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Manawqt t1_irvobmp wrote

Reply to comment by SilverNicktail in NASA invents ‘incredible’ battery for electric planes by HaikuKnives

The ones they bought are hybrid. They hold 30 passengers and have a range of 200km on electricity only. Electric planes are and can be viable in some niches, but when people say "electric planes could never be viable" that's not really what they mean.

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SilverNicktail t1_irwbgcj wrote

Those planes are still intended to run on electric-only the majority of the time.

And yeah, "that's not what I meant" is the traditional naysayer god-of-the-gaps argument.

"Electric planes aren't viable."

-- Short range planes become viable --

"Well I didn't mean those ones, that's a niche."

-- The niche expands --

"Well I didn't mean those ones either"

​

etc, etc, etc

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Manawqt t1_irwlrks wrote

Not really, nobody really says that very short range airplanes aren't viable. I mean sure, some idiots might. But what most people mean when they say that electrical airplanes doesn't really work is simply that the fuel density of batteries are orders of magnitude too low compared to fossil fuels, and that it will pretty much forever remain cheaper to use fossil fuels and then just compensate with direct-air capture on the ground to reach the same 0 co2 emissions. Sure, some miraculous new battery tech might come and change that, but some miraculous direct-air capture tech might come and make the electrification of planes completely useless too. Airplanes (most of them) just simply doesn't make sense to electrify due to basic physics. Rockets is another application where the biggest downsides of electrification are some of the most important aspects.

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SilverNicktail t1_irwpuus wrote

"The density of batteries is too low" he writes in the comments section of an article about making denser batteries more suitable to air travel.

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