Salty
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Like gasoline and diesel oil, for example.
Honest reporting on electric airplanes
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Horses have been used to launch gliders, in the same manner as an auto or winch launch.
StraightnLevel
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Absolutely.Like gasoline and diesel oil, for example.
Synthetic Fuels Can Give the World Clean Gasoline
The Internal Combustion Engine Could Remain a Useful AlternativeThe worldwide move from fossil fuel to clean & renewab
www.lincolntech.edu
Synthetic fuels explained | Synhelion
Solar fuels are synthetic fuels produced from solar energy. A cutting-edge technology that offers a truly sustainable alternative to fossil fuels.
synhelion.com
Jim_R
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Neither did Enron investors.
Clip4
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Obviously not old enough for Mr. Ed.
Domenick
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How long would it take to fully charge a Tesla using rooftop solar? How many square yards of panels would it take to get it done during daylight hours? You would need an expensive auxiliary electric storage system that is charging during the day so you could drive the vehicle during the day. How long to charge in Seattle in November, December, January, and February with mostly nine-hour, overcast days. All this solar stuff would likely double the price of the car.
I suggest we remove the federal tax-funded EV subsidies and see how the market fares.
Ha. Maybe get on the horn and remind Toyota, Hyundai, United, and all the others of the dangers? I'm sure they would be grateful.
chemgeek
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One of the things I taught my undergrads in my Energy classes is that modern agriculture is how we turn petroleum into food. Bio-ethanol takes this one step further, turning petroleum into food into petroleum. This is right up there with using electricity for heating when the electrical grid is still 60% or more fossil fuel based. Nothing makes more
sense than generating electricity with fossil fuels at 40% efficiency to heat your home, when you could burn that same fossil fuel in your home and heat with 95% efficiency. When the grid is 80% rnon-fossil fuel, then electric heating will make more environmental sense.If you want to make progress on carbon burden, we need to figure out how to improve on Fischer-Tropsch chemistry to fix CO2 into high energy carbon compounds.
Palmpilot
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StraightnLevel
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A lot. The daylight hours in sunny environments are when energy usage is highest (A/C loads). Energy storage systems effectively double the cost of solar. QED.
In the end, rooftop solar with backup battery is the single most expensive energy source per kWh. In contrast, the cheapest power on the planet comes from a large utility-scale solar farm in the middle east. It's about scale with solar, and individual rooftop systems are hamstrung by the cost of the controls, inverter, directional tradeoffs, and the cost of interfacing to the grid.
U.S. levelized energy costs by source 2023 | Statista
Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States.
www.statista.com
100% agreed. EVs make sense in certain applications without subsidies, and there needs to be a financial incentive to make them better to expand the market naturally....or figure out other options.
Dan Thomas
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We have a historical precedent for stuff like this. Before and after WW2 there were dozens of companies building airplanes in the US and Canada alone. Everyone was going to fly, and the demand would make the aircraft manufacturers rich. It failed, bigly. No shortage of investors that lost their money.Ha. Maybe get on the horn and remind Toyota, Hyundai, United, and all the others of the dangers? I'm sure they would be grateful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_aircraft_manufacturers_of_the_United_States
The list has many companies that failed more recently, but an older pilot will recognize many of those listed as light aircraft manufacturers of the 1930s-1950s. They've seen some of those airplanes at fly-ins. And these were aircraft that actually flew, and flew well and safely. But the market was far smaller than anyone dreamed.
StraightnLevel
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That's not true of the newer approaches that use renewables to power the ethanol and bio-diesel production processes.
eFuels: Synthetic fuel from renewable energy sources
Sustainability at Porsche has many facets. In this ‘Perspectives on Sustainability’ interview series, Porsche employees talk about sustainability from the perspective of their respective fields of expertise. Team Lead Karl Dums talks about the future of eFuels in the automotive industry.
How Is Ethanol Produced? - ePURE
www.epure.org
SoonerAviator
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I recall seeing some re-runs on Nick-at-Night, lol. I don't remember him drawing anything, but he did well for conversations!
With conventional aviation and aircraft I would agree with you. However, with the UAM transport concept no real precedent exists except the previous attempts over the years with helicopters. It was a transport concept without a viable vehicle until the last 5-10 years.
The UAM concept is historical but it’s the current line of aircraft (eVTOLS/VTOLs) that will set the precedent for UAM. If it works, it will create a new commercial aviation market that never existed on a large scale with the potential to become the largest in market value and size in the industry. Hence the reason so many people are positioning themselves to take advantage of its creation on so many levels.
chemgeek
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Make sure you are taking into account the massive amount of energy and fossil fuel feedstock required to manufacture ammonia (fertilizer) to grow the plants to produce the sugar to power the fermentation to produce the alcohol. Corn is among the worst in this regard, as it can't fix nitrogen. Plus that anaerobic fermentation blows off two atoms of carbon as carbon dioxide for every 6 atoms of fixed carbon in the sugar fermented. Plant-sourced ethanol production is horribly inefficient at industrial scale.That's not true of the newer approaches that use renewables to power the ethanol and bio-diesel production processes.
eFuels: Synthetic fuel from renewable energy sources
Sustainability at Porsche has many facets. In this ‘Perspectives on Sustainability’ interview series, Porsche employees talk about sustainability from the perspective of their respective fields of expertise. Team Lead Karl Dums talks about the future of eFuels in the automotive industry.newsroom.porsche.com
How Is Ethanol Produced? - ePURE
If we want to make zero impact carbon fuels, we need to figure out how to efficiently fix CO2 from the atmosphere. But it is very energy intensive to reduce CO2, so good sources of non-fossil fuel energy will be required: solar, wind, nuclear, tidal, geothermal, etc. Burning fossil fuels to produce fossil fuels is a thermodynamic loser.
Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
You keep bringing up UAM but the title of this thread is electric airplanes. Since when is UAM planning to use airplanes?
Simple. Because in the OPs video and several posts in the thread, UAM developments and equipment are intermixed into the conversation of “electric airplanes” which is a separate venture. I merely try to show the difference.
However, certain “electric airplanes” do have their place in the overall picture as part of the RAM transport concept which a number of years ago was expanded from the original UAM and is now all under the AAM, or Advanced Air Mobility. Plenty of public info out there if you care to read about it.
Domenick
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Built over unproductive desert.
As I have flown around the states I mourn the loss of agricultural land to massive wind and solar installations and the impact on natural ecosystems. The same folks who want to stop land development for toads or guppies or bugs are the same ones clamoring to tear up the ground and plant wind turbines or tear up the ground and shade it with solar panels.
StraightnLevel
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No argument.
We have plenty of non-productive land with enough sun and/or wind to be useful for energy capture, though, and there's really no good reason not to use it. There is a reason that Texas has the largest renewable energy capacity, with more wind than any other state (by a very wide margin) and the 2nd largest solar asset base. When you're talking about desert land or mountain areas that aren't arable nor habitable, why not make use of it?
SoonerAviator
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But the EPA and others will delay it because of impact to the endangered Arizona desert earthworm. The other downside is similar to wind power, where transmission losses are significant because the area where it is produced (middle of desert) are generally not where the energy needs to be consumed. So running transmission lines hundreds of miles away results in a lot less energy making it to the end point than what was actually generated. Easier/less land-intensive just to build modern nuclear, imo.
Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
Just a few miles down the road from me, large orange groves have been replaced with solar fields, and now our local citrus processing plant is importing some of its oranges. "Florida's Natural" brand of OJ isn't entirely from Florida anymore and I think that's sad.
Ed Haywood
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Discussions like these inevitably get politicized, which distracts from an unbiased consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of various technologies.
For short range applications, electric powertrains are lighter, simpler, and more reliable than internal combustion.
As desired range increases, the mass based energy density of batteries becomes a disadvantage.
EV cars are a good example. So much nonsense has been written on both sides from people who see everything through the lens of their political beliefs. Current EV cars are better than ICE for daily commuting in an urban or suburban environment, and worse for longer trips and rural areas. Plenty of vehicles of both types exist, so buy the vehicle that fits your needs better.
Aviation applications are likely to follow a similar trajectory. For scheduled airline travel, it will be many years before batteries have any hope of equaling fossil fuel energy density. However, for short range applications such as air taxis and short range VTOL, electric powertrains have advantages. Those advantages may make some modes of transportation economically viable that previously were not.
ICE rotorcraft are complex, expensive machines that require considerable skill to fly and maintain. Consequently, regular VTOL travel is only economically viable for the very wealthiest segment of the population. Whenever a TV show wants to let the audience know that a character is rich and important, they are shown debarking from a helicopter.
Short range electric rotorcraft have the potential to be simpler, lighter, cheaper, and easier to fly and maintain. Some designs such as quad copters are not practical with ICE propulsion, but are relatively easy to implement with electric powertrains. Quads in particular lend themselves to computer assisted flight by relatively unskilled operators, which is why drones are exploding (literally, in Ukraine). As that technology matures, it has the potential to open up VTOL travel to more people in more situations. That's a good thing.
For short range applications, electric powertrains are lighter, simpler, and more reliable than internal combustion.
As desired range increases, the mass based energy density of batteries becomes a disadvantage.
EV cars are a good example. So much nonsense has been written on both sides from people who see everything through the lens of their political beliefs. Current EV cars are better than ICE for daily commuting in an urban or suburban environment, and worse for longer trips and rural areas. Plenty of vehicles of both types exist, so buy the vehicle that fits your needs better.
Aviation applications are likely to follow a similar trajectory. For scheduled airline travel, it will be many years before batteries have any hope of equaling fossil fuel energy density. However, for short range applications such as air taxis and short range VTOL, electric powertrains have advantages. Those advantages may make some modes of transportation economically viable that previously were not.
ICE rotorcraft are complex, expensive machines that require considerable skill to fly and maintain. Consequently, regular VTOL travel is only economically viable for the very wealthiest segment of the population. Whenever a TV show wants to let the audience know that a character is rich and important, they are shown debarking from a helicopter.
Short range electric rotorcraft have the potential to be simpler, lighter, cheaper, and easier to fly and maintain. Some designs such as quad copters are not practical with ICE propulsion, but are relatively easy to implement with electric powertrains. Quads in particular lend themselves to computer assisted flight by relatively unskilled operators, which is why drones are exploding (literally, in Ukraine). As that technology matures, it has the potential to open up VTOL travel to more people in more situations. That's a good thing.
Ed Haywood
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Just a few miles down the road from me, large orange groves have been replaced with solar fields, and now our local citrus processing plant is importing some of its oranges. "Florida's Natural" brand of OJ isn't entirely from Florida anymore and I think that's sad.
The culprit is disease, not solar panels. Over 50% of Florida orange groves have been destroyed in the last 20 years: Citrus Greening Abandoned groves are everywhere. There is one right off the end of the runway at my home drome.
There is no shortage of unusable land in our area of Florida. The area south of Lakeland and Bartow is a hellscape of abandoned phosphate strip mines that cannot be farmed or built on.
Dan Thomas
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SoonerAviator
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I'm not sure I agree with the "lighter" part. Even my Lithium-battery powered yard edger weighs more than the ICE versions. Those batteries weigh a significant amount, generally more than the ICE they are competing against.
Half Fast
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Greening and canker have been problems, but landowners are finding it’s to their financial advantage to sell for other uses rather than replanting. In some cases they can collect insurance and government assistance to rip out the trees, then they sell the land for development.
I understand the reasons; I just find it sad. This was once a beautiful rural area, full of groves and pastureland and farms and woods, but it’s all being flattened and paved and built. We may relocate soon.
I’m familiar with that area near Bartow and Lakeland, and there’s even a sand mine across the road from my home. I’m not sure, but there may be environmental cleanup that’s a barrier to using the land.
Checkout_my_Six
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I just love it when folks have ideas for what I should do with my property.....
I think Peter Garrison, in FLYING, mentioned avgas has 18 times the energy density of batteries. I could imagine some improvement as tech evolves - but not nearly that much. Physics is real. . .hydrogen probably won't cut it, in airplanes or cars. It mostly uses dead dinosaurs for production, and there is already a shortage of Iridium required for the cells. We need more nukes!
wanttaja
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StraightnLevel
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Tecnam to postpone the P-VOLT Programme - Tecnam Aircraft
After three years of intensive studies covering the entire lifecycle of an all-electric aircraft, Tecnam has concluded that the time for P-Volt is not yet ripe, although research activities will continue to explore new emerging technologies. Since the beginning of the P-Volt development...
tecnam.com
I'm not sure that I buy into the 18x multiplier - I've seen closer to 6-8x for gasoline vs. batteries. Either way, though, it's just not there yet, and it may never be there. The simple fact is that the energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels outstrips anything else we have today that isn't nuclear.
Ed Haywood
En-Route
OTOH, an ICE motor weighs 10 times more than an electric motor, and requires a transmission to maintain RPM in optimal range.
An electric power train with short range can be made considerably lighter than an equivalent ICE.
As desired range increases, the lightness advantage of the electric motor is offset by increasing battery weight.
Checkout_my_Six
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ICE ICE baby....ICE....
FastEddieB
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Fast Eddie B
Seen at an Iron Butt competition:
Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
Agreed. At the moment, based on prototype airplanes, the crossover point seems to be around 30-60 minutes, more or less. To make a truly useful airplane that can be used for meaningful XC travel, or jobs like cargo hauling, the batteries will need to improve by 6x to 10x, which is about in line with the differences in energy density.
We're talking rough numbers here, but in order for electric airplanes to take over the jobs being done by small ICE planes the battery capability will need to improve by an order of magnitude, and that's not just around the corner.
UAM is an entirely new business, tailored to the near-term capabilities of electric aircraft, and will have to take customers away from the current ground transportation options. I'm skeptical that it will be able to do that profitably.
It's similar to the Christensen "disruptive technology" model where a new technology taps a new market and develops its capability there, until the capability reaches a level where it takes over the larger existing market being served by an older technology. There are many examples, but they require the new technology to be profitable and thrive in the new market it creates and to improve its capability rapidly.
I'm doubtful that electric air vehicles will be able to do either, for two reasons: (1) it's not creating a new market; it's tapping one that's already being served adequately, so it will have to offer a significant price/performance advantage, and (2) I don't expect battery technology to advance rapidly enough.
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Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
Seen at an Iron Butt competition:
It needs a Lockheed star on the box.
Compact Fusion
Discover our revolutionary approach to nuclear fusion, leveraging compact design and rapid development cycles to harness powerful energy comparable to the sun.
brcase
En-Route
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN did experiments on the feasibility of nuclear powered aircraft.
Lofty ambitions | ORNL
The Tower Shielding Facility is located on the perimeter of the Oak Ridge Reservation on a road blocked by a locked gate. It's still one of ORNL's more conspicuous landmarks because the two towers, from which a small nuclear reactor was at times suspended, can be glimpsed from nearby Interstate 40.www.ornl.gov
Those test towers are still standing, fairly close to our E TN home.
Here the 2 Nuclear Powered J47 prototypes a the Idaho National Labs.
Ed Haywood
En-Route
Pretty good rundown on eVTOL infrastructure efforts in FL, suggesting that the FAA is an obstacle.
www.sun-sentinel.com
Too fast for the FAA? Companies moving forward to develop flying cars and electric planes, but Florida airspace is just not ready
All around Florida, state and private sector actors have been pressing hard since 2021 to develop a system of “vertiports’ for takeoffs and landings of electric-powered aircraft that could be an in…
www.sun-sentinel.com
Salty
Touchdown! Greaser!
Infrastructure is a big problem when airports have to be every 15 miles to accommodate the range capabilities.Pretty good rundown on eVTOL infrastructure efforts in FL, suggesting that the FAA is an obstacle.
Too fast for the FAA? Companies moving forward to develop flying cars and electric planes, but Florida airspace is just not ready
All around Florida, state and private sector actors have been pressing hard since 2021 to develop a system of “vertiports’ for takeoffs and landings of electric-powered aircraft that could be an in…
Tantalum
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San_Diego_Pilot
I don't think this is true. There isn't some invisible presence that knows you've flown X hours and you're becoming "due" .. I go get in a rented airplane that's flown 25000 hours in its life engine failure free, that plane doesn't know if I am a zero hour brand new student or a 10,000 hr seasoned accident free aviator who's 'due' for an event. My statistical chance of an engine failure is the same every time I get in a plane
But I digress, back to the thread..