2 ms·
Global flyer weighed 1500kg and topped out at half the speed of an airliner's cruising speed. A 737 weighs over 40,000kg empty and tens of thousands more when y
by missedthecue 5y ago
Global flyer weighed 1500kg and topped out at half the speed of an airliner's cruising speed. A 737 weighs over 40,000kg empty and tens of thousands more when you add in passengers and their luggage. Yes, electric flight is possible, but it simply cannot replace the modern airliner.
- Robotbeat 5y agoRight, to be similar efficiency as Globalflyer without improvements to aerodynamics (which is possible), you’d need to restrict flight speeds to roughly Mach 0.5 like passenger commercial turboprop aircraft (instead of 0.7-0.8 for commercial jets). A turboprop Dash-8 (although aging) with up to 90 passenger seats (~same as the original 737) is relatively competitive for short haul, so I wouldn’t consider that lower speed to be a showstopper. Dash-8 is, after all, a commercial airliner in common use. But the SCALE of the aircraft is basically irrelevant when discussing fundamental figures of merit like mass-specific energy. In spite of repeating your concern several times, I’m not sure what you think scale has to do with figures of merit that are explicitly scale-less (Wh/kg).