Comment on Airbus previews next-gen airliner with bird-inspired wings
Nighed@feddit.uk 1 month agoElectricity has been around that long too though, yet there are no serious electric passenger planes (with a decent range)
It has it’s flaws, but it may have a higher ceiling in terms of usefulness. They say they can make it work, which is more than I hear about electric planes for example.
We should be financially encouraging 0 carbon planes, without controlling how, then let the engineers work what tech to do it with.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 month ago
You can also run an aircraft on biofuel with little to no modifications, with none of the downsides of hydrogen.
Dyf_Tfh@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Worldwide diesel/kerosene biofuel production is too low. Last time airbus made a demo on 100% biofuel made from algae, they bought the output of a whole year to run a single long haul flight.
There is a reason they say Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and not biofuel. They also need e-fuel / synthetic fuel made from hydrogen in addition to biofuel.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 month ago
There is a lot of biofuel being made of other fuel types though, so no reason why production of aviation biofuel can’t ramp up.
Nighed@feddit.uk 1 month ago
That requires lots of cropland though. Hydrogen can effectively be made by offshore wind farms etc.
It might work if we reduce standard fuel requirements for cars etc enough.