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'

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.