NASA Offers $1.5 Million For 200MPG Aircraft

coondoggie writes to mention that NASA's Green Flight Challenge is offering up to $1.5 million for an aircraft that can hit 200 passenger miles per gallon while maintaining 100 mph on a 200 mile flight. "The Challenge is intended to bring about the development and convergence of new technologies and innovations that can improve the community acceptance, efficiency, door-to-door speed, utility, environmental-friendliness, affordability and safety of future air vehicles, CAFÉ stated. Such technologies and innovations include, but are not limited to, bio-fueled propulsion, breakthroughs in batteries, motors, fuel-cells and ultra-capacitors that enable electric-powered flight, advanced high lift technologies for very short takeoff and landing distances, ultra-quiet propellers, enhanced structural efficiency by advances in material science and nano-technology and safety features such as vehicle parachutes and air-bags."

Comments

Re:$1.5M? Peanuts.

[Delwin]

They're looking for amateurs and university projects not Boeing or Northrup to take this one up.

"Passenger miles" the catch.

[Anonymous Freak]

Moving four passengers the 200 miles at 100 MPH on four gallons of gas would pull it off. That would be a 'raw' MPG of 50 MPG. Or, in airplane parliance, that two hour trip would consume at an average rate of 2 gph (Gallons per Hour, the normal measurement used in the aviation industry.) A two-place airplane would need to consume half as much fuel to qualify.

A Cessna 172, with four passengers, consumes somewhere between 7-10 gallons per hour. So this would be a serious improvement. There are some 'light sport' aircraft that draw near 4 GPH, but those are two-place.

Either way, still way better than requiring a raw 200 miles per gallon.

Re:A-380 halfway there

[sabre86]

Sadly, an Airbus A-380 isn't going to fit in the size requirements. The plane has to fit into CAFE's hanger. Here's the floor plan.

The requirements in the rules, Appendix B, are:

Vehicle height: less than or equal to 13 feet
Vehicle length: less than or equal to 23 feet from main landing gear to tip of tail
Landing gear footprint must fit onto CAFE Scales (See CFTC floor plan, below)
Gross weight: less than or equal to 6500 pounds on main landing gear and less than or equal to 2000 lb on nose or tail wheel
Wingspan (as projected onto a level surface), if less than or equal to 44 feet, must be capable of being shortened to less than or equal to 44 feet by wing-folding or tip removal that can be easily accomplished in 20 minutes or less by no more than 4 adult persons of average size and strength. This is necessary to fit typical tie-downs, hangar rows and the width of the CAFE Flight Test Center's hangar. Any small additional projected span of winglets, tip tanks or other wing tip device, as vertically projected onto a level surface, will be included as wingspan.

--sabre86

Re:Wow

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Yes you can, and it's called a honda or a subaru or any small car that seats 4. These are passenger miles, not MPG. Hell, my piggish WRX gets 26 mpg on a long trip, so that's 104 passenger MPG if I have 3 people with me.