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Pipistrel-USA, a team from Pennsylvania has won the NASA CAFE Green Flight Challenge by flying an electric plane 200 miles in less than two hours.
The Google-sponsored contest was created to spur development of electric airplanes and efficient aircraft designs and with a first-place prize of $1.35 million, it could very well succeed at that.
The contest took place at the Sonoma County Airport in California and required entrants to fly 200 miles in two hours while using less than one gallon of fuel per occupant or the electricity equivalent. Pipistrel-USA's plane, the Taurus G4, had two occupants and used less than a two-gallon equivalent of electricity. Check out the video above of a flight demonstration of the Taurus G4.
Both the winning Pipistrel-USA and the second place team flew electric airplanes. Only three teams out of 14 that registered met the contest's requirements.
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written by alf, October 10, 2011
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written by hyperspaced, October 14, 2011
If something "green" is going to fly is with hydrogen fuel cells, perhaps in 50 years.
UNTIL THEN: This effort is AMAZING. I only wish prizes were much bigger to motivate more talented people.
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What they fail to say is that a conventionally powered ultra-light plane of the same size could easily carry a fuel payload of many gallons, not merely '2 gallons equivalent'.
The only way to truly improve the energy efficiency of aircraft is to radically change the propulsion system. Batteries are never going to make the grade, the only practical low cost power plant is a small thorium reactor driving a closed loop ammonia turbine which drives a gearbox which drives the propellors.