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Old 08-01-2020, 08:24 AM
  #13  
JamesNoBrakes
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Originally Posted by rickair7777 View Post
All that's true but the real problem with batteries is energy density/specific energy... just can't carry enough juice.

Mathematically impossible to fly larger planes on longer routes. Battery-powered airlines will, at best, be limit to short regional hops. That might actually happen, but I'm talking maybe one hour flight time, if that.
And I'd think the secondary problem would be IF you could have adequate battery density, it would seem it'd be better to just use an electric motor to drive a fan, like pretty much every other electric airplane proposal. Using this exotic process to generate a "jet" of air that would still need to turn a fan, seems to add a lot of extra steps that would just waste energy and add weight. Making plasma is not a big deal, you can do it between electrical contacts. Making it on the scale that would actually transfer enough heat to the air and sustaining that would take massive amounts of energy. I would think this is more along the lines of "we found a new/novel way to make plasma", but due to the laws of thermodynamics and physics, it takes a massive amount of energy to create. Otherwise, as said in this thread, they are essentially claiming "free energy".
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