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How about Hybrid planes? Take a conventional Dreamliner or A320, and add batteries and electric engines. Plane takes off using fossil fuel (hard to electrify),

How about Hybrid planes? Take a conventional Dreamliner or A320, and add batteries and electric engines. Plane takes off using fossil fuel (hard to electrify), and then switches to electric engines once at cruise altitude. This is best of both worlds, and provides additional redundancy...

mrfusion 9y ago
I’d actually suggest the opposite. Planes cuuently need overpowered engines just for take off
- ams6110 9y ago
  It will still never make sense until battery energy density increases a lot more. Boost power for takeoff is still going to be cheaper weight-wise burning kerosene than with electric batteries.
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    How much of a Tesla‘s battery is drained after a drag race? Electric seems to be quite good at delivering boost. See also the current generation of supercars from Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren.
    - icegreentea2 9y ago
      The problem is that then the battery and the entire electric half of the hybrid system is then deadweight for the rest of the flight. Now that doesn't mean it's not viable, but it's going to be a difficult calculation to make without actually have specs in front of you. The catapult solutions elsewhere in the thread seem to make more sense. But once again we're all back to actually having to do the math on these. Commercial flight is viable because the engineering safety factors and economic margins are so close to 1. This means that changes actually have to be considered carefully, unlike some other fields where the greater safety factors and margins let you get away with more assumptions.
  - DoctorOetker 9y ago
    probably a stupid question, but since theres landing gear anyway with drag, why can't electrical power be supplied through the wheels? I am thinking something like a tram, possibly with a bottom pantograph?
sitkack 9y ago
Liquid rocket for launching, batteries for cruising.

mrfusion 9y ago

I’d actually suggest the opposite. Planes cuuently need overpowered engines just for take off

ams6110 9y ago
It will still never make sense until battery energy density increases a lot more. Boost power for takeoff is still going to be cheaper weight-wise burning kerosene than with electric batteries.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  How much of a Tesla‘s battery is drained after a drag race? Electric seems to be quite good at delivering boost. See also the current generation of supercars from Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren.
  - icegreentea2 9y ago
    The problem is that then the battery and the entire electric half of the hybrid system is then deadweight for the rest of the flight. Now that doesn't mean it's not viable, but it's going to be a difficult calculation to make without actually have specs in front of you. The catapult solutions elsewhere in the thread seem to make more sense. But once again we're all back to actually having to do the math on these. Commercial flight is viable because the engineering safety factors and economic margins are so close to 1. This means that changes actually have to be considered carefully, unlike some other fields where the greater safety factors and margins let you get away with more assumptions.
- DoctorOetker 9y ago
  probably a stupid question, but since theres landing gear anyway with drag, why can't electrical power be supplied through the wheels? I am thinking something like a tram, possibly with a bottom pantograph?

sitkack 9y ago

Liquid rocket for launching, batteries for cruising.