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Boeing Working on Fuel Cell Aircraft
"Boeing is working with development partners on a fuel cell-based small aircraft. It seems like a logical use of the technology. Now if they can come up with a quiet, personal-sized VTOL craft a la Paul Moller's Skycar (which is anything but quiet), we'll really have something." From the article "A Boeing research director was quoted as saying, "While Boeing does not envision that fuel cells will provide primary power for future commercial passenger airplanes, demonstrations like this help pave the way for potentially using this technology in small manned and unmanned air vehicles."
I want my flying car by 2015.
The Skycar is vaporware. It has been for the last 30 years. Please don't use the Skycar as a benchmark for anything but hype and failure.
One of the biggest problems with smaller aircraft is reliability. Simply put, piston engines are not as reliable as jet engines. They must be rebuilt every 2,000 hours of flight under the best circumstances. And, with smaller planes at slower speeds, jets just don't make sense.
Turboprop engines are a good middle ground for mid-sized planes starting at the 12-seat size or so, but are very expensive for the smallest aircraft. (2 and 4 seaters)
Electric motors, other the other hand, can be incredibly reliable. If designed for it, they have just a single moving part, and can run continuously, 24x7x365 for many years without issues. This kind of reliability in a small plane would be just incredible!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Their heads are in the clouds on this one. This project will never fly. I bet it stalls and they never get it off the ground. It simply flies in the face of reason. That said, the sky's the limit when it comes to technological fantasy.
And automobile accidents is actually a big deal today, so I guess they were right too.
I know nothing about engines, so can someone answer some basic questions for me? Wouldn't a fuel-cell engine be essentially an electric engine? Would it be quieter than a gasoline engine? More reliable? Would there be any odor? If so, they would be ideal for ultralights:
I am a hang glider pilot, and I would love to have a small engine for it. There are several manufacturers who make small engines for them, they are loud, stinky, gasoline engines. Most of them only hold 1-2 gallons of fuel, which is plenty for this type of flight. Wouldn't a fuel-cell engine do the trick?
It's not the engines which are noisy on Moller's ultra-dangerous thing (I refuse to dignify it with the title "car" or "aircraft" as it is neither) it's the fans/propellers which make all the noise. You simply can't move lots of air without making a hell of a racket.
See: Overclocked PCs, Helicopters, Jet Engine, extractor fan, air conditioner, Vacuum cleaner...
It wouldn't matter if Moller's thing had fuel cells - it would just as noisy.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Are the power to weight ratios comparable to current internal combustion engines?
You probably mean the external combustion engine, also known as the jet engine. Only small airplanes use pistons and such. And the answer is: of course not. This is yet another PR stunt aimed at the Gasoline Is Eeeeeeevil ninnies of the world who failed freshman chemistry.
If not, what about fuel cell powered dirigibles?
I don't think the problem with dirigibles is how to power them. I think the problem is that there's just about zero demand for a transport service that's about as slow as a ship or train but neither as efficient nor as reliable.
A big cargo ship carrying 70,000 tons of cargo can cruise at 15 knots with its 50,000 HP engines running at 80%. The EPA helpfully estimates big marine engine fuel consumption as about 250 grams per kilowatt-hour, which lets you work out that a cargo ship consumes about 4 grams of fuel per ton of cargo per kilometer traveled.
Four locomotives pulling a hundred-car freight train at 60-80 MPH, with each car carrying 100 tons of cargo, will burn about 7.5 gallons each per mile. That works out to 7 grams of fuel per ton of cargo per kilometer traveled.
There's no way any vehicle that flies can ever come close to that kind of fuel efficiency. So who would want cargo delivery that's just as slow, but much more expensive?
...or some kind of powered trampoline.
This isn't totally humorous, incidentally. Think of aircraft carriers. You can achieve very short take-off distances without putting the giant (noisy) vertical-flight machinery on your aircraft -- because you can just leave it on the ground behind you. But you must then accept the fact that you can only launch in certain places.
Still, I'd bet there's a market for a cheap skycar that can only launch at certain public facilities but can land nearly anywhere.
Go here and look at the nice picture on the right-hand side. Notice that the combustion takes place in the exhaust stream, heading out of the engine. Not inside a cylinder.
Sounds like someone failed basic understanding-of-how-things-work class.
Oh I agree, definitely.