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Thats an excellent point. I wonder if flight batteries could be developed in small distributed cells with a weight / surface area that would allow them to hit a
by pkdpic 5y ago
Thats an excellent point. I wonder if flight batteries could be developed in small distributed cells with a weight / surface area that would allow them to hit a non-dangerous terminal velocity. And I wonder what the financial and environmental impact would be as compared to dumping jet fuel.
- adrianN 5y agoDumping solids along flight routes doesn't really sound like a good idea. People don't like getting hit by small pellets, so matter how non-dangerous their terminal velocity is. Just imagine all the broken windshields for example.
- ehnto 5y agoWe are making the assumption that dropping the batteries would actually be useful in an emergency situation. Considering that the plane needs to be designed to land fully loaded, since you're not dumping the batteries every flight, I think you would need to be way outside the operations planned safety envelopes to ever need to do that. I think building battery cells designed to fail safely in an accident is probably a more reasonable option than trying to dump them.
- rich_sasha 5y agoPlanes are safe to land fully loaded, but not designed for doing it repeatedly. The undercarriage, IIRC, needs a separate inspection after such landing. This is why, time permitting, planes will first burn off or drop fuel before doing an unplanned landing.
- chrisandchris 5y agoWhile it‘s technically true that they can land fully loaded, using the word „safe“ is not ideal [1]. They _can_ land fully loaded but you are exceeding the maximum weight for landing which is neither advised by the manufacturer nor is it guaranteed that nothing will break. So if you it‘s not an emergency that requires immediate landing, you won‘t go for it. [1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/33253 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/33253
- rich_sasha 5y agoYeah that’s better said.