The Airbus Foundation has launched its first Discovery Science Week with the goal of encouraging an interest in science in students between the ages of 12 and 16 years old. According to Airbus, the program will provide digital science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-related educational materials and activities to more than 60 educational centers in Spain. This year, Discovery Science Week activities are organized around six blocks that include women in science, environmental impact, mathematical puzzles, flight mechanics, hydrogen and virtual tours of vocations. The 2022 program will continue through the last week of June.
This company’s entire business model is based on two false premises, that CO2 is harmful to the environment, and that man-made climate change exists. CO2 is what humans exhale and is food for plants, hardly hazardous. The myth of man-made climate change has been debunked so often, that it’s hardly worth mentioning. Electric-powered vehicle and aircraft are powered ultimately by fossil fuels. They only exist due to fear-mongering and government confiscation of taxes that are showered on a few crony companies. The best fuels for aircraft are Jet-A, auto diesel and Mogas without ethanol. The US has vast quantities of oil, coal and natural gas, and the Earth (God) constantly replenishes these. They are the ultimate clean renewable energy resource. I predict battery airplanes going the way of the DoDo bird. Once people see behind the curtain of enviro fear-mongering and the government subsidies run out, they disappear. The same holds for those silly battery cars. Of course for those living in the SoCal bubble (LaLaLand) everything looks different.
“The myth of man-made climate change has been debunked so often, that it’s hardly worth mentioning.” But, you know, just for the fun of it, why don’t you link to a single scientific study with any credibility whatsoever that does debunk that myth.
I’m at a loss to understand how a hybrid drive train in an aeroplane makes any significant sense. Normally the advantage is that when an internal combustion engine is regularly varying its rpm wildly e.g. in stop-go urban traffic, when the engine is on it can immediately go to its most efficient rpm and stay there until the battery is charged. This makes for a potentially significant improvement in the efficiency of the engine.
In an aircraft, once it is at cruising speed/altitude the rpm is almost constant and mixture adjusted for most economical use for any given circumstance. So, what use is lugging around enormous battery as well as the internal combustion engine, all its necessary complex ancillary systems, fuel et cetera?
The whole idea sounds a bit like the answer to a question that has not been asked.
On the other hand a fully electric aircraft makes huge sense although obviously currently only for relatively short journeys.
Perhaps someone who actually knows what they’re talking about can enlighten me…?
There might be some advantage to electric motor placements on the airframe or, more useful, the increased reliability of having a battery pack available for climb and to continue flight somewhat when the I.C. engine quits. Having said that, no one deserves a halo for exporting their pollution to the power plant and battery factory etc. etc. Also, the general ignorance about CO2 in our worlds life cycle is appalling. Plants breathe it and ultimately feed us. The early earth had much higher CO2 concentrations and the plant life thrived massively, leaving oil, gas, and coal deposits in the underground past. The current levels of CO2 are merely subsistence living for the remaining plant life. They ate it all up.
MagniX makes electric motors, and connected controllers. Based in Everett WA north of Seattle.
Involved with Harbour Air’s pandering to its gummint customers, last I heard (there was a change). HA’s Beaver has flown several flights, general status is on HA’s web site but no technical details, they are preparing a second aircraft in configuration for certification. (Based at YVR, there is engineering and fabrication support in the area.)
‘Aero TEC’ - you have to spell precisely as there are several with or without an h - marketing people are fools, is an established consulting outfit in Seattle and Moses Lake WA, incudes flight testing and now light manufacturing capability.
Leeham News blog had articles by Bjorn on hybrid and electric aircraft. Battery weight is a big problem, last i paid attention he seemed to be keen on hydrogen which requires huge investment in infrastructure.
Start by over half a century of FAILure of catastrophist predictions - complete failure, none have come to pass. And look at the behaviour of types like David Sleazuki who removes his web pages when challenged on facts, he and alGore jet around spewing CO2 and leaving lights on in mansions - hypocrites.
What did you say about ‘credibility’? Having fun yet?
Then go to friendsofscience.org for explanations and links to solid data and research.
And my page wclimate.pdf on moralindividualism.com, to which I will add basic physics of ‘greenhouse gas’ molecules showing CO2 cannot cause much warming.
And climateaudito.org for solid critique of statistical analyses used by climate ‘scientists’, often FAILing.
Then read up on Climategate, the leak of documents showing collusion to block questioners from publications, one of the perps being the infamous Michael Mann who refused court orders to produce his facts.
Humans cannot cause runaway climate warming, which is not and cannot happen.
Earth was warmer and climate stable in the Medieval Warm Period when Vikings farmed southwest Greenland.
Cimate has been warming slowly since the end of a cool era that drove them out, shown by accurate thermometers like weather balloons and satellite sensors.
The effect CO2 can have is small, limited by the ‘saturation’ effect of overlap of spectra of carbon dioxide and dihydrogen monoxide vapour, most of the increase has already been realized.
After actually studying, ask yourself why someone who supposedly is in aviation fails basic ability needed to fly, and do it safely - facts, logic, …
If you want to be a True Believer, go work in Christian missionary flight operations into poor areas of the world, instead of trying to take affordable portable energy away from poor people.
There’s a doomsday psychology, nothing new just different theories, like doomsday preachers anti-human types keep peddling their corrosion, often claiming their dates of doom were just early, catastrophe will come someday.
Martin, we’re both waiting on the answer to this. The premise is that adding a big battery & electric motor to an aircraft that is basically still combustion powered will somehow result in a better & cheaper commercial flying machine. In my mind that simply doesn’t seem to make sense, and I have yet to see any cogent explanation of how it could.
The HA project apparently involves H55 in Switzerland, an e-aviation outfit.
MagniX appears to be on the north side of PAE, north of Boeing’s plant, west of its recreation center, Japanese Gulch behind it I think (history of hard work and defending community in it) .
Aero TEC’s light fabrication facility is Arlington WA airport north of Everett, long a centre of making aircraft things of varying success.
One nit is that there may be a bit of warming from human use of fossil fuels, which produces little CO2 compared to other sources like undersea volcanoes (this decade spelled ‘Hunga Tonga’).
Beware of catastrophist claims of long persistence of CO2 in atmosphere, measurements at Mauna Loa rebut that.
Beware of claims of ocean acidification (in fact ocean water is chemically ‘basic’) and claims that is killing coral reefs (which bleach from ocean sloshing and virus and some fish eating them). Coral dies regardless - that’s what coral atolls are made of. Water level in the Indian and South Pacific oceans fluctuates with wind and currents, I call that sloshing on a slow scale.
The amount of climate warming from CO2 of any source is limited to a very small amount, most of which has already been realized. That’s because the overlap of spectra of carbon dioxide and the most abundant greenhouse gas dihydrogen monoxide vapour. Every doubling of CO2 only causes half of the temperature increase of the last doubling, so the effect limits (on a graph it looks asymptotic, a mathematical term, not an assumption term as catastrophists use).
Sorry, but none of what you’ve cited is a credible resource regarding climate change. I keep reading on AvWeb the often-repeated claim that CO2 and water vapor have some spectral overlap limiting the warming effect- this is false. Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it is the pronounced change in CO2 leading to increasing forcing in the energy budget. This is a very complicated physics problem and understandable that one could be swayed by misinformation.
*Source: I am a professional scientist and I use spectroscopy tools in my research lab. I am not a climate scientist but I use the same physics to understand how light interacts with living tissue. I love aviation and I agree there are plenty of proposed “snake oil” solutions to reducing CO2 emissions. We can and should debate skeptically about these. I find this hybrid solution proposed in the article far more credible than any near-term, electric only solution for transport category aircraft, for example.
**Climate change due to elevated CO2 in the atmosphere is the overwhelming consensus of nearly all credible scientists today. Uncertainty remains over long-term predictions, and what to be done about CO2 emissions remains a political question open for debate. However, the underlying science is not up for debate, regardless of whatever confirmation-bias supporting (and non peer-reviewed) websites you bring up.
Electric motors clearly can be better than ICE. They have fewer moving parts, need fewer subsystems, are much more efficient and clearly are quieter. They are lighter, more compact and the list goes on.
If they cause CO2 to be produced I care not at all and do not list this as an electric advantage, but even so they are better in many categories.
The problem is batteries suck for aviation purposes, and due to the limitations of the periodic table always will and are a dead end. The reason this is being pushed is political and ideological, it has nothing to doo with aviation.
HFC technology has potential for providing power, but Li batteries, no.
Looks good to me. If it didn’t work, technically or financially, they wouldn’t do it. No point in bleating on about what you don’t like, or understand about it. Reality doesn’t care whether or not you live in it.