Tuxer

Correct. Fuel is around 16/36th of the CO2 mass it emit when being burnt. A 777 carries around 120 tons of fuel for a SF/LON flight, so that's around 300 tons of emissions per flight.

There is a ballistic chute on the cirrus SF50 (their single-engine jet). It's a 7 seater IIRC (6 minimum), and roughly the same weight (2.7T for the cirrus, 3.1 for the lilium).

This type of antiscientific/clickbait reporting shouldn't be on HN. ITER (whatever you think of its results, its competition with more modern approaches like commonwealth fusion systems, and fusion in general) has never been designed for, and has never claimed net-positive power production. It's a prototype vessel for research.

Thats not exactly right. It’s simply that you cannot sell something built >51% by the factory under experimental rules, you’d need to have it FAA certified which this isn’t ( for thousands of reasons ).

The 51% rule is extremely common in experimental aviation.

Transoceanic aircraft need lots of ETOPS time. For example the boeing 777 (twin-engine, transoceanic) has an ETOPS of 330 minutes, so it always needs to be 330 min away from an airport (which is 11 hours of flight from airport A to airport B, not taking wind into account)

Yeah agreed, even on the GA market, the eFlyer 2 is a much more aerodynamic design (low wing, wheel pants, lower windshield height) which is already claiming 36kW cruise at 100kts.

I'm surprised nobody talked about the potential implications of effectively embedding, now that the device is standalone, a lithium ion battery into your skull.

I'm not a battery hater whatsoever but in the case of a thermal runoff if the battery starts burning... there is no way to get it out.

those aren't super hornets by the way (no civilian would get an authorization to fly a super hornet). They're the A/B, original hornet version, and any superhornet would fly circles around one.

Apple does the same thing, where they claim iMessage is ETE encrypted, but the keys (so capabilities to read) are stored on their servers.

hi it's me caltrain, serving santa clara and growing 2x in 15 years

https://nationaltransitdatabase.org/california/peninsula-cor...

absolutely nothing. If the cost of carbon removal was 5$/ton, we wouldn't be having this climate change problem whatsoever.

If we're in nitpick land, it truly is important (especially in that 737 case) to remember that stalls on wings has nothing to do with speed, and everything to do with angle of attack (the angle between the wing and the apparent wind).

Now, to be fair, going faster DOES create apparent wind coming from the front, so it decreases your angle of attack, but that's it.

(the sensor that failed on the 737s was the angle of attack indicator, trying to estimate if the wing was going to stall).

Driving has been made impossible

Sorry you can't drive a 2-ton vehicle through one of the most dense cities in the world, that also has a very extensive public transportation system.

For what it's worth, there is a BIG difference between 22 million tons to orbit (LEO), and the Sun-Earth L1 point, in terms of delta-v.

Tesla moved to 21700 on model 3 and newer models

Space isn't like a highway where you can move from A to B at minimal expense. Switching orbits, both orbit heights but mainly orbit inclinations, comes at a very high delta-V expense and therefore propellant expense, which this craft simply doesn't have the volume to hold.

This cannot shuttle between LEO stations and switch orbits to imitate multiple observation sats unless those sats and stations are very close in terms of orbits.

"common type" is what people usually use.

92kWh

I was unclear in my weight explanations. The OP’s point was that one of the advantages of fossil fuel aircraft was its ability to shed weight during flight from its fuel source burning away, and I claimed that was irrelevant for GA ( which it is ).

Completely agreed on the avantages of fuel for weight adjustments before takeoff though.

To be fair however the eFlyer specs of 440pounds of useful load for the 2, and 800 for the 4, are quite generous when you compare to fuel equivalent aircraft with realistic fuel loads.

The real insane drawback is the limited range at useful speeds...

Hehe I also fly a super decathlon for aerobatics. 0.3mile finals! ;)

For a VFR aircraft I don't mind an iPad-type device for nav. I did my initial training on a 6pack 152 and I was fine with that.

I'm mostly interested (and they've remained silent) on their choice of avionics for the IFR eFlyer4. I'd kill for a G1000...

I would WAY rather lose my engine and instruments in VFR conditions (where I can see the ground and see where I'm going) compared to IFR, where I can't see where I'm going and I'm relying on my instruments to navigate.

This is why IFR certification (more dangerous and skilled) is an addon that takes dozens of hours to complete initial training for, and then requires Instrument Proficiency Checks every 6 months to keep current on.

This is wrong on many levels:

1) General aviation doesn't rely at all on the weight difference from fuel burn for flight planning (I am IFR certified and fly Cirrus SR22s). My fuel not burning in my wings wouldn't change anything, as I'm constrained by takeoff weight not by landing weight, and I don't climb into the flight-levels high enough for my current weight to matter (that would require FL22 or above, and I like my breathable oxygen).

2) General aviation certification, while expensive, is far from the cost of commercial cert, especially for VFR aircraft. There is no reason why they can't certify an electric aircraft, and they have funding from Subaru's investment fund. Pipistrel (electro) did it for their ultralight.

3) Of course the motor's electrical system is separate from the aircraft's other electrical system, that's aircraft certification 101 (being able to through the master switch deactivate alternator but not battery power). On top of that 12v instrumentation is (obviously) on a different power level than an electric engine, so the batteries will be different.

IFR certification will require 2 instrumentation power source backups (like BAT1/BAT2 on my cirrus) which really isn't a problem, when you've put a 92kWh battery on a plane you can put 2 0.5kWh batteries as redundancy.

(for what it's worth, I'm currently waiting to buy an eFlyer 4).

High compression ratio / turbo gas engines definitively do. Try pushing a BMW M3 ( competition for the model 3 perf ) on 87 and you’ll see how long the engine lasts.

Look up engine knock.

Jet-A at airfields isn't a valid measure of how much airlines. I read that most airlines pay around 1.10$/gal for Jet-A.

Well if you're investing a lot in newer plane tech, yeah I'd like them to think about the externalities of what they do and find alternative solutions. For example on high-flying airliners (I expect this plane to, like concorde, fly around FL550) you could potentially go with a hydrogen propulsion at least in cruise, since the outside air temperature wouldn't result in H2 boil.

Given the current emissions of air travel I find fairly repulsive to spend that much money designing a new airplane going completely in the wrong direction in terms of fuel efficiency. There is no way ( regardless of altitude, unless you’re going in LEO ) to avoid the huge drag losses of going supersonic, so most of that ticket price is going to go towards fuel.

If this ever flies and there is a kerosene carbon tax, that plane is dead.

It is. 40% of french emissions are due to personal transportation (cars), 8% airplanes.

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/

As you can see, the US response is critically deficient.

did no one see armageddon, seriously?

I'd send denis villeneuve :)