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The busiest air routes in the world aren’t the transatlantic ones but short routes in Asia. If you could make a 30 or 50pax plane that could fly for 1 hour you

The busiest air routes in the world aren’t the transatlantic ones but short routes in Asia. If you could make a 30 or 50pax plane that could fly for 1 hour you could serve a lot of the busiest routes to/from Seoul, Taipei, Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok. They are electric plane routes that aren’t replacing normal flights, they are replacing routes that should have been short-ish train rides (but weren’t, typically because of water). It’s crossings of very busy and narrow bodies of water between very populated areas. Replacing even one of those top routes with electric would be a huge success. Even if there is no viable path to 300 passengers or 8 hour flights, this has to happen.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Worth comparing with battery trains. Just a few short years ago these were considered impractical, people were waiting for hydrogen or complex electrification projects. Now, (thanks mostly to cheaper batteries) the numbers pencil out for longer distance transport (as long as you include carbon and pollution costs) but just having a bunch of batteries you can connect to the grid (and move around by rail) could possibly pay for the whole thing by itself. Combining the two is looking pretty sweet. For planes, I imagine the ability to use these to offset the emissions from longer flights will be a potential driver of adoption. I'm also surprised that assisted launch isn't talked about more, but maybe the physics just doesnt work out. Just saw a company that is trying to launch satelites by throwing them from the ground. The 10000G would kill humans, but is okay for other uses. Feels like they could possibly branch out to terrestrial cargo delivery.