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This is a lot of hype that the airline is using to get some publicity, and the idea is interesting, but will not take flight (hah). Taxiing is such a minimal part of the fuel burn, and of low relative cost, that the added complexity, not to mention certification hurdles, extra weight, etc. etc. of a new airworthy component will not be worth it.

You are carrying something with hydrogen (not a huge deal, but extra hurdles), heavy, and interacting with existing aircraft systems.I know of no example (or cannot easily think of one) where a fuel cell is currently certificated as an aircraft operating component (which I believe it would have to be, as described).

Richard Branson wanted to try something similar a decade ago for Virgin Atlantic, with a biofuel powered robotic mini-tugs that would clamp on to the wheels and tow aircraft to the runway. Even that idea went nowhere -- much less something that has to be a part of the airplane and fly. Funny how all the ideas get forgotten and tried again.

Fat Albert was used for drug interdiction. It bears responsibility for helping turn the '80s into the "Cocaine Decade" in the U.S. because it became much more difficult to import the the heavy and bulky drug marijuana into the U.S. through Florida. Instead, those involved in boot-legging drugs into the country switched to a lighter, more compact drug -- cocaine. This quickly led to the development of crack cocaine and the rest is history. As a kid growing up in the Keys back then, the cultural change this brought with it was immensely obvious.

I remember when Fat Albert, tethered in Cudjoe Key, broke free from its mooring. Jets were scrambled and shot it down.

It is also recently responsible for a deadly general aviation accident, when a Cessna 182 hit its mooring line.

Fat Albert is also used for US propaganda directed at the Cuban population (TV Marti). It was supposed to be decommissioned last year. I don't know if it is still there. You could see it from pretty much anywhere in the lower Florida Keys.

This isn't a heat engine; therefore, it isn't subject to the Carnot efficiency limit that is a key reason that internal combustion engines have such a low maximum theoretical efficiency in terms of extracting energy from the fuel.

Hydrocarbons are actually a great energy store for a vehicle: they are thermally stable/don't discharge over time, it's fast & trivial to "recharge" the energy store, and hydrocarbons have orders of magnitude more energy per mass than any form of battery, which improves vehicle efficiency by reducing the mass that has to be lugged around. However, the internal combustion engine is a wastefully inefficient, complicated machine. Ideally, we could get the best of both worlds with a hydrocarbon fuel cell that efficiently produces electricity to drive electric motors for a vehicle. There are other technologies that could potentially accomplish this, such as the solid oxide fuel cell.

Don't conflate the energy store (hydrocarbons) with the stored energy (e.g. fossil fuels). There is no reason we cannot create hydrocarbons at will using various approaches. Biodiesel from algae is one example as well as "reverse combustion" via more industrial processes (e.g. the Fischer-Tropsch process). Some catalytic processes have been created that use solar power to create hydrocarbons.

Personally, I prefer the idea of large nuclear plants creating hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2. As a bonus, we would get to keep our existing petroleum distribution infrastructure while our vehicle fleet becomes carbon neutral. Backwards-compatible carbon neutrality FTW?

The battery charging voltages and currents are logged, the logs go to the flight recorder, and they don't indicate overcharging. There are monitoring circuit boards in the battery case, separate from the charger, which report this data. Either the charger failed in some way that caused an overcharge without the voltage sensing detecting this, or the battery itself failed.

The NTSB says they haven't found anything defective yet. The burned battery is enough of a mess that it's hard to extract much info, but they're using spectroscopy to check that the composition of the components was correct.

The grounding is necessary. The JAL aircraft at Logan only had 22 takeoff/landing cycles on it, and this has now happened twice, so the odds of further trouble are high. Over the next few days and weeks, batteries and chargers will probably be pulled from other aircraft and cycled through pressure chambers, shake tables, and hot/cold cycles in attempts to induce the failure.

Meanwhile, I suspect that there are frantic efforts at Boeing to design a replacement that doesn't use lithium-ion batteries.

Hey, don't blame the White House for the fact that only the joke petitions are getting enough signatures to require an answer.

Want answers to serious questions? Get all your friends to sign those serious petitions.

There are serious petitions being signed. They are just not being taken seriously. Hey, they let the chief of the TSA answer the petition to dismantle the TSA. How much less seriously can you take the serious petitions?

Sorry, I'm with GP on this one.

Shachar

A competition envisions ca. 70 MPH on average: In Search Of ... The Fastest Blimp | Aero-News Network. So that would be the norm; nice for a pleasure cruise.

Solar powered airliners, that's rich. Let's start with a perfected solar drone aircraft first, dimwits.

It's not just car parts. It's happening in the aircraft industry and else where. There's also the issue of refurbished parts being sold as new...

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=67ee8eb6-54ae-403c-bcd5-3c76b6f95506

After reading this article, I'm halfway tempted to think that his incident was an elaborately orchestrated plot to facilitate a power grab by the FAA:

AMA: FAA Seeks To Restrict Model Aircraft Flight

Excursus: When the FAA was in danger of "losing 4,000 jobs", I thought to myself, "what the hell does the FAA need with 4,000 employees" - can't we deploy Skynet already?

Well as soon as DOE can convince FAA and the Air Force to stop blocking projects perhaps we can make some progress.

Its a little frightening that a non-emitting source could so easily fool radar and the best solution either agency has is to block wind farms.

Then there is the BLM and their restrictive access polices, not to mention the Kennedy clan.

There are some obvious problems with wind (hot calm days), but tied to an efficient national grid much of these should be manageable.

The problem with common sense is that often it's exercised by idiots: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=340a79d6-839a-470d-b662-944325cea23d

Not "better".. Safer..

As a nice, bright and shiny illustration of just how safe you are with these people being given free reign is illustrated by the story of how the TSA grounded 9 planes. My favorite quote: "TSA agents are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk".

I am yet to be convinced there is a measurable return on investment for the money wasted on TSA, investment in HUMINT would have been a better use of the budget. and THAT annoys me most when those morons do their usual.

I guess the use of room temperature IQs is essential to stop anyone from thinking about what they're doing, but the result is that they give the impression of being people rejected for writing parking tickets because they were too stupid.

It's not flamebait. There's a good 5% of the voting public feel exactly that way about these two. And they have very good reason. While their position on "high" tech is interesting and all, when you starting asking the real questions, it boils down to their position on our rights to use that tech as we see fit. Because none of them are "against" technology. We have to watch how it will used against us. So the questions become something like, Who's going to to reign in the FBI and their wiretapping? Who's going to stop the TSA from damaging our airliners, possibly causing a real disaster? When are we ever going to see real adherence to the Bill of Rights? Not that we ever had, but it's about time we make a real effort. If we want to see truly rapid development of high tech, we have to ask when are they going to put an end to near infinite copyright, and the idea of software patents.

Well, from both of these guys we are getting negative responses to all these questions and more. We are going to get more of the same thing that we have been getting since long before we were born.

So the AC is right
Fuck McCain
Fuck Obama
The only thing I could add is "!"

Yeah, I cut and pasted the wrong URL. ToMuchToDo's subsequent post referred to http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=29293775-85f9-4007-817c-bd65a1060dda
which contained the quote.

Sorry for the mixup. Fly safe.

Emphasis mine.

My mistake! I had meant to mention that XCOR and the Rocket Racing League would be starting rocketplane exhibition races this year, but forgot about it while looking up articles. Thanks for the reminder.

Each aircraft has two people flying it regardless of whether it is carrying 100 or 600 people. Pilots do occasionally fuck up and when there are so many lives at stake it makes sense to dedicate more people to the job of flying the plane.

The number of pilots required is based on distance, not number of passengers. In newspapers reporting the recent court case against a AA pilot who turned up to Manchester airport drunk when he was scheduled to fly to Chicago, it was reported that the plane had to be diverted to New York to comply with the FAA rules that flights longer than 8 hours carry 3 flight crew.

Not to be redundant or anything, but the main reason that magnetos are still used is not because of the efficiency/performance but because they do not require electricity to work. As long as the brushes, magnets, plugs, etc are all functioning properly there will be a spark if the engine is rotating. If your alternators or batteries break, or if there is a short or something, the very last thing that you need at that point is to have your engines quit as well. It is true that airplanes are "gliders" with an engine, but when you lose an engine you sink, fast, and unless you happen to be in a great place such as the Midwest during daytime where there are fields everywhere, you're going to be in a heap load of trouble if you cannot find a suitable landing site quick. Also, that was an interesting article that you linked me to, thanks. About your comment on fuel burn, I believe that the FADEC system I linked to earlier solved (some) of those problems as it continuously monitors and regulates the amount of fuel being delivered to the cylinders. I don't believe that magnetos are (such) a big problem that they actually diminish fuel economy by that much. In fact, each cylinder has two spark plugs to ensure not only reliability, but also to maintain a consitant burn of fuel vapors during the combustion stage of the engine.

It is true that composite materials are expensive, however many of the kit planes, as well as some production planes like the cirrus/diamond air are using them because of the enormous performance gains you get by utilizing them. I believe that once the process is even further streamlined the cost will only continue decreasing until almost all airplanes use them. While there is the infamous starship blunder involving composite materials, the cirrus continually sets new sales records and that only goes to show that people are willing to pay for high quality, especially when it comes to an expensive hobby such as aviation where most of the people are already rich to begin with. If that seams hard to believe (it does for me too since I'm just a poor college student) you only have to look at the VLJs coming out. If people can afford to buy personal jets, then I believe that the additional price will not be a factor during these initial years when the material construction process is being perfected.

Recently Sam Dinkin of the Space Review had a chance to tour SpaceX's facility, and wrote a 4-part article series about it. It's a pretty neat read, and gives you a good idea of the culture of SpaceX and where it's headed. Also, they're apparently looking for good people to hire. ;)

*Part 1
*Part 2
*Part 3
*Part 4

Also, an interesting bit of recent news: Apparently the President of Sea Launch, which is "arguably the world's most successful commercial launch company," has left Sea Launch to join SpaceX. Anybody care to speculate about why he would leave such a cushy position for a start-up?

Newsflash. The United States imports more from China than we export to them. They are about to get into the aviation in a big way. They are starting to export cars to the US

The main things we are exporting to China are money, garbage (for recycling), money, agricultural products and money.

We may have the moral highground, but don't think China is worried about anything but the flow of cash into their country.

Company founder Elon Musk says "in order to facilitate preparations for a missile defense launch, the Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) has bumped the SpaceX Falcon 1 maiden flight from its officially scheduled launch date of 1 p.m. California time (9 p.m. GMT) on November 25. The new launch time is 1 p.m. California time (9 p.m. GMT) on November 26."

Grr.. I hate it when people drop the http:/// from their links, making it relative and thus pointing at slashdot. Now I've gone and done it. ANN is the correct link.

~Lake

As usual, if you're interested in this sort of news ANN covers this sort of things more closely and much more promptly. They posted about this several days ago.

~Lake

Here's ANN's coverage of the story.

If you're interested in this and similar sort of news, ANN is a great daily news site you should probably check out.

~Lake

Aero News Net (ANN), a great daily news site for aviation, has been covering this as well.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

~Lake

Aero News Net (ANN), a great daily news site for aviation, has been covering this as well.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

~Lake

Aero News Net (ANN), a great daily news site for aviation, has been covering this as well.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

~Lake

Another good overview can be found at http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID= 65261609-3814-42c0-979d-a77f9b8c10f8& This new category bridges the gap between the relatively uncontrolled (US) ultralights and the standard airplane. If I understand correctly (correct me If I'm wrong), it may allow European 'ultralights' (which can be larger than their US cousins) to be flown in the US without meeting all the standard airplane rules.

JetBlue has clearly stated that they never consented to the data being used in this manner.

quote: "Yesterday [Wednesday], ANN got a call back from jetBlue's Vice President, Corporate Communications, Gareth Edmundson-Jones, who wanted to go on the record, in the wake of the lousy publicity his airline had gotten yesterday. He wanted us to know, in no uncertain terms, that, "jetBlue is not entered into an agreement to participate in CAPPS II.""

Link to article

In case these haven't already been posted: the story in detail (as part of an interview with the pilor) is available at aero-news.net

... the plane company's web site cirrusdesign.com has also been boasting about it...

... the story is a good read; sounds like Lionel Morrison had a very entertaining time :-)