about the world speed record for electric aircraft

NoHeat

En-Route
Joined
Jul 27, 2009
Messages
4,990
Location
Iowa City, IA
Display Name

Display name:
17
There's an interesting article at BBC about a plane being built to break the world speed record for electric aircraft.

The existing record is only 185 knots (213 MPH, 342 km/h). That's for a 3 km course, which seems to me to be particularly well suited for electric power since a battery can put out lots of power only for a short time.

Anyway, I looked up the historical speed records, and it turns out that 342 km/h is pretty much where the world record (for all kinds of planes) was exactly 100 years ago, in 1921. I thought that's kind of interesting, that battery power is lagging 100 years behind piston, for airplane speed.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top