lstencel

I’m STILL ‘hot’ over NASA Armstrong wasting $87M on a project that they knew or should have known was a waste of resources and that the technology wasn’t anywhere ready to support. If they’da investigated a hybrid propulsion system … something that multiple manufacturers could have used in individual unique aerodynamic designs, I wouldn’t be nearly so mad. Mighty handy to hide behind a project schedule to stop a worthless project with some face saving. SIGH!

To understand it better, try to watch the NASA channel when they show the story about the crash of the X-31. On a totally separate program, that crash negatively showcases – CLEARLY – that NASA Armstrong has a very serious problem at the top of their management. They even discuss this … yet nothing changes. All they do is jack their jaws.

How we ever got to the moon in less than 10 years in the 60’s defies explanation. More poignantly, these are the same people that flew the lifting bodies that led to the Space Shuttle. What the X-57 led to is … umm … absolutely nuthin! That it has degraded to ‘this’ is deplorable.

The rules of physics are immutable. Wishing for something doesn’t turn fantasy into reality. I coulda saved 'em $87M. They didn’t get the memo that 'unobtanium is … well … unobtainable.

As for the other contraptions you discuss … just wait until those things start falling on people’s heads. Anything without a pilot and without a wing to garner some lift … Katy, bar the door.

1 reply

todd.m.whelan

Thanks, Paul – from your summary, it looks like NASA and Tecnam were the next contestants to reach the Trough of Disillusionment on the Gartner hype cycle.

Lars_Hjelmberg

Good article. Make this comparision: I have a 100 % electric car with summer performance
250 nm and winter 140 nm (at minus 20 C). The battery pack in the car is 1200 pounds.
Compare to if the same car had a diesel engine that in winter time will make 140 nm on 5,5 us gallons and with a fuel weight of 40 pounds and then only use about 50 % of the energy which is in the diesel fuel. Batteries are not a paying load in the aircraft - so with present technology it is a dead end. Energy density per pound is the issue. 40 pounds compared to 1200 pounds.

johnbpatson

Dissonance exists when people fly four hours there and back in Europe, in aircraft burning jet fuel in litres per second, to holiday in eco-retreats.
Driving takes a day, and turns consumption to under 10 litres per hour, (depending on car) but is seen as bad…

1 reply

rjmontgom

I think it’s clear that batteries are not the appropriate energy storage devices for these types of aircraft. But the electric motors have proven themselves to be reliable, the energy management technologies are looking very promising, and there are some interesting new use cases.

My genuine hope (admittedly a long shot) is for hydrogen. In theory the energy density is there (if we can get the weight of the storage under control), refueling should be very simple, and it’s easy (if inefficient) to separate hydrogen from water using nothing but electricity… which opens a connection to green power generation.

I hope there are some smart people working on lightweight tanks that can hold hydrogen under high pressure.

4 replies

SeaKite.batteries

We call batteries chemistry or the storage of electricity, but it is basically nothing more than controlled corrosion of metal. Think of iron rusting and then unrusting. To do that, it takes a lot of materials that are heavy, which is a bad word in aviation. We can already produce hydrogen, electricity and remove CO2 all onboard without huge batteries of any type. The total weight is less than one aircraft engine. The mileage is 4 times better and have a carbon neutral exhaust. So why is no one else doing this? Because investors continue to be duped into thinking that the miracle of the future battery is coming!

2 replies

rpstrong

There is at least one: Universal Hydrogen (hydrogen.aero). UH is looking at converting existing aircraft to hydrogen power. Their focus is as much on the logistics of hydrogen distribution as it is on aircraft design.

From their website:

“We are building a flexible, scalable, and capital-light approach to hydrogen logistics by transporting it in modular capsules over the existing freight network from green production sites to airports around the world. At the airport, the modules are loaded directly into the aircraft using existing cargo handling equipment. No new infrastructure is needed. Starting with regional airplanes, we are also developing conversion kits to retrofit the existing fleet with a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain.”

rpstrong

Can you provide details of such a system? Web links would be handy.

1 reply

Edalaska

Great article. I have also read light weight/high power are also difficult for the electric motor part of these systems. Poor reliability in this part of the propulsion system is far worse than a degraded battery pack.

James_Pennino

Yep, hydrogen is the CO2 free solution to all our problems…

Except hydrogen is very expensive to produce in a CO2 free manner, problematic to transport and store, and has such a high flame temperature that burning it in an engine with air as the oxidizer produces lots of NOx, i.e. oxides of nitrogen AKA smog.

Only fuel cells, which operate at lower temperatures, don’t produce NOx and fuel cells aren’t there yet, if ever, for airplanes.

1 reply

chip1

I enjoyed your usual well-written analysis, PB. But unless your TV/monitor has successfully implemented the cinematic Smell-o-Vision feature of the sixties, I think you meant “odious miasma of cable news” in your lede.

1 reply

md1

NASA programs create value in the data collected. NASA isn’t the first to elect not to fly (ie Airbus RR BAE 146). NASA is continuing their research using a DeHavilland Dash 7 MSN 011 currently being prepared for delivery to the program. One of the outboard nacelles, likely to be replaced by a new design, will be modified, the MagniX power train installed, flight tests, and then second outboard nacelle will be modified. This is a much more practical approach in my opinion. Maybe lessons learned? This program is testing a hybrid model, just as you

1 reply

md1

mention in the article.

byhgxkae0ewm

Uh, yes, I agree, all of human culture is an exercise in cognitive dissonance, but can you show me where your numbers are to support your assertions?

According to available data, the most popular consumer vehicle sold in the USA last year was the Chevy Silverado - “Custom” trim with an EPA fuel economy Rating of 20 MPG. According to UMich, the average occupancy of cars on the road is 1.5 people, but assuming 2 people on a trip, and ZERO traffic, that’s 40 MPG / person(5.9 Liters/ 100 kilometers / person)

Also according to available data, the most popular transatlantic transport aircraft last year was the B787-9. Lufthansa is showing their operational data of 2.5 L/km/ person on their website. They posted an 79.8% load factor last year, so this would be an adjusted 3.1 L/km / person on-board.

So there’s no win for road travel using carbon fuel using real data for the most common vehicles and occupancy. Even if you ignore what people actually buy and cherry pick the smallest, most efficient car on the top five - the Toyota Camry, with two people, you get EPA 32 MPG. (Assuming 2 people - I’ve sat in the back, no thanks), and ZERO traffic, that’s 64 MPG / person (3.7 Liters/ 100 kilometers / person)

1 reply

byhgxkae0ewm

Did you read the the tech papers on the X-57 website at NASA? Their docs are quite short and easy to understand. So yep, they were shooting for the moon, claiming they would be pathfinder for bringing e-propulsion to market, and they certainly did not get very far (part way through Mod II, nowhere near flight testing in Mod IV), but none of their problems actually had to do with what you are saying. There was nothing to do with “The rules of physics are immutable.” It might have gotten to that point, but actually, they never got near proving / disproving this

They had thermal issues with power controller transistors, even though according to them, Joby worked around this years ago. Their analysis said it would take 1+ year to re-engineer the power management, and they were already twice their original budget and years late and had nothing to show for it, so management called it quits.

Speaking of which - "that crash negatively showcases — CLEARLY — that NASA Armstrong has a very serious problem at the top of their management. "
Do you think anyone who was in management for the X-31 crash, almost thirty years ago, is still alive, much less currently in a management position at NASA?

"these are the same people that flew the lifting bodies that led to the Space Shuttle. " - OK, pretty much every page of the Shuttle program development documentation is available for historical research at Archives in College Park, but I am not seeing a lot of overlap. Only two of the 850 people who flew on the Shuttle were on an Apollo ride. Apollo was designed a Raining Money environment of Cold War paranoia, the Shuttle has literally dozens of design revisions for reduced cost after Americans got bored with space and didn’t want to write a blank check anymore (back then you couldn’t borrow $3T every year to balance the federal budget, you had to decide what to spend on). The f-1 vs rs-25 rocket motors have similarities (the black end gets hot for both) but are distant engineering cousins, likewise fuel, thermal shields, etc. very different eggs. Everything on Apollo was one-time use, everything on Shuttle was engineered (theoretically) to last 20-100 launches. The program itself was a lesson in missed goals (promised launch costs in 1972 : $15m, actual costs closers to $2b). Not seeing where you’re going with this one…

2 replies

kenbob87

I get the concept that you don’t learn anything unless you try it (ask Thomas A. Edison), but hundreds of millions of dollars spent only to confirm that the back-of-the-envelope energy density calculation was right?? I am beginning to wonder if these failed aircraft experiments were intended as tax write-offs or IPOs, with a dose of Hail Mary thrown in to make it interesting.

avconsumer

Odious might be the better choice, but I mean odorous, as in emitting a foul smell. I tend to write not entirely literally. Nor literarily.

lstencel

My point was … a bunch of eAviation fanatics at NASA Armstrong wasted a lot of money chasing an imaginary rabbit down its rabbit hole and there’s a behavior pattern forming. See Lars’ comment below. So why did NASA waste $47M? How are our aviation lives better now for this waste of money?

rekabr52

“Goldbergish?” Don’t think Rube could have come up with something as complicated as 12 (!) electric motors in an aircraft such as the X-57. To spend $87 million on this pipe dream epitomizes government money management.

2 replies

Richard_Welsh

Nice article Paul. The 6,000 orders reminds me of the Day Jet order deal back in 2002 for the Eclipse Jet, and we know where that went.

JimH_in_CA

In reading some of their published papers, they solved a number of initial problems;

• used silicon-carbide FET [ field affect transistors ], which can handle high voltages of 800 volts and are fast switching, so the efficiencies of the power controllers are at 99%.
• they developed air cooling solutions for the motor and controller.
• the large amount of EMI [ electromagnetic interference] from the FETs had them develop some innovative filters .
  So, they developed a viable motor/controller system.

The ‘unsafe to fly’ appears to come from the discovery of the wrong style ball bearings in the motors . They should have had deep groove ball bearings, like those used in turbine engines, to handle the thrust loads.!!!

The choice of the P2006, with 100 HP, light weight Rotax engines, was a mistake, with a gross weight of 2,600 lb, there is no capacity for a large capacity battery.
Maybe use a Cessna 210 with 4,000 lb gross and 1,700 lb load capacity ?

FlyerDon

“In GA, by comparison, there’s little sentiment toward climate change being a real thing” Well, I’m a GA pilot, and I’ve been one as long as you have, and I believe climate change is real and I believe we need to address it. I think a lot of GA pilots try to take a balanced, realistic, approach to the issue and I was hoping AVWeb would do the same.

2 replies

bserra

I would like to know how much atmosfere pollution is created every time a rocket is lunched, just … simple just …, to make a comparison to how much decrease in global pollution that NASA project had in mind, independently of his cost.
As I’ve written here before e-planes should be viable only if electrons could be obtained by a non convencional nuclear fusion. And that is tens (if not hundreds) away from now, although I wish it should happen sooner.

1 reply

dnickerson80h

What is “decarbonization” and why are entire industries being destroyed to achieve it?

2 replies

SeaKite.batteries

At the time we release the product, it starts the clock for getting the patent process going. Here are some highlights: The engine is low rpm with one moving part because the power is converted to another machine that produces a great deal of power. Generating electricity requires power - not high rpm. Hydrogen is produced on demand so storage is not needed and only a small percent is sufficient. We have another process that removes the CO2 from the exhaust. The system runs cooler and silent. It is a lot of little things that makes it work so well.

2 replies

avconsumer

So what, exactly, is a “balanced, realistic approach?” If you own an airplane and you fly it, say, 75 hours a year, you’re burning maybe 600 gallons of gas a year. (Six tons of CO2) That’s a third more than the typical car uses and if you fly more or burn more, it could be twice or three times as much.

If you accept anthropogenic warming as a thing, you’ll know that the effects of it are asymmetrically suffered by the third world and by Pacific and other islanders in rising sea levels, even though they contribute a fraction of greenhouse gases that cause it. So for our amusement and hobby, we have Big Foot carbon footprints about which we are doing very little. I don’t see how a person can be an environmentalist or a believer in GHG warming and fly airplanes for pleasure without embracing the hypocrisy. That’s the only way I justify it.

One other approach is simple denial. You know the spiel. Anthropomorphic warming doesn’t exist, therefore it can’t be happening and aviation has nothing to with it. This is pretty much where GA is. Alphabet industry groups ignore the issue entirely. The airlines can’t afford to do this, however, thus SAF is getting a big push.

I’ve followed the climate data and especially the ice melt data and closely as a reasonable non-expert might. I don’t see any “balance” for people flying small airplanes. Either do it or don’t do it. Maybe do less of it if that provides a fig leaf. Buy a Tesla. Delude yourself with offsets. As I pointed out, the GA contribution is tiny, so making it less is likely to have zero impact.

I’m pessimistic about this. I think we’ve already passed the tipping point of wrecking the planet.

4 replies

diehl.steven

The shuttle program was scuttled by Lyndon Baines Johnson. The original shuttle design was three times larger than the one that was built. It would have been economically self-supporting. The design failure rate was 1/1000 launches. The original project budget was a whopping $4billion. LBJ took $1.5billion for his “Great Society” program, which was of course outright vote buying (they had not yet learned industrial scale election theft). von Braun was left with 2 options, downsize or kill the program. He downsized. The resulting shuttle had a design failure rate of 1/100 launches. The goal of economically self-supporting manned missions was scrapped, the beginning of the end of the US manned space program.

1 reply

Sven_Freitag

The next gen of cars were hybrid for a good number of years before fully electric started to become feasible. The same - but undoubtedly amplified - learning curve applies to aviation, which has a number more challenges to overcome than electric cars.
A hybrid approach will help bridge the time needed for battery technology breakthroughs to occur (I’m positive that they will – in a decade or two, but clearly not much earlier than that).
Taking shortcuts to emission-free aviation is wasteful and dangerous. Patience is key.

KlausM

The World Economic Forum (WEF) speakers say that too many mammals, humans specifically are the greatest threat to the planet.
According to ChatGPT a human breathing contributes:
1.577 cubic meters * 1.98 kilograms/cubic meter = 3.12 kilograms/year. 7 billion people breath out approximately 22 billion metric tons of CO2 each year. That doesn’t include all the livestock that feeds the humans.

charral

Must remove carbon, in the form of CO2, from the atmosphere. Never mind the facts: 1. CO2 is to plants as O2 is to humans. 2. The CO2 that’s released by burning fossil fuels was once removed from the atmosphere by plants.

I suspect its another woke thing.

1 reply

charral

Imagine the complexity of 12 engines, with all those moving parts, lubrication and cooling systems. At least motors only have one moving part, supported by a couple of bearings. Plus they’re easily kept coordinated electrically. Easy peasy.

Has anyone considered that, with a motor, aerobraking actually recovers energy, puts “fuel” back in the “tank”. With all those props on the wings, an X57 could make a controlled, near vertical descent, easily making the first taxiway.

While I’m at it, why are they reinventing the wheel? Much of aviation has this problem. The auto industry is working hard on many of these issues. But some Tesla powertrains, bolt them on, go fly. Put the powertrain $ saved into battery research. Problem, if not solved, would be a lot closer than otherwise.

lstencel

I’d like to get a figure of merit as to how much carbon Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Gates and all the other fat cats spew out jetting around the globe pontificating about ‘climate change’ and how that compares to ALL of GA. As you said, jets burn a helluva lot more fuel than a small GA airplane.

When faced with multiple hard decisions, it’s usually best to attack the large issues which make the largest difference first.

As to the ‘tipping point,’ Klaus has the right common denominator IMHO.

jbmcnamee

Rob, you mention the energy inefficiency of splitting water to produce hydrogen. I recently read an article that may change all that. Scientists have discovered that there are numerous formations in the earth where water is chemically broken down into hydrogen and oxygen through a combination of heat, pressure and the presence of iron. The oxygen is consumed by producing iron oxide, and the hydrogen is set free. The reason why these have not been discovered before is that the formations usually contain an anaerobic bacteria that consumes the hydrogen so it never reaches the surface. Some companies are now drilling exploratory wells to see if recovering the hydrogen is practical. If so, it is estimated that the potential is greater than our current reserves of hydrocarbon fuels. And since it is an ongoing process, the potential may be for an unlimited supply of green hydrogen. That could potentially shift electric aircraft to fuel cell technology instead of batteries.

jbmcnamee

Paul, first of all, thank you for pointing out a couple things I have always believed. First, that converting existing conventional airframes to electric power is not the way to go. Our current planes were designed and optimized to use one or two large recip engines that require a lot of cooling airflow to keep them from melting. Electric propulsion, especially distributed thrust, will need to have a different aerodynamic design to be most efficient. Thus the interesting shapes of the current EVTOL designs. Second, that for the foreseeable future, chemical based batteries are a dead end for aviation. Lugging around a half-ton of batteries may be okay for a car, but weight is the eternal enemy of airborne anything. That’s why birds have hollow bones. And making incremental improvements in battery capacity won’t help. We need at least an order of magnitude improvement to be even close and I just don’t see that in the periodic chart. Perhaps NASA and Technam’s decisions to back away are just a reflection that not all components are ready for prime time, and they have better places to spend their R&D dollars today. Keep up the good work.

Arthur_Foyt

Personally, I think people making wars is 1000x worse than “global warming” when it comes to being a real threat to life on the planet. We have our priorities wrong.

2 replies

JimH_in_CA

+100…!!

CO2 is not a problem, and the climate has always changed. Our use of hydrocarbons maybe causing some increase in atmospheric CO2, but no one has made any definitive measurements.

BTW, the ocean level rise has been a constant 1-3 mm, depending where it’s measured.
Some of the pacific islands are actually increasing in land area.
see; https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/

The computer models used to predict all the ‘crisis conditions’ are all running much hotter than actual measurements.

Some climate scientists indicate that our use of FF has actually extended the current warm period, before the Earth falls into the next ice age…
In the 1970s the crisis was the coming ice age…so…?

avconsumer

Just air pollution kills orders of magnitude more than modern wars do. We live in one of the most peaceful eras in world history.

https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

https://oneearthfuture.org/news/world-getting-more-peaceful

2 replies

Arthur_Foyt

Air pollution in undeveloped countries is lessened by using oil/gas instead of wood/dung. As far as war casualties, tempting WWIII will change that chart in a heartbeat. Just sayin’.

JimH_in_CA

Yes, per, https://ourworldindata.org/data-review-air-pollution-deaths
7 million die from air pollution every year.
It is also stated that the poor, low income countries are most affected.
But of the total 67 million deaths WW annually, cardiovascular disease and cancers kill 29 million each year.
https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

So, air pollution accounts for about 1% of WW deaths, while the 2 leading causes are 43% of WW deaths.

I would like to see the data on air pollution death for the US.

1 reply

JimH_in_CA

oops, make that 10% of WW deaths from air pollution
significant, but far fewer that the leading causes of death WW.

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Paradoxical

On the topic of “decarbonization”: After having breathed the particulate emissions of Canadas (apparent) controlled-burns-bad-so-save-the-planet-one-massive-bonfire-at-a-time approach to being green, I have to wonder. If carbon emissions are bad and humans invented (meaningful) climate change, what did the world do about forest fires when there was human-driven deforestation and organized, human-driven fire fighting? I mean, what about all that pollution? Did it just not count because humans weren’t around to take the blame?

FlyerDon

I’m using those words to describe my worldview of the problem. I agree that flying or not flying a GA aircraft isn’t going to have much affect on the problem one way or the other. Getting off fossil fuels makes so much sense to me, for both geopolitical and climatological reasons, but I’d be starting with cars, trucks and power plants, not airplanes.

art

Don, There are many problems I see with the anthropocentric theory of climate change. First, we do not know enough about the earth’s primary heat source. 11 year solar cycles are well known and measurable over the past century. Sunspot activity, a harbinger of electromagnetic activity and radiation have been observed somewhat longer. But consider this: Hertz only discovered EMF and the means to detect it about a hundred years ago. We do not know and could not measure longer range solar cycle activity and energy outputs. Even if we could, much of the solar fluence is at least damped by the earth’s magnetosphere which we have only known about for 70 years, let alone studied in detail in deep space probes. So we really know little to nothing pertinent about long term solar energy cycles and nothing at all about era-scale energy fluence changes.

Next, the carbon cycle is far more complex than most models predict. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are very low. CO2 is highly dissolved in water as bicarbonate and is easily converted to and sequestered in minerals that make up much of the earth’s surface mineral base, such as limestone, marble and other minerals. It is also sequestered in living things, such as plants as cellulose and other carbohydrates, as well as animals. Much of our surface and ground water contains copious amounts of calcium carbonate which we regularly scrape off our plumbing or chemically convert with our water softeners. When plants and animals die, their converted carbon eventually becomes oils and gas or is burned on the surface. The oils and gas are sequestered and over millennia become stored solar energy fields and in a far more efficient but slower cycle than PV cells with many orders of magnitude energy density.

That scratches a surface: We do not know the true energy reaching the surface over geologically important time frames and because of this cannot predict in a meaningful manner the anthropomorphic impact on climate, if any. We also do not know if the rate of energy capture is constant or how it varies at the planet surface over geologically meaningful time frames.

We do not know the rate of conversion from atmospheric CO2 to sequestered CO2 in terms of mineralization of dissolved CO2, photochemical conversion of CO2 to carbohydrate, bioconversion of carbohydrate to organic oils, and sequestration of those oils as fossil oils and bioconversion of organics to methane gas over geologically important time frames.

Finally, as energy and matter are conserved, the stored captured energy in fossil fuels is stored solar energy and by using that stored energy we are re-converting it to CO2 which is a closed cycle and will/may be re-sequestered either in minerals or oil fields again. Unless we continue to burn our foodstocks, bypassing the fossilization of that fuel.

Arthur_Foyt

Paul and JimH actually make excellent points. Man caused diseases and man self-induced diseases and man caused accidents are WAY more immediate and deadly than “climate changing”.

That is why I see these EV projects as diversions from solving the real issues in the modern world.

rpstrong

In other words, vaporware.

And what does actually releasing a product have to do with the patent process? Companies routinely patent ideas which never actually get used in any product.

Fred_Gerr

Humans are not well equipped by evolution to mitigate any problem that has a time frame longer than the typical duration of fertility (maybe 30 years). There is no evolutionary selection pressure for such a trait to be incorporated into our psychology (the trait confers no reproductive advantage since such advantage would occur after reproduction has occurred). So, although we realize pretty quickly that an impending midair collision is best avoided with quick evasive maneuvering we deny and fail to act on threats that are decades in the making (or the fixing).

Like Paul B, I find it hard to have much optimism about the human response to anthropogenic climate change (global warming). Many of the comments here reinforce my pessimism about the future.

bbgun06

The truck burns 5.9 liters per ONE HUNDRED kilometers and the airplane 3.1 per ONE kilometer.
And you’re saying the truck is LESS efficient?
According to those numbers, it’s 50 TIMES more efficient.

1 reply

tordseriksson

Using an electric boost for shorter take-off and landing that’s OK, but not for the cruise; that will not happen until batteries and cables have a higher energy density than conventional fuel and piping!

And the problem is that the aircraft will weigh the same when it lands as the batteries weigh exactly the same as before take-off, not even long taxying helps. So wear on brakes will be far greater, wear on runways will be far greater, and runways must be longer (and costlier!).

And I do agree with Fred G. that any hope for humans to evolve on this Earth is very slim in the next 10 generations’ time.

2 replies

tordseriksson

The issue with hydrogen is the manufacture thereof is very energy intensive, and that hydrogen is a worse pollutant for the Ozone Layer than CO2, which naturally will happen when aircraft leak, power stations leak, and when aircraft crash

1 reply

tordseriksson

Ah!

Arthur_Foyt

I agree, lugging around the full weight of batteries from startup to shutdown is less than optimal. Humans will adapt just fine to a few degree shift. Heck, we have survived 30 degree temperature swings every day!

lstencel

Now just wait a doggone minute, Tord. AOC, et al, says we don’t even have a decade … you’re saying we’re goners in 10 decades … which is it? ME … LET’S PARTY !!!

1 reply

tedstriker

I knew those electric planes were a dumb stupid idea from the very get go. It surprised me companies and organizations with as much clout as they have took this long, and so much wasted money to figure that out. A true fools folly. Probably done to pander to the greenies, without stopping to look at the absurdity of what they were doing. Or maybe the pandering was all they were really into it for, and knew all along it would be a total flop.

1 reply

Arthur_Foyt

Politics, propaganda and ESG scores.
Rational reality never enters into those equations.

byhgxkae0ewm

thanks for spotting my typo, all of the units are the same - Liters per 100 kilometers per person. The data for Lufthansa is directly from their site (I posted the link but using an external u r l flagged my comment for review and it never gets publicly posted). So no, the most popular vehicle sold in the USA is nowhere near as efficient per person as the most common flight to Europe. And of course there are much more efficient planes like 321neo burning just over 2L per 100 km per person if you want to cherry pick to make a point

byhgxkae0ewm

“asymmetrically suffered by the third world and by Pacific and other islanders in rising sea levels, even though they contribute a fraction of greenhouse gases that cause it.”

Having lived on four Pacific Islands for many years and worked in a many others I am always amazed when I hear someone pushing a narrative that islanders are some innocent victims of the outside world’s contamination of their pristine paradise. Yep, mathematically the 40,000 people in the Marshall Islands or the 110k people in all of the Fed. States of Micronesia did not create climate change. But I am here to tell you, on a per-person basis, they sure as heck are contributing to the situation more than most western nations. They are on an island. They get every (and I mean every) single thing in their lives from that outside, evil, polluting world, but somehow they they claim they’re not responsible for any of the associated impact. On every island there’s a corner where they burn low-grade, high-sulfur dregs to make power on a very inefficient diesel generator. There’s another corner where they burn the trash, which is mostly plastic that is illegal to incinerate in most areas. There’s no scrubbers or anything on the incinerators or power regenerating from the heat, it just burns openly. And there’s another spot where the boat leaves to dump in the ocean everything that won’t burn. All the fuel comes in drums from somewhere else. No one is driving a Tesla, no one is eating coconuts in a thatched huts, it’s all imported sheet metal and concrete, it’s all well-used cars from the US or Europe and no emission controls. Everyone is using an well-worn outboard motor for everything and you can see their oil sheen a mile away.

These folks are not living in some eco-harmonious state, 99% of the food comes in a cargo container from somewhere else. They are eating frozen chickens from Tysons in Arkansas believe it or not, or tinned fish from 5,000 miles away. I think I was the only one who ever ordered the sashimi where I worked, everyone else ate canned lunch meat from USA. The idea of recycling is not only foreign to them but logistically impossible. “Going to the beach” actually means going down to that log at the tide mark to poop.
They are free to enjoy all of the benefits of the modern world, but of the junk they get from China has the exact same eco impact as all the useless junk Americans or Europeans buy. They use products that have elements strip-mined or unsustainably harvested or manufactured, but all of that devastation is shifted somewhere else in the world, and they like to keep the blame over there. Even creating a cell network, internet submarine cable network, cloud computing infrastructure, etc. has enormous environmental impact, but they take advantage of all of these advances but conveniently ignore that an eco price has to be paid somewhere. They actually realize there’s not free lunch for carbon footprints and everyone will readily admit it to you over a warm beer, but their PR efforts to play the victim for foreigners to get aid for “climate remediation” are actually impressive in the number of people they convince

1 reply

rkphillipsjr

A giant shuttle would likely have never flown, and I can find nothing on it, not even a proposal. Heck, the one that did fly was much larger than NASA wanted, because the military needed more capacity for their spy gizmos.

rkphillipsjr

The tanks exist. Cheap tanks do not.

rkphillipsjr

Certainly some sort of mechanism should exist to burn the hydrogen in case of a crash.

rkphillipsjr

I. Don’t. Believe. You.
At all.
Having worked with innovative designs, the first thing that happens is getting the patent paperwork started.

rkphillipsjr

Nobody in their right mind would burn hydrogen in an engine; a fuel cell is essentially twice as efficient.
I could build, with essentially off-the-shelf parts, a hydrogen-fuel-cell electric propulsion system. There are no mysteries here, beyond economy.

rkphillipsjr

Electric motors are simple, relatively cheap, insanely reliable, and lightweight.
Compare that to, say, a large, modern, TSIO-5XX.

rkphillipsjr

Yep. But, as in GA, their impact is small. Once we get the problems figured on the “big end”, it will hopefully trickle down. Until then, it’s bunker oil for the genset.

rkphillipsjr

That math has been done, and it’s a little tiny fraction of the overall amount.
Heck, making concrete is a huuuuuuge fraction, bigger than a lot of what, to some people, are “apparent” offenders.
Ultimately, making fuel from plants, more nuclear power plants, and other little bits and pieces will work together to help. No one solution to the disease, but many smaller ones.

rkphillipsjr

Well, let me fix your ignorance. (In my family, ignorance is not a slur.)
Just two things, out of many, to consider:
1: Too much CO2 can stunt plant growth.
2: Plants release CO2 at night.

Raf

For those in Hangar B3, global warming will turn everything into crap. So yeah, let’s party!