How can we make clean-green airplanes that travel as fast as typical passenger jets?

[belchfire]

Since time has not always been I'm going to have to disagree with the omnipotence you give it and nature is merely mankind's feeble attempt to describe what in not under whatever control delusions allow us to believe we have.

And what airliner speed are we talking about? Thunderguppies and Airbuses (they're like real buses only slower!) or 74, (76 can step along but is a bit slower) 77 and 78 speeds? There can be a difference of up to 20% of the speed of sound and perhaps more if one considers minimum buffet margin (I don't know what speed the 73 and AB's will fall out of the sky at, only what they normally plod around clotting up the airspace at!)...

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Since time has not always been I'm going to have to disagree with the omnipotence you give it and nature is merely mankind's feeble attempt to describe what in not under whatever control delusions allow us to believe we have.

And what airliner speed are we talking about? Thunderguppies and Airbuses (they're like real buses only slower!) or 74, (76 can step along but is a bit slower) 77 and 78 speeds? There can be a difference of up to 20% of the speed of sound and perhaps more if one considers minimum buffet margin (I don't know what speed the 73 and AB's will fall out of the sky at, only what they normally plod around clotting up the airspace at!)...

I'm talking about 75% Mach speeds or higher. What is the typical cruising airspeed of a Boeing 747? The Concorde? What about fighter jets? I don't know of any aircraft carrying man that can travel at these speeds (near or exceeding the sound barrier) without non-renewable energy sources as fossil fuels, hydrocarbons. Private jets are generally advertised at 0.90 Mach. The total depletion of fossil fuels might certainly end high speed air travel as we know it. I don't think propeller-driven airplanes can be designed to carry man at these speeds. What is the airspeed record for a totally-battery-electric-powered aircraft carrying man on board? Also, what are the ranges of travel? Necessity is the mother of all invention. Feasibility makes it happen. The challenge to man is to find FEASIBLE alternative energy. If Mother Nature had wanted man to fly, well, he would have been born with wings.

 

[belchfire]

I don't know what Econ speed on the Concord was (it wasn't M 2.2, that's for sure!) and nothing about them was economical-they were a "statement", we had the Apollo missions, Britain and France had Concord and I'm not sure a "fleet" of six prototypes and fourteen production aircraft delivered to two national carriers counts in the discussion. I know that normal cruise on the F-14 was about M .84 not sure about anything newer-piston WWII fighters would cruise about 140-160 kts depending on which one. Depending on weight, altitude and Cost Index, Econ on the 74 will be M .82-M .85...the Big Lady is Fast! I know the 77 is capable of those speeds but I'm not sure what "normal" is and that the 78 is no slouch in the cruise speed arena.

I don't remember what the unducted fan aircraft were projected to cruise at but the CFM-56 and other electronically controlled high bypass fan engines killed that evolutionary branch of propulsion technology.

The answer lay in advanced physics...when we learn to divide by zero or discover math that lacks the point discontinuity, whole new possibilities await!

Only God Almighty can explain the first few moments of the big bang because He (and She because God embodies both) can actually divide by zero and create a big bang...

I'm not sure man deserves that amount of power-we sure as hell don't at this point in time!

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Then Father Time will tell then what the future will really bring. Perhaps some aliens will someday save us. The Big Lady is fast until Mother Earth runs out of gas.

What does tomorrow look like to you, belchfire?

MAN HAS TO MAKE HIS OWN FUTURE. HE CAN'T WAIT FOREVER ON A LONG-HAIR BEARDED GUY WITH SANDALS.

 

[belchfire]

Politically the world is an unstable mess with the talithugs back in control of Afghanistan, one revitalized super-power (the former Soviet Union-lets call them for what they are acting as), an emerging super-power (the PRC) doing a bunch of saber rattling while most powers that be ignore their human rights atrocities and not so thinly veiled expansionism while the sun is setting on the super-power status of the US?

Well...

Beyond all the possible permutations of that and barring a cosmic or viral extinction level event (covid-19 isn't it) we've got 30-40 years of fossil fuels left in known reserves. Progress has been made in certain battery technologies (regardless of the environmental effects of the chemical processes involved) but the charging systems still rely on reliable hydro-electric and fossil fuels, horrifically expensive fission processes and the expensive and less than reliable "renewable" sources.

Nevada Solar One is a system that shows great promise but it still requires some fossil fuels to maintain temperature of the thermal exchange media and it is as bad or worse for the bird population than wind "turbines" though the environmental radicals decline to discuss that shortcoming openly. The solar heat collection scheme is also limited as to where it will be efficient and the scale of land use required. They are ideally suited to near sea level deserts that do not have freezing weather.

Birds are very important to the ecosystem as pest control, pollinators and clean up crews. That the radical movements ignore the threat green energy presents to avian species is troubling to say the least!

Improved efficiency is a necessity as the current renewable sources are at best suited to limited geographic areas and even then are not 100% reliable as they rely on the weather to say nothing of the never mentioned negative environmental side effects.

Anyone who denies those things is dwelling in an alternative reality that is not fact based.

Barring the fulfillment of various End Time prophesies, an extinction level event or a global war that reduces the population to a tiny fraction of what it is now I believe there are two possible outcomes.

1) A collapse of the current petroleum based system with global starvation and a massive die-off of humans where only the rich and powerful are able to get food, since they are unwilling to farm behind a mule or ox this will eventually end them too...the "meek" shall inherit the Earth perhaps? Right now there are not enough mules or oxen to get the job done at 1900 levels. A little known fact-until about 1917 there were more horses in the US than there were people!

2) Advances in Physics that allow economical, sustainable fusion (not fission) reactions that provide the level of electrical power that will support what we now consider the standard of living. That abundant amount of electrical energy may make producing Hydrogen gas for fuel economical which would allow for continued high speed travel by aircraft, train and automobile.

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Belchfire, we can agree on one thing: time will always tell what happens. I was born in 1964. Late boomer. I'm living in a segment of human history in the making with the most uncertainty about the future of the world than since the day the dinosaurs went extinct. The days of the Red Scare and the Cuban Missile Crisis seems rather comforting alongside what we are going through now. Over my lifetime, we went from man steps on the moon to World Trade Center falls to I don't know what. It's all mad.

 

[Pervis]

Times were pretty uncertain when my grandfather was freezing in the trenches of WWI. As were times when my father was floating on a target in the Pacific in WWII. Doom and gloom will always rear it’s ugly head as the worst of times are always in the present. Funny how our pitiful humanity seems to come up with answers to the greatest challenges. Of course there will always be the chicken littles in every age. Boo hoo.

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

9/11 was much more shocking than Pearl Harbor. The way young people look, act, dress and talk these days is most disturbing. Old people tolerate it. Old people did not tolerate the hippies of the 1960's. My mother was disciplined in a 1940's Catholic school. She beat the crap out of me with switches, canoe paddles, hairbrushes and spoons.

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Times were pretty uncertain when my grandfather was freezing in the trenches of WWI. As were times when my father was floating on a target in the Pacific in WWII. Doom and gloom will always rear it’s ugly head as the worst of times are always in the present. Funny how our pitiful humanity seems to come up with answers to the greatest challenges. Of course there will always be the chicken littles in every age. Boo hoo.

Is earth becoming the planet of the apes?

Is the bare-skinned hominoid getting stupid while the hairy simians are getting smart? Will hairy simians soon rule the world? When this earth is all out of fossil fuels, will it revert to horse transportation and lack of aircraft as in the classic 20th Century Fox film series with Charleston Heston, Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter?

 

[Pervis]

You are clearly an indication your concerns about hominids are coming to fruition. What do you not understand about SAFs made from plastic or landfill waste? It’s available now and removes two of the biggest concerns we all share. I’ve used it and it burns just as efficiently as Jet A. By the time we use up those resources, we’ll find new solutions. We always do.

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

You are clearly an indication your concerns about hominids are coming to fruition. What do you not understand about SAFs made from plastic or landfill waste? It’s available now and removes two of the biggest concerns we all share. I’ve used it and it burns just as efficiently as Jet A. By the time we use up those resources, we’ll find new solutions. We always do.

Charleton Heston was still able to make a paper airplane and demonstrate it to the intelligent apes far off in the future to prove human intelligence. I suspect the future simian-ruled world did not have known fuel resources for flying machines. This 1968 film is real possible look into earth's future and man's plight.

 

[Pervis]

Yep, a troll.

 

[belchfire]

The biggest difference between 12/07/41 and 9/11/01 is that it was at a minimum a few hours before any and over 24 hours before the majority of the US population was aware of the Japanese attack...

We're very close in age, Puma. One of my first aviation jobs was working for a guy who had gone into the Air Force rather than roll the dice on the Pre-Viet Nam obligatory years of military service.

Cuban Missile Crisis comforting you say?

Bovine Excrement!!!

His last duty station was a SAC base and one night during that incident (of which very few living really understand how close we came to all out nuclear war) most of the guys on duty were on the ramp, watching the still glowing expended JATO packs dropping off the fully nuclear bomb armed B-47's, falling into the desert and looking at each other in absolute certainty that it was all over-though he was proud of the fact that only one of the many aircraft from his Wing had a mechanical issue and returned early!

Yes, we actually scrambled a large portion of the nuclear deterrent with orders to targets.

No one has publicly announced (to the best of my knowledge) why they were recalled...

If apes are going to evolve and take over, where are the little incremental changes that we have had time to observe? Could Darwin (as he admitted later was possible) have been wrong, that his theory is actually deeply flawed and big changes only pop up because of as of yet unknown reasons (The Hand of God for lack of a better expression) that causes just the right change to a population's DNA (DNA being code that the people of his time could barely begin to imagine though perhaps Darwin had a glimpse that caused him to have the later case of doubt).

Fossil fuels will eventually run out which has nothing to do with a fictional screenplay or two-might as well throw in A Space Oddity while we're at it, what the heck?

A different power source, a mass die out due to starvation on a global scale or perhaps an extinction level event courtesy of the cosmic or genetic shooting gallery...or maybe we'll be stupid enough to end it all ourselves!

The biggest issue facing mankind in the so called "developed" Western World is our lack of understanding just how fragile human life is, a denial of it's meaninglessness in the Universe and as individuals our own mortality...as if somehow everyone is destined to live out a long life and die completely fulfilled in old age...

That is perhaps the biggest lie of the humanist/socialist movement.

There's this "free will" clause in the Death and Taxes guarantee...

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Yep, a troll.

No, a person with an open mind. I can only say, Mother Nature and Father Time help us all.

 

[belchfire]

Necessity is a Mother and Time Wounds All Heals...

ya know, there was once a guy who thought he would commune with nature.

The bears ate him and his girlfriend!