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Electricity Over Glass
guddan writes "Running a live wire into a passenger jet's fuel tank seems like a bad idea on the face of it. Still, sensors that monitor the fuel tank have to run on electricity, so aircraft makers previously had little choice. But what if power could be delivered over optical fiber instead of copper wire, without fear of short circuits and sparks? In late May, the big laser and optics company JDS Uniphase Corp., in San Jose, Calif., bought a small Silicon Valley firm with the technology to do just that."
But what if power could be delivered over optical fiber instead of copper wire, without fear of short circuits and sparks?
You're stilling bringing as much power into the fuel tank. High-power beams of light aren't any safer, a laser can cut inch thick steel.
At least electricity is very well understood, we know how to insulate the wire, we know how much voltage will spark in a given medium, and the low voltage for sensors is very safe.
High energy lightbeams are not at all well understood. Will the fiber heat up? What about light leakage, will that cause an explosion? What if the fragile fiber breaks while the beam is on?
Who even says that the sensor necessarily needs to be fully electronic? You can have a mechanical piece that sticks in the fuel tank and have an electronic control piece that's outside of the fuel tank. In fact, this is exactly how the gas gauge in your car works. This design has, quite frankly, worked well for decades. Sure there's a few disadvantages, but, uh, who cares?
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What, no one ever heard of vacuum lines? Or maybe pressurized lines?
I'm no rocket scientist either, and I'm sure that those rocket scientists has already consider those options you've mentioned. Perhaps because it is on an airplane going over 500mph and you have all sorts of physics and temperature considerations that vaccuum/pressurized lines are just not best suited for.