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New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation
An anonymous reader writes to mention Boeing has successfully completed tests for the engine that will power HALE, the new prop plane that will be able to stay aloft for long periods of time. "The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight, which is definitely better than a Taurus and apparently exceeded their expectations on fuel economy. Chris Haddox at Boeing's Advanced Systems said that while it will be several years before HALE flies, the key to this aircraft is the propulsion system and this recent test was very promising."
What sort of mileage does a Taurus get at 65000 feet?
liqbase
The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight
This must be why the average fuel economy of American cars continues to suck so much dirt, all of the engineers are working on high altitude aircraft engines for use in the upcoming (any day now) FLYING version of the Ford Taurus...yeah.
New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation
Oh, the humanity!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Hate to be the downer of the party, but that's the way our leaders think. Gain the "high ground."
Would've never guessed that fuel efficiency was prized more by military than civilian customers. Or is there some subsidy for "green" fuels in some Defense appropriations bill?
So, the fuel economy would go up with less fuel in the tank? Is this the reason why my wife always seems to drive her Taurus around with the fuel gauge always on "E"?
You people need to stop feeding this sort of stuff to the mechanically inept. I mean, it took me two hours to explain there was no such thing as "blinker fluid" to her friend the other day.
Hydrogen! Yay! It's everywhere - heck, water is 2/3rds Hydrogen - meaning it is safe and plentiful and when you burn it all you get is water! But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water? At this point the answer is based soundly in the same thermodynamics that condemns us all to a second stone age: LOTS AND LOTS of energy, my friend, meaning hydrogen solves nothing. Hell, it's not even easy to store the corrosive stuff.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
How much energy does it take to produce the hydrogen?
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's an energy storage system, and not a very good one.
Deleted
For aircraft developers, the advantage of hydrogen has always been that it delivers more energy per weight unit than traditional hydrocarbon fuels. The matching disadvantage is that because of its low density, it is much bulkier, so requires bigger and heavier fuel tanks. Temperature is also an issue with pro and cons. On the one hand, LH2 is very cold, so ice formation on the skin of the aircraft can be an issue. On the other hand, LH2 is still chemically stable at high temperatures that would turn fossil fuels into a nasty sludge, or even break down hydrocarbon molecules before they can be properly burned. All that always made LH2 a very suitable fuel for a big rocket or for the hypothetical Mach 4 space plane. Its use on a slow high-altitude UAV poses very different challenges.
You know what other aircraft was hydrogen powered? THE HINDENBURG! *hides under the desk*
The ability to, say... orbit above a cave mouth for days and light up someone's world with a few 500-lb bombs whenever they stick their head out is not currently available- the closest we have to this capability is predators (which can deliver a hellfire and can stay aloft for a while but not for a week). Task a couple of these to a mission and you could keep an asset overhead for as long as there's budget- which gets you a couple of things: Instant strike capability, the ability to call in tactical strikes from in-theater assets, the ability to guide in tactical precision munitions, and multiple-strike capability from the same asset (2000 lbs is a ton of hellfire missiles, as it were- or one really big bomb, or any arrangement of 100, 250, 500, 1000- or 2000-lb bombs).
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
Ahh, don't go a burst the AC's bubble. He's riding high on who-knows-what. He's so damn sure that he's in the right and everyone else is dead wrong that at this point he wouldn't sign up for an account here even if we told him he could have Rob Malda's ID here.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
More survived than died. IIRC, of the 100 or so people on board, only about 30 died. Almost all of the deaths were from jumping. When it caught fire, people panicked and jumped; the ground is what killed them. Almost everybody who rode the ship to the ground lived to tell their tale. It was a relatively slow and controlled crash, and the flames were all above the people and billowing upward. Try that with an jetliner.
The reason the Hindenburg disaster is remembered so fervently is that it was the first transportation accident covered in mass-media audio/video distribution. Bloody everybody has heard Herbert Morrison's "Oh the humanity". These days, the general population would hardly bat an eye, but at the time, it was unprecedented.
The real tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster is that the world gave up on lighter-than-air craft, perceiving hydrogen-filled balloons as inherently dangerous. In fact, it's very likely it would have been safer than conventional fixed-wing jetliners. You don't fall out of the sky due to engine failure in an airship. Meanwhile, a blimp on approach hold uses drastically less fuel. Sure, they're nowhere near as fast as jets, but they would have made a great complimentary technology.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.