Well AV, you’re right to observer that there are a lot of people who claim to know that electric propulsion aviation is a fairy tale that will never happen. They don’t know the future. No one does. But many people know grade 11 and the basics of energy density and some also the reality of certification requirements, or have an industry understanding of aviation operational reality, that make all of the white-board theory seem overly optimistic.
However, your assertion that the failure of X-57 was NOT an issue of the lack of practicality and was simply a “a technical issue in the design of a component from a supplier that would require redesign to resolve.” is not anything I can find in reviewing all of NASA’s X-57 docs.
Please point me to an actual document on NASA’s X-57 Technical Papers site that supports your claim that somehow a supplier or its component was at the root of the cancellation.
What I am seeing is that they are claiming to have 650 docs available but only showing a few dozen of high level 10-page glossy powerpoints owith no access to the underlying data. They are claiming to offer The Data on request. I do see they have been talking about the project in the past tense for months. I do see they never successfully cleared Mod II and nowhere near the Mod IV test flights that would yield data of actual use for others. I do see they eventually admit their power controller transistor heat issues, which they are using as the last-straw excuse to throw in the towel, were already identified and rectified by Joby years ago (again, according to NASA’s own analysis), so again, they did nothing “groundbreaking” whatsoever. They knew others had identified this roadblock, but they thought they were the smartest people and could re-invent the laws of thermodynamics. But that was only the official reason to cancel - they met very few of their own metrics to move to the next stage gate and are years behind schedule.
NASA’s words: “The value of X-57 lies in advancing the Nation’s ability to design, test, and
certify electric aircraft, which will enable entirely new markets.
The Mod II flight test program is a pathfinder for the experimental propulsion
system performance and reliability to reduce the risk in the X-57 configuration.”
But they did not get anywhere in Mod II. So by definition, the project yielded nothing of value. The Certification Pathfinder mission is a dead end. There is nothing they got working properly.
They identified all of the challenges and overcame a grand total of ZERO. Of course, if you look at the presser, somehow COVID was to blame.
Again, I actually believe e-flight is coming eventually. X-programs are experimental and $87m is not a lot of money compared to the gov’t budget pie. NASA is a always doing interesting research, and some slice has commercial applications. But their glossy PR claims that this project was going to show the roadmap to certification for other companies was always laughable - they know research, but have no clue on cert.