Rethinking the airplane, for climate’s sake
It will never soar into the wild blue yonder, but the dusty Peterbilt truck parked outside a hangar at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Centre here may represent the future of low-carbon aviation. Perched on steel supports behind the truck’s cab is a 30-foot airplane wing, the kind found on a small plane. Instead of a fossil-fuel-burning engine or two, however, the wing is outfitted with 18 electric motors along its leading edge, each with a small red propeller. The truck-plane mash-up, a NASA project called LeapTech, is meant to test a new approach to powering flight. Technicians and engineers have been driving the truck down a dry lake-bed runway at this desert base at more than 70 miles per hour, the battery-powered propellers spinning as if a takeoff were imminent. “We’re able to simulate full takeoff and landing configurations and measure lift, drag, motor efficiency and aerodynamic performance,” said Sean Clarke, an engineer and a principal investigator on the project. The concept, called distributed propulsion, is one of several being studied here and at other research centres to develop technologies that could lead to completely new and far less polluting aircraft designs. Future planes may be powered by batteries or hybrid gas-electric systems, for instance, and have lighter wings that can quickly change shape to better handle the stresses brought on by turbulent air. Others may eliminate the conventional wings-and-fuselage design in favour of one that blends the two elements, all to further the cause of lower emissions. Commercial aviation accounts for about 2% of the global total of carbon dioxide emitted annually by human activity, or a little less than is produced by Germany. Although manufacturers and airlines have made air travel far more efficient — the Air Transport Action Group, an industry organization, estimates that emissions per seat-mile are down 70% from the 1960s, when jets began operating — the industry’s tremendous growth has resulted in higher total emissions.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2016-01-13/general/rethinking-the-airplane-for-climate2019s-sake
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/logo.png
Rethinking the airplane, for climate’s sake
It will never soar into the wild blue yonder, but the dusty Peterbilt truck parked outside a hangar at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Centre here may represent the future of low-carbon aviation. Perched on steel supports behind the truck’s cab is a 30-foot airplane wing, the kind found on a small plane. Instead of a fossil-fuel-burning engine or two, however, the wing is outfitted with 18 electric motors along its leading edge, each with a small red propeller. The truck-plane mash-up, a NASA project called LeapTech, is meant to test a new approach to powering flight. Technicians and engineers have been driving the truck down a dry lake-bed runway at this desert base at more than 70 miles per hour, the battery-powered propellers spinning as if a takeoff were imminent. “We’re able to simulate full takeoff and landing configurations and measure lift, drag, motor efficiency and aerodynamic performance,” said Sean Clarke, an engineer and a principal investigator on the project. The concept, called distributed propulsion, is one of several being studied here and at other research centres to develop technologies that could lead to completely new and far less polluting aircraft designs. Future planes may be powered by batteries or hybrid gas-electric systems, for instance, and have lighter wings that can quickly change shape to better handle the stresses brought on by turbulent air. Others may eliminate the conventional wings-and-fuselage design in favour of one that blends the two elements, all to further the cause of lower emissions. Commercial aviation accounts for about 2% of the global total of carbon dioxide emitted annually by human activity, or a little less than is produced by Germany. Although manufacturers and airlines have made air travel far more efficient — the Air Transport Action Group, an industry organization, estimates that emissions per seat-mile are down 70% from the 1960s, when jets began operating — the industry’s tremendous growth has resulted in higher total emissions.<br/>
