don't think they're artificially more affordable. I just think they're more affordable.

Using public funds to invest in capital expenditure is - outside of the US - considered a wise use of public funds. If the result is a more competitive industry, whether that's ship building (South Korea), steel production (recent UK nationalisation efforts), military hardware (United States), or medical research, physics, chemistry, computing (look at the history of all the G7 there), and so on, and so on... irrelevant.

China has decided to spend it on complex manufacturing that they've been the supply chain for to Western manufacturers for the last 30 years. That's not controversial - it's been obvious this is where they were heading for some time.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#282

Post by Tade0 »

dist-epoch wrote: post #243
golem14 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real benefit really seems to be that the electric motors have a much smaller failure rates than mechanical ones running near their top rpm. The hybrid motor can run at a much optimized RPM, so the idea is that this will improve the overall safety margin of the overall design. I could be wrong, but that's what the video said.

One would assume that all combustion engines used in aviation run at an optimized RPM?

RPM is one thing, but the other is that engines run more efficiently at altitude due to the temperatures being much lower there.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#283

Post by thrance »

QuantumNoodle wrote: post #32

These kind of startup excite me. More so than the "next killer app" or "look what we shoved AI into." Cheap electric transportation can finally offset USA's lacking rail commutes and attack Europe's short flight market (which is already cheap). Now we need bigger planes or more frequent planes and the next startup to solve the energy needs.

Realistically, you can't replace the entire global fleet on any reasonable timescale. And when climate change starts being such a problem that even politicians can't ignore it anymore, I think we'll have much bigger fish to fry than building electric planes. Flying is a luxury, after all.

Now, I think this is very neat, but I doubt we'll ever set foot on an electric plane this century.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#284

Post by bluGill »

Toutouxc wrote: post #240
shuwix wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nothing. I was crossing Himalaya's by crawling at even slower speed. Dayuuum, ... you're smart.

I am, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that 125 miles as the crow flies is “less than 2 hours of driving” between like 6 specific pairs of destinations in the whole world.

125 miles as the crow flies is less than three hours (two hours is a little tight) of driving for most trips of that distance people make!

People tend to have friends and family they want to visit regularly. So they try plan their life around not moving too far from where they grew up. That means people won't even look at a move of 125 miles away if there is not good transportation back. In turn if the high speed route between the two destinations they won't move there and in turn won't be making those trips.

Note that I said route above, not highways. Trains, boats, airplanes, cars, or anything else you can imagine works. The method of travel doesn't matter at all. What matters is how long it takes, and that you would use it for the trip.

Half an hour door to door (by whatever travel means) means you can have dinner after work with those friends once in a while. 1 hour means you can visit every weekend, but you lose those dinner mid week dinners. 2-3 hours means you visit for every minor holiday, but it isn't every weekend. At 4-6 hours every visit is an overnight. At 8+ hours this is a week long trip.

The above ranges are guidelines, not rules, they get fudged and overlapped all the time depending on various details. If the trip is 5 hours by train you might still do it as a day trip since you can plan to nap on the train. Even if you have to drive 6 hours each way: you might attend a funeral and return all in one day.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#285

Post by bluGill »

zxexz wrote: post #199
dyauspitr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving. It would be 2 hours of just airport shenanigans much less the flight itself.

Depending on the cost, and availability, 125 miles gets you within easy public transit range of NYC from Boston. Now, of course, most of the hassle of getting to NYC from Boston is transit to and from the airport. And of course, transit from JFK, Laguardia, etc into the city. There are at least 5 capable airports/airstrips closer to me than Logan or T.F. Green. Only one of them, Worcester, offers NYC flights. Worcest…

Too bad Amtrak can't run good service. This is a perfect area for high speed trains, but instead the service is too slow and not frequent enough.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#286

Post by bluGill »

theodric wrote: post #239
keiferski wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be useful for hub and spoke type systems, where you fly from a smaller city to the main hub, and catch a connection from there. Even then there are lots of flights in Europe that are between cities less than 1 hour apart. This idea generally makes more sense in Europe than the US, I think.

Electric propulsion would eliminate the local environmental impact of emissions justification for the short-haul flight bans that are floated and/or implemented [1] from time to time in Europe. It makes sense to spray less jet/avgas exhaust when possible. Of course, if the ban reasons include noise abatement or evil conspiratorial machinations, they're still on the table ;) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-hau…

Perhaps, but almost all of those shorter trips are routes that should have fast train service anyway.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#287

Post by bluGill »

phire wrote: post #163
MobiusHorizons wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular aircraft are required to have enough fuel to be able to divert to the alternate airfield in their flight plan plus all the margins for taxiing and waiting for a landing clearance. If a plane is low on fuel they can declare an emergency and get priority over other traffic, but that obviously is disruptive and should not happen on well planned flights unless something pretty significant happens after takeoff.

> and should not happen on well planned flights You make it sound like it is acceptable for a badly planned flight to have a fuel emergency. It is not. If there is a fuel emergency (or the plane lands with less than 30min of fuel) there will be an incident investigation that treats the situation as serious as if the plane had crashed. If the investigation discovers it was nothing more than bad planning, (at minimum)…

Badly planned flights should not happen. Pilots who don't carefully plan their flights end up dead quickly. Lack of fuel is one of the easier to handle things that can go wrong from bad flight planning.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#288

Post by mschuster91 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #164
luma wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybrid after the first 125 miles, total range 500 miles. Their problem is diversions - an incident at the destination airport may mean an passenger aircraft may need to land at an airport which could be a couple hundred miles away. The hybrid powerplant throws the fuel efficiency numbers off so goal is not to run it unless needed, but they could not get certification without it.

Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving. It would be 2 hours of just airport shenanigans much less the flight itself.

> Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles.

There are a lot of "island hopper" and bushpilot mini airlines in the world. The current world record is a route in Scotland that, on good days, takes less than a minute of flight time [1].

It is much much easier to supply such islands with electricity (there almost always is a power grid tied to whatever the nearest mainland is) than to continuously haul fuel around.

And in Croatia... that is easy enough distance to cover Rijeka-Zadar for example, which is about three hours worth of car or bus drive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight

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