If American people is losing imagination for any potential progression and do away cut-and-try, we will be surly falling behind in the race.
“In 1910 many people like you-all thought the Wright Brothers were nuts.”
Maybe so, but after 110 years of aviation it’s clear today what works and what does not.
This is trying to re-invent the wheel (and doing so with no tangible gain of function).
“A light weight generating system is needed for any electric flight to be meaningful”
Meaningful? Since fuel is needed to power the grid for initial charging and fuel is needed to power an on-board generator, I have a tough time calling the whole process of electric flight meaningful in the conventional sense.
Dana, I just found out a very well educated person in my sphere worked on this thing for a while. His comment … “the least surprising outcome of my engineering career.” So it seems the worker bees knew it … only the meatheads managing the program refused to acknowledge the futility of the effort. If NASA managers can’t control themselves, maybe it’s time to seriously curtail their budget. Another person high up in an aerospace company’s structure told me that’s exactly what he did when expenditures started getting out of hand … report on milestones and MAKE them or he cut their budgets. Maybe NASA never heard of ROI ??
The local volunteer fire department has a strict protocol on dealing with burning eVehicles … yank the humans out IF possible and then let the vehicle burn.
Maybe the FAA needs to order ejection seats for all eAirplanes?
I use that statement all the time when trying to ‘splain’ to non-engneering types that “energy cannot be created nor destroyed … it merely changes it’s form.” And, “there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.” All the eEverything zealots didn’t get that email, I guess?
Lets keep it real.
In just over 10 years after the Wrights, airplanes had matured into war machines flying 100mph.
In just over 120 years after the Wrights, electric airplanes have progressed to about 1906 levels of flying.
Humans DO NOT FLY NOW. They build machines that they use to transport themselves through the air. I BIG DIFFERENCE!
CAREFULL a healthy portion of Tesla PROFITS (vs income) for the most of its existence has NOT come from vehicles but from Tax credits for carbon offsets. Tesla is HIGHLY subsidized in that respect. https://www.sinbon.com/solution/integrated-solutions/how-tesla-made-great-profits-from-regulatory-credits. 2 B a year is NOTHING to sneeze at.
Nobody ever mentions the fact that an electric airplane lands at the same weight it took off at. So no take off above max landing weight is possible like is done now. Not possible to burn fuel and land or dump fuel.
?
HM say a 40 MPG equivalent car…at 60 mph you are using about
1.66 gallons or 10.3 lbs of gasoline to travel an hour. Assuming a very efficient vehicle this is 24 HP power consumption. the Average Modern AC for a draws. 3 HP during compressor operation at full draw or about 2 hp average, (from Plane Kool CEO who is using a Toyota unit for Experimental Aircraft AC). this is an 8 % average draw compared to freeway cruising. so an 8 percent increase in power use and 8 percent reduction in max range. SO unless you are cutting the range to the edge there will be NO wilted bride. DO the math it is easy.
Only true if you include the plurality who say it never will be in your majority.
Sometimes I wonder if some of you have ever accepted indoor plumbing.
People mention that all the time, and they seem to think it has greater importance than it likely does.
Yes … I just didn’t spend $87 million with a 120% / $47 million overrun beyond the installation estimate on it and THEN not be able to use the toilet or wash my hands. Get serious, Don.
It might be worth a study to see if the sections that were installed are slowing the illegal crossings. Of course, secure borders are a primary government function while research like this is not, so I’m not sure there’s much value in comparing the two. Perhaps if we could all agree it would be better for government to get back to basics we could stop picking and choosing what to throw money at.
Might be interesting to have less talking past each other, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
My main issue with large electric planes is why? I’ll never bet on never, if you know what I mean, but I think there’s a good consensus that electric automobiles are much more doable than electric planes. If you replaced most all the ICE cars with electric ones supplied with a much lower carbon source (on average), then would you really need to worry about Boeings and Airbusses? Wouldn’t we be effectively fixing the problem?
Furthermore, the volume of light vehicles has this amazing way of speeding up new tech. Just compare the two industries and how much auto innovation has pushed plane innovation instead of the other way around. If we are going to get the needed tech, it will likely come from the auto industry than aerospace. Right?
Last, do we really need drones carrying humans? It really wouldn’t take that much land use to put STOL ports around a major metro and fly people around with today’s technology yet we don’t do it. We don’t even think about doing it.
If you ask me, the better research NASA might ought to do is how to get the government out of the business of destroying aviation before trying to add new ways to make planes which the FAA, IRS, municipalities, and many others are trying to keep out of the sky anyways.
The article does not mention batteries or energy density as a reason for the choice to end the program at the end of the year, only the fact that the path to airworthiness will take some time.
As the well known aviation maintenance guru Irwin M Fletcher pointed out many decades ago, “Its all ball bearings nowadays”
From another source reporting on the decision:
“The choice of steel ball bearings in the aircraft’s two electric motors that were “lower grades than aviation” standards caused unforeseen issues, said NASA Glenn Research Center systems engineer Dave Avanesian at the time. Among other issues, the ball bearings were not properly seated, resulting in “pretty high levels of vibration,” he said.”
“As we got into the detailed analysis and airworthiness assessment of the motors themselves, we found that there were some potential failure modes with the motors mechanically under flight loads that we hadn’t seen on the ground,” says Sean Clarke, principal investigator with the X-57 program. “The motor design had a couple of particular failure modes that show up through our detailed analysis that show that it could seize up in flight and … could be a safety hazard to our pilots.”
The most popular talking point for battery aircraft supporters seems to be some version of “the Wright Brothers built airplanes that flew”.
Respectfully, I would like to point out that while the story of the Wright Brothers may be inspiring, the fact they demonstrated powered flight first does not bear on the possibility of someone successfully creating a battery powered full equivalent of a Bonanza, or a CH-53. What does bear on that possibility are the statements of scientific mavens who repeatedly point out that the order of magnitude improvements in battery energy density needed are not possible.