It's not "science fiction", but it absolutely does require significant prep work (same as a Mars colony). As mentioned, there's no shortage of missions sitting on the backburner that would provide much of the needed data... but Mars gets all of the funding.
there is some unknown form of lightning
The nature of Venus's lightning is very much unknown at this point of time, including whether there's a hadesphere "anomaly" that shocks things as they descend through it and whether there's a radio-reflective layer that allows for lightning detection from great distances. But both of these things only apply to the lower atmosphere. It's unclear at this point whether there's any lightning at all in the middle (habitable) cloud layer. Lightning flashes have never been visually detected, so that at least rules out the upper cloud deck, and reduces the odds that it's in the middle. But we also don't think it's volcanic based on the evidence thusfar. We really don't know. That said, even if lightning does exist in the middle cloud deck, like Earth you wouldn't expect it to be uniformly spread across the wide potential latitude and altitude ranges - the odds that every habitable height and latitude would be high lightning risk zones is extremely unlikely. It's quite possible that none of them face a lightning risk.
As for the danger from a lightning strike to a blimp, on Earth it's proven to be.... well, underwhelming. While lightning has been implicated in fires of hydrogen airships, in helium blimps it hasn't been implicated in more than rare, minor skin damage (to be fair, blimps don't fly when adverse weather is to be expected - but even ground-tethered aerostats which are out 24/7 deal with lightning surprisingly well). And this is with no lightning protection system, which could readily be incorporated into a Venus habitat. And even moreso? Check the dielectric strength for helium vs. oxygen and nitrogen vs. CO2. Helium breaks down far easier than air on Earth (0,15 vs 3 MV/m), making it easier for lightning to flow through a blimp than through the air around it. This isn't the situation on a Venus habitat filled with O2/N2. And the outside environment ionized particulate matter, unlike the interior. And a PTFE/UHMWPE skin is a better insulator than polyurethane/nylon.
In short: more data is absolutely needed. But in no way does it appear like it's going to be a serious problem.
and so-called "atmospheric gravity-waves" (completely unrelated to gravitational waves)
I'm not sure you know what gravity waves are, given your inclusion of them here. We have them on Earth, too. In fact, we really had to search to find them on Venus; there's no evidence that they're more common or more severe than on Earth (nor should they be - the mountains that (presumably) cause them are such great distances below). They can be a source of turbulence**, but no more than other sources on average. Glider pilots love using them** to make long sustained glides. Furthermore, on Venus they've only ever been detected over Ishtar Terra anyway - by far the highest mountains.
** There's really three effects in play - near the ground you have rotors (high turbulence, but irrelevant here), then higher, stationary lee waves (stable, good for gliding), and evanescent waves (detached; cause high level turbulence by shifting the tropopause periodically up and down... but a blimp designed for tropospheric operation doesn't care about that). More to the point, blimps aren't particularly turbulence sensitive to begin with - they're not like planes. In severe cases they can pitch and roll, but they never lose lift (obviously). Lesser turbulence that would bother passengers on an airplane is generally unnoticeable on a blimp.
"Winds" are not hazardous, turbulence is. The high wind speed (superrotation) is a significant benefit, not a negative; you circle the planet at no energy cost, and it dramatically reduces your day length.
There's still a good deal uncertainty about the degree of turbulence that can be expected, and like Earth it probably varies greatly by latitude and altitude. At this point, the only data that we have on that comes from the Vega probes. From what we've seen, it's probably in the same ballpark as that on Earth.
and hydrogen fluoride rain
Hydrogen fluoride rain will not occur on Venus. We're not sure if any rain (or snow, or hail, or icing, or other forms of precipitation) occurs on Venus, and if so, from what compounds (that will depend on the altitude). But hydrogen fluoride is too minor of a constituent to form a significant portion of rain at any altitude.
Hydrogen fluoride's risk comes from (like all chemicals on Venus) permeation through the envelope. Plants are rather sensitive to HF, moreso than to H2SO4 and H3PO4 mists and SO2. The rate of permeation of a compound depends on the surface area and the permeation rate data for the compound, which is usually based on the material and relative to thickness and temperature. The VEGA balloons used old-school PTFE, which has rather high permeation (as one might guess, given that expanded PTFE is used in breathable waterproof fabrics). But plastics have moved beyond that. The next big shift was to liquid crystal polymers like vectran. They're not as chemical-resistant as PTFE, but generally considered "good enough" for Venus; they're also much stronger and they have incredibly low rates of permeation. The big problem with liquid crystal polymers is that they're very complex, chemically; it would be difficult to produce them locally. Hence the ideal approach IMHO - if one wants low permeation but also easy production chains - is modern PTFE variants plus a UHMWPE ripstop.
There have been big advancements in PTFE in recent years, such as Teflon NXT and FEP (among many others). NXT is PTFE plus a fraction of a percent PPVE, which dramatically reduces its permeability as well as improving a lot of its other properties. They're not as good as vectran, but the permeability levels are acceptable. PPVE could be supplied from earth, but it's not the only such comonomer that provides such benefits. IMHO the most interesting is HFP, because that can be produced from the same process that produces TFE, just at higher pressures. Indeed, FEP is a copolymerized HFP/TFE. As for the ripstop, UHMWPE is even simpler than PTFE to produce, and more to the point has already been demonstrated for space applications, so it's at a high TRL (though fabric production from it is a lower TRL). While UHMWPE doesn't have the heat tolerance of PTFE, it's otherwise excellent - acid resistant (in case anything permeates through), extremely abrasion resistant, and a very high tensile strength to weight ratio. It's UV sensitive, but Venus isn't a high UV environment, and 0,2% HALS absorbers imported from Earth render it quite stable (there's a lot of other absorbers that can be paired with it). For the PTFE you'd also want ATO or ITO (0,2-0,5%) to make it high-E.
Did I mention that I've been researching this topic?;)
It might be the most earthlike, but outside of active volcanos and ocean trenches you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere on Earth less hospitable.
It's more hospitable than Mars.:) People focus a lot about Venus's cloudtop acids (which are actually a resource - heating 85% H2SO4 mist (which your engines that compensate for meridional drift can suck across adsorption bed) yields water (both directly and by the decomposition of H2SO4 to H2O + SO3) and oxygen (from the catalytic decomposition of SO3 at elevated temperatures)). But the acid mists
Indeed. I'm not opposed to missions designed for human settlement offworld - I actually think that's a great goal. But I am designed for "for the cameras" bread and circuses stuff. I'll put it simply: if you launch a habitat, and by the end of its lifespan (say, 20-30 years if you build it well) they haven't reached the capability to by and large rebuild the lion's share of that habitat, then you've wasted your money. You've just done a massively expensive systems test, which could have far more efficiently (money-wise) been conducted by robotic systems on Mars and mockups at home.
Meanwhile, there's a TREMENDOUS amount that we have yet to learn about our own solar system. Heck, look at Earth's twin Venus... it's almost embarrassing how little we know about it, in almost every respect, and it's the easiest planet to get to (about the same delta-V as Mars if you use aerocapture, but shorter transit times, more frequent launch windows, and more available sunlight; aerocapture is easier as well) And it's not like we don't know how to study it - Venera proved it for the surface, VEGA for the clouds, and there's been several orbiters. But we still know next to nothing about the nature of its lightning; we only know the most common elements of its clouds as a whole (not specific layers or lesser constituents), and there are potentially whole layers (such as surface hazes) that we're not even sure if they exist; we're not even sure whether the most significant cloud particle type (type 3) actually exists; we still don't know what's absorbing Venus's UV (polyatomic sulfur? Iron chlorides?); we think it's the most volcanically active planet in the solar system but we've only "maybe" been able to "kind of" observe one eruption; we think it may rain, snow, or ice out but we really don't know; we still don't know what causes a large portion of Venus's weird landforms; we still don't know what the "snow" is on Venus's mountains; we still don't know exactly why Venus is as it is today, so different from Earth (all we have is theories); and about fifty other really fundamental things. And it's right bloody next door.
Indeed - BEAM is built to the same debris impact tolerance standards as the ISS itself. High strength fibers, it should be pointed out, are also used in bulletproof vests.
Fibers tend to have far superior tensile strength to weight ratios vs. metals.
Look, if they were actually making something interesting, creating something new, that would be one thing. But they're just imitating things that others created.
.... as not being REALLY a complaint about the lack of creativity, but rather being an expression of hatred for fun?
My objection wasn't to "people doing whatever makes them happy". My objective was the characterization of "poorly imitating someone else's preexisting work" as "creative".
The rod “ something in appearance like a cross between the flame of a welding torch and the arc of a static electricity charge crackled from the end of the rod even as it burst from the end of the rod the discharge from Galyan’s rod met the discharge from Slothiel’s head on, and the two lines of white fire splashed harmlessly into an aurora of sparks"
Isn't the definition of suicide attacking your own fan base
No, it's "the intentional taking of one's own life." Nothing about a fan base in there. Seriously, if somebody told you, "My brother committed suicide last year", would you respond, "What an idiot - what good did he thing would come of attacking his fan base?"
Should have just gone with "plasma sword" or "energy sword". There's tons of examples of such weapons in science fiction from before Lucas. Changing merely the word "sabre" to "sword" as admittedly a rather weak change.
Look, if they were actually making something interesting, creating something new, that would be one thing. But they're just imitating things that others created.
At least try to do something that even the creators didn't. If these people were for example building real plasma swords, then I'd have more interest. But they're just hitting each other with big mass-produced plastic swords, the same sorts of toys that little kids play with.
Yes time matters and of course it affects total effective power density
No, by the DEFINITION OF POWER, time is not a component of it.
consuming the *same power*
You don't consume "power", you consume energy.
So if i want 1kW for 6 min, i can get away with a battery 10x lighter than if i need 1kW for an hour
Because 1kW *6 minutes = 6 kW-minutes (360J = 6kW-minutes = 0,1kWh), while 1kWh*1h = 1kWh (3600J = 1kWh). Joules and kilowatt hours are measures of ENERGY, not power.
I'm done here, I'm not going to waste my time with an idiot.
Mass density: excellent Volumetric density: horrible Thrust: poor (though probably not an issue for passenger jets) Ease of ignition: easy. Burns aggressively in almost any fuel-air mixture, requires only a trivial spark to ignite, and burns can accelerate from deflagrations to detonations in many circumstances. Ease of accidental ignition: likewise, easy. Liquid storage: very difficult. High boiloff rate (liquefies air outside its tank), lots of energy goes into creation (incl. ortho/para conversion), entrained air freezes out as a highly explosive ice, subpar compatibility with composites, metal embrittlement over long periods. Boiloff gases pool under overhangs / enters pipes & follow them to their destinations. Gas storage: difficult. Requires very high pressures for even low densities; high leakage rate and metal embrittlement over long periods. Leaked gas pools under overhangs / enters pipes & follows them to their destinations. Airflow required for stoichiometric burn: high (~17kg air per kg kerosene, ~40kg air per kg H2)
Basically: as a fuel, hydrogen is both wonderful and terrible.
Fuel cells are not all that great either. One of the biggest problems is that they're low power density. And the more power you try to get out of them, the lower their efficiency gets. Plus, aircraft jet engines - when operating at high throttle - are actually pretty efficient to begin with.
A hydrogen fuel cycle - between electrolysis losses and fuel cell losses is much less efficient than an electric cycle. When it comes to cars, usually 1/4 to 1/2 the system efficiency; for aircraft it'd be in the ballpark of 1/2. It also represents far higher capital costs (if you think batteries are expensive, try pricing fuel cells some time) and shorter lifespans (yes, fuel cell lifespans are generally pretty terrible - even in passenger car usage). Fuel cells also demand very high purity fuel, which means that you can rule out the cheapest hydrogen (NG-reformed) - it has to be (extremely expensive) electrolysis H2. Electricity, by contrast, is extremely cheap - much cheaper than jet fuel.
The biggest advantages for switching to electricity for an aircraft come on the ground and during landing. While jet engines are very efficient at high throttle, they're very inefficient at low throttle, and burn a lot of fuel when idling, too. So there's already a lot of work on electrifying the landing gear for taxi, for example.
When it comes to hybrid engines, there's two big targets. One is an electric fan feeding the engine. The other is direct electric drive of the compressor, with the nacelle as the stator and the compressor as the rotor. The latter option lets you entirely eliminate the turbine, which is an expensive piece of hardware that adds significant parasitic drag and reduces combustion efficiency. So moving energy consumption to electric not only lets you save on fuel - one of the biggest costs of an airline - but also engine purchase cost and maintenance. This of course comes at the cost of batteries, but their prices keep dropping (and with how much Tesla is going to need to scale up to meet their orders, they're going to drop even more than expected)
Fram: Forward ("frahm") Sókn: Attack ("soak") Framsókn: Progress ("FRAHM-soak") Framsóknar: Of progress ("FRAHM-soak-nar") Flokkur: Political party (also group, class, category, etc) ("FLOCK-er") Flokkurinn: The political party ("FLOCK-er-in") Framsóknarflokkurinn: The political party of progress, AKA the Progress Party ("FRAHM-soak-nar-Flock-er-in"):)
which just the word looks like a band of vikings sharing a flagon of mead and a haunch of smoked meat.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not "science fiction", but it absolutely does require significant prep work (same as a Mars colony). As mentioned, there's no shortage of missions sitting on the backburner that would provide much of the needed data... but Mars gets all of the funding.
The nature of Venus's lightning is very much unknown at this point of time, including whether there's a hadesphere "anomaly" that shocks things as they descend through it and whether there's a radio-reflective layer that allows for lightning detection from great distances. But both of these things only apply to the lower atmosphere. It's unclear at this point whether there's any lightning at all in the middle (habitable) cloud layer. Lightning flashes have never been visually detected, so that at least rules out the upper cloud deck, and reduces the odds that it's in the middle. But we also don't think it's volcanic based on the evidence thusfar. We really don't know. That said, even if lightning does exist in the middle cloud deck, like Earth you wouldn't expect it to be uniformly spread across the wide potential latitude and altitude ranges - the odds that every habitable height and latitude would be high lightning risk zones is extremely unlikely. It's quite possible that none of them face a lightning risk.
As for the danger from a lightning strike to a blimp, on Earth it's proven to be.... well, underwhelming. While lightning has been implicated in fires of hydrogen airships, in helium blimps it hasn't been implicated in more than rare, minor skin damage (to be fair, blimps don't fly when adverse weather is to be expected - but even ground-tethered aerostats which are out 24/7 deal with lightning surprisingly well). And this is with no lightning protection system, which could readily be incorporated into a Venus habitat. And even moreso? Check the dielectric strength for helium vs. oxygen and nitrogen vs. CO2. Helium breaks down far easier than air on Earth (0,15 vs 3 MV/m), making it easier for lightning to flow through a blimp than through the air around it. This isn't the situation on a Venus habitat filled with O2/N2. And the outside environment ionized particulate matter, unlike the interior. And a PTFE/UHMWPE skin is a better insulator than polyurethane/nylon.
In short: more data is absolutely needed. But in no way does it appear like it's going to be a serious problem.
I'm not sure you know what gravity waves are, given your inclusion of them here. We have them on Earth, too. In fact, we really had to search to find them on Venus; there's no evidence that they're more common or more severe than on Earth (nor should they be - the mountains that (presumably) cause them are such great distances below). They can be a source of turbulence**, but no more than other sources on average. Glider pilots love using them** to make long sustained glides. Furthermore, on Venus they've only ever been detected over Ishtar Terra anyway - by far the highest mountains.
** There's really three effects in play - near the ground you have rotors (high turbulence, but irrelevant here), then higher, stationary lee waves (stable, good for gliding), and evanescent waves (detached; cause high level turbulence by shifting the tropopause periodically up and down... but a blimp designed for tropospheric operation doesn't care about that). More to the point, blimps aren't particularly turbulence sensitive to begin with - they're not like planes. In severe cases they can pitch and roll, but they never lose lift (obviously). Lesser turbulence that would bother passengers on an airplane is generally unnoticeable on a blimp.
It didn't turn out so well...
"Winds" are not hazardous, turbulence is. The high wind speed (superrotation) is a significant benefit, not a negative; you circle the planet at no energy cost, and it dramatically reduces your day length.
There's still a good deal uncertainty about the degree of turbulence that can be expected, and like Earth it probably varies greatly by latitude and altitude. At this point, the only data that we have on that comes from the Vega probes. From what we've seen, it's probably in the same ballpark as that on Earth.
Hydrogen fluoride rain will not occur on Venus. We're not sure if any rain (or snow, or hail, or icing, or other forms of precipitation) occurs on Venus, and if so, from what compounds (that will depend on the altitude). But hydrogen fluoride is too minor of a constituent to form a significant portion of rain at any altitude.
Hydrogen fluoride's risk comes from (like all chemicals on Venus) permeation through the envelope. Plants are rather sensitive to HF, moreso than to H2SO4 and H3PO4 mists and SO2. The rate of permeation of a compound depends on the surface area and the permeation rate data for the compound, which is usually based on the material and relative to thickness and temperature. The VEGA balloons used old-school PTFE, which has rather high permeation (as one might guess, given that expanded PTFE is used in breathable waterproof fabrics). But plastics have moved beyond that. The next big shift was to liquid crystal polymers like vectran. They're not as chemical-resistant as PTFE, but generally considered "good enough" for Venus; they're also much stronger and they have incredibly low rates of permeation. The big problem with liquid crystal polymers is that they're very complex, chemically; it would be difficult to produce them locally. Hence the ideal approach IMHO - if one wants low permeation but also easy production chains - is modern PTFE variants plus a UHMWPE ripstop.
There have been big advancements in PTFE in recent years, such as Teflon NXT and FEP (among many others). NXT is PTFE plus a fraction of a percent PPVE, which dramatically reduces its permeability as well as improving a lot of its other properties. They're not as good as vectran, but the permeability levels are acceptable. PPVE could be supplied from earth, but it's not the only such comonomer that provides such benefits. IMHO the most interesting is HFP, because that can be produced from the same process that produces TFE, just at higher pressures. Indeed, FEP is a copolymerized HFP/TFE. As for the ripstop, UHMWPE is even simpler than PTFE to produce, and more to the point has already been demonstrated for space applications, so it's at a high TRL (though fabric production from it is a lower TRL). While UHMWPE doesn't have the heat tolerance of PTFE, it's otherwise excellent - acid resistant (in case anything permeates through), extremely abrasion resistant, and a very high tensile strength to weight ratio. It's UV sensitive, but Venus isn't a high UV environment, and 0,2% HALS absorbers imported from Earth render it quite stable (there's a lot of other absorbers that can be paired with it). For the PTFE you'd also want ATO or ITO (0,2-0,5%) to make it high-E.
Did I mention that I've been researching this topic? ;)
It's more hospitable than Mars. :) People focus a lot about Venus's cloudtop acids (which are actually a resource - heating 85% H2SO4 mist (which your engines that compensate for meridional drift can suck across adsorption bed) yields water (both directly and by the decomposition of H2SO4 to H2O + SO3) and oxygen (from the catalytic decomposition of SO3 at elevated temperatures)). But the acid mists
Should read "But not for 'for the cameras' bread and circuses stuff". Started changing an earlier sentence but didn't fully erase it...
Indeed. I'm not opposed to missions designed for human settlement offworld - I actually think that's a great goal. But I am designed for "for the cameras" bread and circuses stuff. I'll put it simply: if you launch a habitat, and by the end of its lifespan (say, 20-30 years if you build it well) they haven't reached the capability to by and large rebuild the lion's share of that habitat, then you've wasted your money. You've just done a massively expensive systems test, which could have far more efficiently (money-wise) been conducted by robotic systems on Mars and mockups at home.
Meanwhile, there's a TREMENDOUS amount that we have yet to learn about our own solar system. Heck, look at Earth's twin Venus... it's almost embarrassing how little we know about it, in almost every respect, and it's the easiest planet to get to (about the same delta-V as Mars if you use aerocapture, but shorter transit times, more frequent launch windows, and more available sunlight; aerocapture is easier as well) And it's not like we don't know how to study it - Venera proved it for the surface, VEGA for the clouds, and there's been several orbiters. But we still know next to nothing about the nature of its lightning; we only know the most common elements of its clouds as a whole (not specific layers or lesser constituents), and there are potentially whole layers (such as surface hazes) that we're not even sure if they exist; we're not even sure whether the most significant cloud particle type (type 3) actually exists; we still don't know what's absorbing Venus's UV (polyatomic sulfur? Iron chlorides?); we think it's the most volcanically active planet in the solar system but we've only "maybe" been able to "kind of" observe one eruption; we think it may rain, snow, or ice out but we really don't know; we still don't know what causes a large portion of Venus's weird landforms; we still don't know what the "snow" is on Venus's mountains; we still don't know exactly why Venus is as it is today, so different from Earth (all we have is theories); and about fifty other really fundamental things. And it's right bloody next door.
Indeed - BEAM is built to the same debris impact tolerance standards as the ISS itself. High strength fibers, it should be pointed out, are also used in bulletproof vests.
Fibers tend to have far superior tensile strength to weight ratios vs. metals.
(Most earthlike apart from Earth, that is ;) )
Meh, everyone has their own goals. I personally wish we'd be focusing toward a colony in Venus's cloudtops (the most Earthlike place in the solar system).
But Mars gets all the money.
Seriously? How are you reading:
Indeed. At least that would be creative.
My objection wasn't to "people doing whatever makes them happy". My objective was the characterization of "poorly imitating someone else's preexisting work" as "creative".
Analog Magazine cover, 1969
The rod “ something in appearance like a cross between the flame of a welding torch and the arc of a static electricity charge crackled from the end of the rod even as it burst from the end of the rod the discharge from Galyan’s rod met the discharge from Slothiel’s head on, and the two lines of white fire splashed harmlessly into an aurora of sparks"
No, it's "the intentional taking of one's own life." Nothing about a fan base in there. Seriously, if somebody told you, "My brother committed suicide last year", would you respond, "What an idiot - what good did he thing would come of attacking his fan base?"
Was I the only one here who actually tried googling "Cats In Space"?
Should have just gone with "plasma sword" or "energy sword". There's tons of examples of such weapons in science fiction from before Lucas. Changing merely the word "sabre" to "sword" as admittedly a rather weak change.
Look, if they were actually making something interesting, creating something new, that would be one thing. But they're just imitating things that others created.
At least try to do something that even the creators didn't. If these people were for example building real plasma swords, then I'd have more interest. But they're just hitting each other with big mass-produced plastic swords, the same sorts of toys that little kids play with.
No, by the DEFINITION OF POWER, time is not a component of it.
You don't consume "power", you consume energy.
Because 1kW *6 minutes = 6 kW-minutes (360J = 6kW-minutes = 0,1kWh), while 1kWh*1h = 1kWh (3600J = 1kWh). Joules and kilowatt hours are measures of ENERGY, not power.
I'm done here, I'm not going to waste my time with an idiot.
You ARE mixing up energy and power density. Power has nothing to do with time. Energy is power times time. A joule (energy) is a watt(power)-second.
Please at least get your terms correct before you start discussing an issue.
Power density is far better in batteries than fuel cells. I think you're confusing energy density and power density.
I assumed they meant to say "wasn't" ;)
Indeed, to sum up:
Mass density: excellent
Volumetric density: horrible
Thrust: poor (though probably not an issue for passenger jets)
Ease of ignition: easy. Burns aggressively in almost any fuel-air mixture, requires only a trivial spark to ignite, and burns can accelerate from deflagrations to detonations in many circumstances.
Ease of accidental ignition: likewise, easy.
Liquid storage: very difficult. High boiloff rate (liquefies air outside its tank), lots of energy goes into creation (incl. ortho/para conversion), entrained air freezes out as a highly explosive ice, subpar compatibility with composites, metal embrittlement over long periods. Boiloff gases pool under overhangs / enters pipes & follow them to their destinations.
Gas storage: difficult. Requires very high pressures for even low densities; high leakage rate and metal embrittlement over long periods. Leaked gas pools under overhangs / enters pipes & follows them to their destinations.
Airflow required for stoichiometric burn: high (~17kg air per kg kerosene, ~40kg air per kg H2)
Basically: as a fuel, hydrogen is both wonderful and terrible.
Fuel cells are not all that great either. One of the biggest problems is that they're low power density. And the more power you try to get out of them, the lower their efficiency gets. Plus, aircraft jet engines - when operating at high throttle - are actually pretty efficient to begin with.
A hydrogen fuel cycle - between electrolysis losses and fuel cell losses is much less efficient than an electric cycle. When it comes to cars, usually 1/4 to 1/2 the system efficiency; for aircraft it'd be in the ballpark of 1/2. It also represents far higher capital costs (if you think batteries are expensive, try pricing fuel cells some time) and shorter lifespans (yes, fuel cell lifespans are generally pretty terrible - even in passenger car usage). Fuel cells also demand very high purity fuel, which means that you can rule out the cheapest hydrogen (NG-reformed) - it has to be (extremely expensive) electrolysis H2. Electricity, by contrast, is extremely cheap - much cheaper than jet fuel.
The biggest advantages for switching to electricity for an aircraft come on the ground and during landing. While jet engines are very efficient at high throttle, they're very inefficient at low throttle, and burn a lot of fuel when idling, too. So there's already a lot of work on electrifying the landing gear for taxi, for example.
When it comes to hybrid engines, there's two big targets. One is an electric fan feeding the engine. The other is direct electric drive of the compressor, with the nacelle as the stator and the compressor as the rotor. The latter option lets you entirely eliminate the turbine, which is an expensive piece of hardware that adds significant parasitic drag and reduces combustion efficiency. So moving energy consumption to electric not only lets you save on fuel - one of the biggest costs of an airline - but also engine purchase cost and maintenance. This of course comes at the cost of batteries, but their prices keep dropping (and with how much Tesla is going to need to scale up to meet their orders, they're going to drop even more than expected)
I once tried to get my occupation in the phone book listed as "talandi slökkvibíll" ("talking firetruck").
It didn't work :P
The north is actually a bit warmer (and a lot less rainy) in the summer :) But spring comes significantly later.
Dunno, I just typed it. Still can't type a thorn, though.
Fram: Forward ("frahm") :)
Sókn: Attack ("soak")
Framsókn: Progress ("FRAHM-soak")
Framsóknar: Of progress ("FRAHM-soak-nar")
Flokkur: Political party (also group, class, category, etc) ("FLOCK-er")
Flokkurinn: The political party ("FLOCK-er-in")
Framsóknarflokkurinn: The political party of progress, AKA the Progress Party ("FRAHM-soak-nar-Flock-er-in")
Maybe a bottle of brennivín and some hangikjöt being consumed by HafTHór Júlíus? ;)
No, that's an eth.