160 AA batteries powers aircraft - and it flies!
 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060716...2MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

Got batteries?

-S

I read that a couple days ago......really neat.

Wasn't one of the Wright bros. aircraft powered with a rubberband before they thought of putting a motor on it?

Those Japs have done it again.:cool:

:up: pretty amazing especailly as the main problem has allways been that in order to get enough power to generate the thrust needed to take of..the batterys weight allways became the catch 22 part that meant that you could never achieve the desired power to weight ratio to get of the ground...(used to make radio controled model aircraft....some folks were experimenting with electric powered RC model aircraft back then ..same problems amplified a hundred time for full size aircraft!)

brilliant stuff...extremely light weight yet very powerfull power cells have huge implications right across the technological board.:up:

No. They experimented with gliders from 1900-1902, then went straight to a gasoline-powered engine in 1903. Samuel Langley used steam engines in his unpowered models in the 1800s.

You think airplances will ever get away from having to use jetfuel? Cars will eventually go electric or hydrogen, but a jet engine that runs on anything else but fossil fuels is hard to imagine.

This is true. However, it's possible to use methane pulsejets, using nuclear power plants and syn-gas reactors.

Right now, kerosene in all it's JP-5, JP-8, JP-9 versions is a tiny fraction (under 7% last time I looked at charts) product of our global refineries. Global refineries. American refineries run about 12% of their total crude intake to kerosene.

What this means is, if the entire "western" world moved to nuclear power as their primary electrical supply source, we would have more than enough "natrural gas" to supply our aviation needs for...hell....I don't know. Given growth in India and China, I would easily guess beyond 2050.

Thats pretty neat. Could be turned into a profitable enterprise. Flight made affordable to the common person. (well, at least for a little bit)

P.S.
If we wanted to, we could put a terrorist twist on this and start another discussion for the fearsum foursum.

nuclear powered aircraft? :o Ugh, every accident would turn into a ecological nightmare. :(. Come to think of it though, I do remember hearing that the SR-71 used liquid hydrogen as its fuel source (becuase its combustion properties were desirable at Mach3), but is hampered by its low density, a cubic meter of liquid H2 only holds 70kg of fuel iirc.

Hmm... maybe they could run on ethanol made from plants like some cars can now...:hmm:

[quote=tycho102]he he! speaking of pulse jets and the like..there was a Dutch radio controled model display team (yes i did say display team !)
who used miniture model WW2 V1 type pulse (?? not entirely sure if thats the right tech) jets for their models and they toured Europe givng displays at all the major model aircraft shows...
(UK government banned them a while ago as being too dangerous)

i saw them two or three times put on their show at Woodvale here in the UK (near Southport)...mind boggling....fast unbelievably so--in fact nigh on impossible to track them with the naked eye..(i have no idea how they flew them..must require super-human reflexes) and LOUD----ye gawds they were loud..as i say i saw them perform two or three times and i still don't know what the actual model looked like---just to damn fast to get a good look at them...but i'll never forget what they sounded like...exactly like those WW2 films showing them dropping on London...only 400 time louder in real life (and these were just scale models!!!)

While it woulf be possible to use hydrogen, the SR-71 used JP-7, a high flash point hydrocarbon fuel developed for high temperature use. Also used as coolant and hydraulic fluid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7

SR-71 did use JP-7 and it had such a high flash point that a lit match could not make it burn. The reason this was used is because the SR-71 leaked fuel when on the ground. It's structure had to be built to expand at Mach 3 due to the heat, so there was no way to avoid this. JP-7 was used simply because it was a bad idea to have a wet leaky airplane that could go up in smoke at a moments notice.

By the way - to keep liquid hydrogen in a liquid state would require cryo temps - so this is not a possible fule source for future engines. Hydrogen stored as a gas on vehicles is also no desired since there is no way to store enough of it to power a car for as along a range as you can get out of a normal gastank - same size gas tank as found in a car of pressurized hydrogen would give you about 150 mile range. I heard however that the designer of the nickel metal hydrad battery has found a way to make hydrogen into a 'solid' state that could be used as a fuel. He calls it (guess this one) solid hydrogen.

-S

PS. the gas form of hydrogen may even be less - like 80 miles.