On 1/3/20 9:17 PM, wrote:
Let's talk about how much fuel it takes to get an airliner from Point A to Point B. You want to climb above the weather (30,000 ft. or more), you want to haul enough passengers and their stuff to pay the cost of doing business, the airplane, the crew, the maintenance, the insurance, and all the rest of what makes a business run and an airplane fly.

What are you going to use to make this happen? Jet-A1 (or JP-4 or Kerosene, or diesel, or whatever other petrochemical compound) with a sufficient energy density to lift its own weight plus the mass of the airplane and payload and keep it aloft until Point B is reached (with a significant fuel reserve because **** happens).

You want electric airplanes that will do the same thing? Not likely. The energy density of the most powerful battery bank is still nowhere near sufficient enough to allow an airplane (even Light Sport Aircraft) to take off, climb to altitude, cruise for long distance and carry anything but batteries.

Yes, battery technology is improving, and quickly. But the actual laws of physics take over and determine the maximum output and duration of every chemical battery.

"$200,000 worth of Tesla batteries, which collectively weigh over 20,000 pounds, are needed to store the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil." (from the Manhattan Institute study on the economic cost of "Green Energy."

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/...ear-impossible

As soaring pilots, we recognize, appreciate, analyze and utilize "free" atmospheric energy. But we also recognize the limitations of our technology when the energy suddenly (or gradually) diminishes or disappears. Trying to legislate and force an unreliable and wildly expensive form of unreliable energy on an energy dependent populace for political gain will doom a large portion of the world to starve to death in the dark.


I'm just not seeing the rapid progress in battery technology. Hardly
any improvement in Li-ion performance in the last ten years.

What has improved has been the imagination shown in the press releases.
IBM is claiming they'll be able to extract three mystery chemicals from
seawater and build a battery that beats the li-ion chemistries.

In Colorado, Bye Aerospace keeps designing electric planes that aren't
quite viable with current batteries, but don't worry in a couple years
some revolutionary battery will come along to make it all work. They've
been milking that story for as long as I can remember. They're claiming
electric planes similar to C172's will offer a breathtaking 80%
reduction in operating costs. Almost sounds too good to be true.