Slashdot Mirror
Battery-Powered Plane Taxis, Set To Fly Soon
bigdaddy writes "'WORCESTER - At 10:01 a.m. yesterday, Cary Dillman fastened her shoulder belts in the pilot's seat of a sleek twin-seat airplane, closed the cockpit canopy, and taxied into aviation history sounding - in her words - "like a sewing machine." Dillman was piloting the first conventional airplane powered by electricity.' How cool is that! Full details in this story."
...the batteries, which often have lots of nasty toxic compounds in them (though that's gotten a bit better recently).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Dunn is also working on Fuel Cell planes.
Fuel Cell and Aviation
He says, "There is a limitless supply of hydrogen, and it poses no environmental harm, unlike carbon dioxide and other compounds generated by traditional gasoline or diesel engines," Dunn said. "
As someone who works in the aviation sector, I can tell you that aviation works in babysteps.
You start the engine before you taxi.
You slow taxi before you high-speed taxi.
All these things begin to tell you how the aircraft will behave and handle, as well as it's structural integrity, without putting the pilot's life in immediate peril. Only when you're absolutely as sure as you can be that the whole thing wont fly to pieces around do you accelerate and rotate.
Would YOU sit in an untested prototype plane and throw the throttle to the stops without having any idea what was going to happen? Any problem you might encounted at 0 feet AGL is a lot more serious at 1000 feet AGL.
This space for rent.
Additionally, generation facilities can install multi-$$$ scrubbing / cleaning technologies on their stacks to prevent Nasty Stuff from getting into the air.
A jet engine, as far as I know, just burns the stuff and has no controls in place for some of the nastier chemicals that result.
They tend to suffer from the same problems, however -- low flight times. You can have an electric R/C plane that's extremely high performance and fly for 3 minutes (with Ni-cads), or a very very tame flying plane that flys for 30 minutes (using Li-ion cells.) With a glow or gas engine, you can have a very high performance plane that flies for 30 minutes -- or you can try and fly across the Atlantic in an 11 lb plane.
Electrics are quieter, cleaner (no oil sprayed everywhere) and easier to deal with, which are the main reasons for their popularity. You can fly them where gas/glow planes would not be allowed.
Still, a plane that carries a passenger (i.e. not a model) for only 100 miles per charge really isn't going to be that useful. They're going to need to be able to make the fuel cells work before this plane will be accepted as anymore more than a toy. Either that, or they're going to need to make a *massive* improvent in battery technology -- such as being able to hold 5x as much charge. It may happen eventually, but it's not likely to happen soon.