Flying Mag did a good job of promoting this project. “Bye Energy has settled on the venerable Cessna 172 as its electric platform.” At the time I was enthusiastic about it. That was in 2011.
Here is the link:
flyingmag.com/aircraft-battery-powered-cessna-172-skyhawk/
Reaction from the road is free.
Reaction form the air is very costly.
EV’s weigh more than gas vehicles. Longer range EV’s weigh more than short range EV’s.
Even with road EV’s technology projections, electric aircraft performance/efficiency graphs hopelessly diverge.
As an engineer I have no objection to exploring concepts or allowing separation of funds from pockets (just not mine), as long as everyone respects the same safety margins before selling tickets.
There’s a parallel unraveling now that will be noted by investors and that is going to be eye-watering for the number of regulatory/insurance opinions and lawyers involved and the futility of “releases” when negligence is contested.
Ultimately as a pilot, I have as much respect for the tie-dyed believers or snotty entrepreneurs as I do for the 100 hour (insert expensive aircraft here) pilot who launches his family into cumulo-granite…no respect for physics, material science or environment.
Electric aircraft will happen for one primary reason – economics. And, yes, there will be many failures and much hype on the way. Remember GM’s EV1. It was a bit early and was not a commercial success. But now they have a number of practical EVs and will be all electric by 2035. I actually worked on an electric car when I was a grad student in 1967. It was much to early to be practical and took 3000 lbs of batteries to achieve 100 miles of range but remember that the 1903 Wright Flyer only flew a few hundred feet.
So NASA spent $87 million to discover this? What a waste of time and money. Regardless of the hype, electrics will always be niche/boutique vehicles regardless of the wishful thinking involved.
Not all research goes somewhere but if you’d follow the naysayers a lot of things would not have been tried and accomplished. Given the overall size of the US budget (to which I do not contribute), the expenditure seems infinitesimally small. Investing in PV to get rid of carbon-dependent energy and curb global warming and associated weather extremes makes sense economically, better spend it on PV now than disaster relief later. I, too, think that battery technology is going to improve. Imagine having to run your smartphone on NiCads, the most advanced commercially available technology when I was a teenager. Today’s teenagers will reminisce about 500kg battery packs in cars the same way. Somewhere along that small electric aircraft might have a place.
It’s totally invalid to look back in time at the march of technology and just assume it can be applied forwards with whatever subject you want. When an electric car with a 400 mile range weighs the same as an ICE one, you’ll have a nice summer commuter car as long as you don’t run the AC. If you’re going to a wedding, all the ladies will have wilted before they get there. When you factor in winter, with snow, long traffic jams with accidents, winter storms trapping 1000’s of e-cars full of people who need to keep warm, now you have a huge logistical rescue problem most counties aren’t equipped to handle.
“… and the knowledge gained by trying to get the plane into the air will be available for anyone who can apply it to their project.”
Hopefully, detailed tech information will be included about the problematic systems that broke the deal. Given the govt’s propensity to continue throwing money at projects even after cost overruns mount, it’s surprising NASA bailed on this one at this point. Could they have been counting on outside suppliers who were not able to deliver?
“The issue is energy density which needs to increase by roughly an order of magnitude for batteries to be viable and replace fossil fuel, and that is never going to happen.” Never is a long time.
$15 Billion was wasted on the US-Mexico border wall. Not sure how much science was gleaned from that experiment.
This is why the “drawing board” was invented! The waste can should have been the graveyard for all the mistakes. It was easy to see that it was a money bonfire from its conception. Big is never better when you depend on batteries. A light weight generating system is needed for any electric flight to be meaningful. That holds true for cars as well.
Hmm… $87M for NASA engineers to do some basic calculations that any second year aerospace engineering student must master.
Just curious, what happens to lithium batteries that are no longer serviceable?
How would one put out a lithium battery fire in-flight?
How does one do it on the ground?
The answers are why in my opinion lithium batteries shouldn’t be used on aircraft.
The applicable laws of physics that govern batteries are immutable and all of the elements from which batteries can be made have been known for a long time. There is no way, even in the wildest theory, that energy density can be increased by an order of magnitude.
If practical electric airplanes are to ever exist, they will have to be powered by something other than batteries. Fuel cells are one possible answer.
You cannot put the fire out because of the solid oxygen in the cells which is needed to oxidize the lithium metal. Heat changes it back to a gas which burns very hot. This plane would have been a flying barbecue pit!
And humans —offf-course ---- will never be able to fly.
I believe that never is never a good assumption
A C172N with 40 gallon tanks has an endurance of 4 hours at 75% power.
Which of these can match that?
A 737 has an endurance of over 6 hours.
Which of these can match that?
“A light weight generating system is needed for any electric flight to be meaningful. That holds true for cars as well.”
Don’t they teach engineers in school these days that you can’t get more energy out of a system than you put in? Would someone please explain to me how a 15-hp engine, turning an electric generator, can drive an airplane or car that requires 100-hp to perform its mission? Sure, the engine driven generator can supply energy to the batteries, but it’s not enough to keep the vehicle in motion. The batteries will still run down; just not as quickly, but they WILL run down.
Or maybe they have finally found a way around the laws of physics…
?
What a bunch of clown-show armchair quarterbacks you crowd are.
In 1910 many people like you-all thought the Wright Brothers were nuts. No market, not practical, yadayada. Innovation is surrounded by naysayers without the vision to understand the future potential the innovation can realize.
For the record, the X57 program was not scrapped because of batteries, energy density, or the practicality of electrifying the aircraft. It was a technical issue in the design of a component from a supplier that would require redesign to resolve. Totally fixable, just not in the time frame the team had left to complete the project.
And yes, NASA has published their data and has directly contributed to advancing the state of the art as it relates to electrifying aircraft. Their work has moved the needle - an HIGHLY appropriate use of tax dollars for an Agency chartered with advancing the state of the art as it relates to aerospace.
If it wasn’t for NASA investing in tech like this over the past 50 years we would still be taking the train everywhere.