Siemens' 110 lb world-record electric aircraft motor produce 348 hp at 2,500 RPM

On 11/14/2015 5:14 PM, wrote:
As researchers continue to work on creating better
batteries, the logical solution all along was always
the Auxiliary Power Unit for charging.

Well yes that will work (assuming an electric drive train with a
battery) , ...as long as that APU produces significantly MORE power than
the average that you will need at the prop hub. The reason why you
would need MORE power is to make up for the losses inherent in the
generator, motor, battery, and controller.


In an ideal world, there would be a RTG such as NASA
and Russian lighthouses have used for decades. The
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators can put out
whopping power from a container the size of a coffee
thermos. Fairly benign from a gamma ray exposure
standpoint, you could keep an electric airplane up
for weeks at a time.

Sorry, that is just complete nonsense! Forgetting for a moment the
problems with carrying highly radioactive materials in an aircraft, and
forgetting that those materials are so rare and expensive that even few
spacecraft use them these days, RTGs are very inefficient devices. Most
produce, at most, a few hundred watts of electrical power, a tiny
fraction of what a full-sized aircraft would need.