Boeing tests battery-powered plane
“For the first time in the history of aviation, Boeing has flown a manned airplane that was powered by a hydrogen battery,” Boeing chief technology officer John Tracy told a news conference at the firm’s research centre in the central Spanish town of Ocana.
The plane, which used propellers, flew at a speed of 100 kilometres an hour for about 20 minutes at an altitude of about 1000 metres using only the hydrogen battery for power, Boeing said in a statement.
The director of the Ocana research centre, Francisco Escarti, said the hydrogen battery “could be the main source of energy for a small plane” but would likely not become the “primary source of energy for big passenger planes”.
I am baffled why nobody has come up with a hydrogen jetpack. Seems like a great idea to get to the grocery store or around campus.
Perhaps Segway folks are doing this as their next invention.
Yea–I couldn’t let it go. Sounds more like “fuel cell” to me and that’s just what it is.
Weird that an article as posted above would be intentionally modified to be misleading?
http://tinyurl.com/56rdhs
The flight was reported in the Spanish Press at the time. The plane took off from Ocaña under battery power and switched to the hydrogen fuel cell once it reached cruising height, when it flew using the fuel cell for 20 minutes. For those who read Spanish, there’s also a report on Boeing’s Spanish site, http://www.boeing.es/
What I don’t understand was the need for pilot O2 at 3300 feet. Also that was a very heavy aircraft. In comparison the new light sport class of aircraft have a max gross weight of 1320#. Most are also capable of 4 hours of flight at ~130mph on a 100hp engine.
Boeing has a long way to go.