
GE, NASA Partner to advance the future of electric flight - joak
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ge-nasa-partner-to-advance-the-future-of-electric-flight/
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noodlesUK
At what point does it become simpler to do hydrogen powered flight and use
renewables to break water? Hydrogen is much easier to fly a plane with than
batteries from what I understand.

edit: I mean that we would split water on the ground to make hydrogen.

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thescriptkiddie
Synthetic liquid methane would probably be more practical because it is so
much more energy dense than hydrogen. Audi already has a pilot plant that does
this.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-
gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas)

You can also run standard jet engines on biodiesel.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel)

Both options are far more realistic than electric airliners, which simply
aren't possible with any battery technology which will exist in the
foreseeable future.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNvzZfsC13o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNvzZfsC13o)

NASA's interest in electric aircraft is most likely motivated by the
possibility of flying them on other planets.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPL_Mars_Helicopter_Scout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPL_Mars_Helicopter_Scout)

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llukas
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48630656](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48630656)

"This week's Paris Airshow saw the launch of the world's first commercial all-
electric passenger aircraft - albeit in prototype form.

Israeli firm Eviation says the craft - called Alice - will carry nine
passengers for up to 650 miles (1,040km) at 10,000ft (3,000m) at 276mph
(440km/h). It is expected to enter service in 2022."

"Eviation has already received its first orders. US regional airline Cape Air,
which operates a fleet of 90 aircraft, has agreed to buy a "double-digit"
number of the aircraft."

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Already__Taken
Surely you can't fly with only 1 engine right on the wingtip even if it has
the thrust?

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pjc50
It has three engines, not 1?

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Already__Taken
Yeh but the media on it keep banging on about having redundant engines. I
don't think redundancy counts when if that one the fails is a wingtip.

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nkingsy
How much denser do batteries have to get to feasibly power a large commercial
jet from SF to LA? Do they need to include two of these inverters for
redundancy?

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jillesvangurp
Quite long but it's the wrong question to ask. The reason that huge jets that
cost in the order of hundreds of millions and burn tens of thousands of liters
of fuel per flight are interesting at all is that their scale adds up to a
reasonable fuel cost per passenger.

Electric flight does not have this problem and nor does it have the scale
advantage. Flying smaller electrical planes is more efficient on a kwh per
passenger basis. It's also easier to build them technically.

The SF to LA route is well in range for the Eviation Alice that should hit the
market in the next few years. The variant they are advertising carries 9
passengers + 2 crew or 1,250kg of useful load for a bit over 1000 kilometers
(including the required extra range) using 900kwh of batteries. This thing is
supposedly entering certification after next year and should start hitting the
market in a few years.

This is obviously not a jet but the economics of flying this thing are very
different. It completely destroys the business case for that. You charge it
with cheap electricity. The unit cost is in the order of 3M$, it can fly in
and out of any small airport, and it makes a lot less noise. One full charge
would cost about 50-100 $ depending on how cheap you can get your electricity.
Probably lower than that given improvements in cost of e.g. solar.

For the price of 1 737, you could buy a few dozen of these. It can do a lot of
things a big noisy jet can't do while being cheaper at it. Imagine a fleet of
about 10000 of these flying back and forth all over California to any of the
dozens of small airports. Deploying that amount of planes will take a few
decades probably. Over that time you can expect improvements in range, battery
efficiency and economies of scale. So, bigger, faster, cheaper happens as
well.

I'm not sure it will ever make sense to cram hundreds of people in an
electrical plane. But why would you want to when the small ones eventually
drop in price to a couple of tens to hundreds of K each and fly you from A to
B autonomously for the price of a cup of coffee?

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benj111
You've missed out the crew though.

Currently the cost of pilot and co pilot are amortized over 100s of
passengers.

You've quoted 2 crew to 9 passengers, and I'd have guessed 3 crew (pilot, co
pilot, Air Host(ess))

Obviously when we get to autonomous flight that will change, flights will
never be completely crewless though.

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jillesvangurp
Most business jets today operate without an air hostess and some of them use
only 1 pilot. I think the FAA limit for that is around 9 passengers. But you
are right that that kind of cost is going to be dominating the overall cost.

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0xffff2
Business jets generally operate under completely different regulations (part
135 or part 91) from commercial air travel (part 121).

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HocusLocus
Pilots don't like to run out of fuel.

When pilots are unhappy, passengers are unhappy.

Pilots know exactly how much fuel they have. It can be measured precisely.
They know how long it will last whether the airplane is hot or cold.

Batteries are managed by statistics, guesswork, thermal readings that may not
be accurate, snake oil calculations, factory assembly methods applied to
solids (not mixed liquids like fuel) and a measure of overzealous investor
confidence.

In order to advance the future of electric flight, first we must find a pilot
who does not mind running out of fuel. Such as a robot maybe. And passengers
who don't care if the pilot is happy. Or just don't tell them there isn't a
human pilot.

Heads up!

