Originally Posted by
tallpilot
Looks good if it didn’t need a nuclear reactor to make enough electricity for it to be viable in anything big enough to be considered a transport.
That's the issue. It may be a more efficient way to USE electricity than motors, power converters, and associated hardware but it's still limited by the specific energy of batteries...
Right now they get to about 250 Wh/Kg on battery packs. Absolute chemical limit for batteries is about 1,000 Wh/Kg (cell level, not pack level) and that's driven by fundamental chemistry and therefore fundamental physics. So don't talk about "breakthroughs" because there won't be any unless you're talking about diluthium crystals and warp drive :rolleyes"
Kerosene has an energy density of about 12,000 Wh/Kg. So best case batteries fall short by over an order of magnitude.
Long term solution for air transport will be low-carbon liquid fuels, basically fuels we manufacture by one means or another by using carbon from the atmosphere (directly or through plant feedstock). Such liquid fuels release the same carbon as jet A but that carbon was previously extracted from the atmosphere, vice being pumped out of deep wells. Green liquid fuels work, and already in very low quantity use by airlines. They just need to scale it up to get costs down. Cost will likely never be as low as petroleum fuels on average, but should be low enough to be economically sustainable.