Comment on Amazon's drone delivery program is the joke it always sounded like.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 7 months agoThe amount of energy required to keep something in the air instead of using the ground is also astronomically bigger
Comment on Amazon's drone delivery program is the joke it always sounded like.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 7 months agoThe amount of energy required to keep something in the air instead of using the ground is also astronomically bigger
merc@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Not really. Many planes can get about 20 miles per gallon traveling at about 180 miles per hour. That’s slightly more than a family car, but not astronomically more.
The big differences are that there’s effectively no “traffic” in the air, so once you dial in a cruise speed you stay at that speed for the entire flight. In a car you can get stuck in stop-and-go traffic. There’s also the lack of “rolling resistance” in the air. Even if you’re going a steady speed on a highway your tires are a source of drag. On the other hand, taxing and taking off can burn gallons of fuel, so unless you’re going for a fairly long flight that’s a significant part of the fuel burn. Also, planes go in a straight line, whereas cars have to follow highways. But, the total fuel cost of the trip really includes the trip to/from the airports.
But, fundamentally, the fuel economy of cars and airplanes is pretty similar.