No, that’s not the name of a rock band. But there is a real twin fuselage motor glider featuring a 145 kW electric motor, lithium-ion batteries, and retractable landing gear.
From NASA:
Pipistrel-USA, Taurus G4 aircraft is seen as it participates in the miles per gallon flight. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
CAFE Foundation Hanger Boss Mike Fenn directs the eGenius aircraft to the start of the speed competition during the 2011 Green Flight Challenge. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
› View all large images in Flickr
› Green Flight Challenge News NASA has awarded the largest prize in aviation history, created to inspire the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft and spark the start of a new electric airplane industry. The technologies demonstrated by the CAFE Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google, competitors may end up in general aviation aircraft, spawning new jobs and new industries for the 21st century.
The first place prize of $1.35 million was awarded to team Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, Pa. The second place prize of $120,000 went to team eGenius, of Ramona, Calif.
Fourteen teams originally registered for the competition. Three teams successfully met all requirements and competed in the skies over the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif. The competition was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation under an agreement with NASA.
“NASA congratulates Pipistrel-USA.com for proving that ultra-efficient aviation is within our grasp,” said Joe Parrish, NASA’s acting chief technologist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Today we’ve shown that electric aircraft have moved beyond science fiction and are now in the realm of practice.”
The winning aircraft had to fly 200 miles in less than two hours and use less than one gallon of fuel per occupant, or the equivalent in electricity. The first and second place teams, which were both electric-powered, achieved twice the fuel efficiency requirement of the competition, meaning they flew 200 miles using just over a half-gallon of fuel equivalent per passenger.
“Two years ago the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 mph in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction,” said Jack W. Langelaan, team leader of Team Pipistrel-USA.com. “Now, we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation.”
This week’s competition marks the culmination of more than two years of aircraft design, development and testing for the teams. It represents the dawn of a new era in efficient flight and is the first time that full-scale electric aircraft have performed in competition. Collectively, the competing teams invested more than $4 million in pursuit of the challenge prize purse.
“I’m proud that Pipistrel won, they’ve been a leader in getting these things into production, and the team really deserves it, and worked hard to win this prize,” said Eric Raymond, team leader of eGenius.
NASA uses prize competitions to increase the number and diversity of the individuals, organizations and teams that are addressing a particular problem or challenge. Prize competitions stimulate private sector investment that is many times greater than the cash value of the prize and further NASA’s mission by attracting interest and attention to a defined technical objective. This prize competition is part of the NASA Centennial Challenges program, part of the Space Technology Program, managed by the NASA Office of the Chief Technologist.
For more information about the CAFE Foundation’s Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google, visit:
For high resolution photos of the challenge, visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto
For more information about NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist and the Centennial Challenges program, visit:
Pipistrel-USA, Taurus G4 aircraft is seen as it participates in the miles per gallon flight. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
CAFE Foundation Hanger Boss Mike Fenn directs the eGenius aircraft to the start of the speed competition during the 2011 Green Flight Challenge. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
› View all large images in Flickr
› Green Flight Challenge News NASA has awarded the largest prize in aviation history, created to inspire the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft and spark the start of a new electric airplane industry. The technologies demonstrated by the CAFE Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google, competitors may end up in general aviation aircraft, spawning new jobs and new industries for the 21st century.
The first place prize of $1.35 million was awarded to team Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, Pa. The second place prize of $120,000 went to team eGenius, of Ramona, Calif.
Fourteen teams originally registered for the competition. Three teams successfully met all requirements and competed in the skies over the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif. The competition was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation under an agreement with NASA.
“NASA congratulates Pipistrel-USA.com for proving that ultra-efficient aviation is within our grasp,” said Joe Parrish, NASA’s acting chief technologist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Today we’ve shown that electric aircraft have moved beyond science fiction and are now in the realm of practice.”
The winning aircraft had to fly 200 miles in less than two hours and use less than one gallon of fuel per occupant, or the equivalent in electricity. The first and second place teams, which were both electric-powered, achieved twice the fuel efficiency requirement of the competition, meaning they flew 200 miles using just over a half-gallon of fuel equivalent per passenger.
“Two years ago the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 mph in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction,” said Jack W. Langelaan, team leader of Team Pipistrel-USA.com. “Now, we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation.”
This week’s competition marks the culmination of more than two years of aircraft design, development and testing for the teams. It represents the dawn of a new era in efficient flight and is the first time that full-scale electric aircraft have performed in competition. Collectively, the competing teams invested more than $4 million in pursuit of the challenge prize purse.
“I’m proud that Pipistrel won, they’ve been a leader in getting these things into production, and the team really deserves it, and worked hard to win this prize,” said Eric Raymond, team leader of eGenius.
NASA uses prize competitions to increase the number and diversity of the individuals, organizations and teams that are addressing a particular problem or challenge. Prize competitions stimulate private sector investment that is many times greater than the cash value of the prize and further NASA’s mission by attracting interest and attention to a defined technical objective. This prize competition is part of the NASA Centennial Challenges program, part of the Space Technology Program, managed by the NASA Office of the Chief Technologist.
For more information about the CAFE Foundation’s Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google, visit:
For high resolution photos of the challenge, visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto
For more information about NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist and the Centennial Challenges program, visit:
I wonder how they will do in an electrical storm….OR a three hour holding pattern?
A coal-powered airplane. Who wouldda thunk it?
Er, that would be taxpayer money NASA is lavishing about as prize money for a contest that many here are calling irrelevant, correct?
It will make for a good extend fly surveillance drone with missiles attached if you put some solar panels on it. Somehow, I do not see it replacing the 747 any time soon.
Electric RC planes (small, weigh about 20 lbs) have been used by the military for gathering combat intel for several years and they are useful for that purpose. But some things just don’t scale up well, and this is one of them.
Among other things, the craft would be limited to a 10k foot ceiling, and perfect weather (pressurization & icing would be problems, as would any significant head wind, etc. ). As has been said, this is only a toy, not even suitable for General Aviation, let alone commercial.
Mike Bromley the Canucklehead says:
October 4, 2011 at 12:32 am
“Oops, double post. Half a gallon per passenger? Is there someone who can quickly calculate if that is possible? Factoring in drag, lift, inertia…that just seems intuitively unachievable…especially at 100 mph, where the drag would be considerable. If you ask me, there’s something very wrong here.”
Nothing at all wrong. A Boeing 747-400 gets close to 100 passenger/miles/gallon with a range of thousands of miles and a cruise speed approaching 600 miles per hour (Mach 0.85). So they were basically asking for a bit better than twice the fuel economy of a jumbo jet.
Looks like a “way cool” toy for rich hobbyists. Wish I had one for the farm, assuming lift off can be achieved under a mile, with some remaining power capacity! GK
I love the “diversity” aspect, as it it makes it better. “Let’s have a token on the team! It’ll make us look better even though he knows piddle about planes!” Being under NASA and their new directive to reach out to the ever tech-hungry Muslim world, I wonder if they insisted on an outreach program to Muslims, some of whom love to try to get on planes packing extra forms of energy.
The half gallon per passenger surely does not count the inefficiency and cost of producing the power used to charge the batteries. Add in the expense of the high tech materials in the plane and the per passenger cost goes way up. And then there’s the battery longevity. I’m sure the batteries are not cheap and their replacement life not very long. I wonder at what temperature the batteries operate.
In the same way they talk about wind turbines being so cheap to run, but the cost of manufacture, the extensive infrastructure, and limited lifetime are usually not properly included.
I’ll bet the plane was comfy, being a stripped down version of a stripped down plane built on a starvation diet.
Bernd Felsche 2:36:
“……aren’t they usually towed to altitude?”
Usually, yes, but you can get a glider that has a small engine and propeller that pops up out of the fuselage behind the pilot and sinks back into it when you reach altitude and you start gliding. Very useful, but I believe you have to have the full private pilot’s license to fly it.
This focus on electricity replacing fossil fuels is such an interesting exercise in spin.
“NASA uses prize competitions to increase the number and diversity of the individuals”
Now if they would only do that for climate models. Award prizes not based on Peer Review, but on actual, real world future performance.
Look at the results when governments give prizes for ACTUAL winners, rather than trying to pick the winners ahead of time.
Instead, we have GISS/NASA compiling the temperature records, then Gavin forecasts with their models, then Hansen adjusts the GISS results after the fact, which surprise surprise increases the accuracy of the models.
GISS/NASA is a rigged game. They control the readings, the model and the adjustments. Where are the experimental controls to ensure objectivity?
Just wait until the Tort Lawyers get hold of any of these advances. As noted in this Tort Reform law article.
Then there was the pilot smart enough to fly a plane, but not smart enough to keep from dying from terminal dumbness. He flew his small Cessna up a mountain box canyon till the terrain was rising faster than the Cessna could climb.
In a futile attempt to turn inside the narrowing canyon, his plane struck a canyon wall and crashed on a gravel bar beside the river, killing the erring pilot. His widow’s lawyer got a jury to award millions, on the flimsy grounds that if Cessna had built a “crash-worthy” cabin, the pilot could have survived. The jury’s exorbitant award helped force Cessna to abandon the manufacture of small general aviation aircraft.
http://www.sagecommentary.com/pages/SV022304.html
The next big leap in aviation will be in the development of ‘zeppelin’ type blimps, welcome to the 1920s lol, That being said I have always thought that blimps were a great idea even if it was only for the haulage of goods, it’s probably not as practical for human passengers, but they can be very useful depending on the weather and some journeys without time constraints.
The ‘Electric airplane’ idea is another pipe-dream and a waste of money, simply put the numbers do not add up to any over all net savings, imagine owning a fleet of 10 commercial Electric passenger airplanes, the charge time for such a battery even if it existed could be 12+ hours between flights, where would the charge come from? an especially built expensive solar or wind power plant? what if there was no sun or wind? do the planes get their charge from an especially built backup generator? and what would the cost and life of such a battery be? how many flights before a battery needs to be replaced? After all the investment and finance that would go into setting up a fleet of commercial Electric passenger airplanes and factoring in a team of maintenance engineers and the cabin crew, How on earth could a flight on one of these planes be competitive? Do we subsidize the price of flights and raise taxes to make them appear cheaper?
“Today we’ve shown that electric aircraft have moved beyond science fiction and are now in the realm of practice.”
Yes they may work in practice, but a cheap commercial flight on an Electric passenger airplane is still firmly in the realm of science fiction.
For those disputing figures, or thinking there was something else required here are basic calcs:
200 passenger miles per gallon equalled 33.7kWh electrical power per per passenger = 121MJ/passenger (note that organisers credited electrical entrants with full energy available in a gallon of fuel without consideration of inefficiencies of conversion in an IC engine, this really flatters the electric aircraft). Winners actually achieved about 400mpg per passenger – ie half 33.7kWh, but had four passengers so about 121*4/2=240MJ total, needed. Also needed to carry a 30 minute reserve so about 300MJ total or about 85kWh of battery storage total. Best Lithium batteries weigh about 6kg/kWh with that storage and so would weigh about 500kg. Also need to carry passengers of 200lb each so another 4×90 =360kg of passengers, plane without battery and with motor probably weighed about 400kg, so call it 1260kg all up (about half a ton).
Assuming about 80% efficiency for combined prop and motor that 240MJ could lift 1260kg about (240000000/9.81/1260*.8) = 15500m
200mile course = 320000m. 320000/15500 = 20.6:1 glide slope achieved by the winner – not that the motor was off but the calculation is the same. 20.6:1 is frankly very low (about the same as best commercial jets). Gliders typically achieve 40-50:1 and up to 72:1 in case of open class Eta glider, though normally this is at about 50mph not 100mph. They paid the price of greater drag for dual fueselage design – this is a cute idea used to leverage pre-existing wing and cockpit parts that they had and allow then to distribute weight across wing more easily, but is not optimal.
Cruising power: Gliding sink rate at 20.5:1 glide angle and 100mph (45m/s) is about 45/20.1=2.2m/s, with 80% prop+motor combined efficiency and 1260kg that only needs 1260*9.81*2.2/0.8 = 34kW cruising engine power. 145kW is only used for climbing and takeoff.
It should be possible to double the 200mile range achieved in this competition. Note that the batteries alone probably cost $80k, but that is not bad compared to incredibly antiquated thirsty and expensive aviation motors currently used.
“No, that’s not the name of a rock band.”
But when can we expect Electric Starship?
You may be interested in the Sonex electric airplane::
http://www.sonexaircraft.com/research/e-flight/
and this Wikipedia page: Electric Aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft
I see a lot of posts here talking about the uselessness of electric airplanes. For the ordinary airline passenger, I agree. On the other hand, airline travel itself is generally wasteful over land, compared to rail. Over the oceans, air travel is the best way to go, and jets are the most efficient way to get there quickly to date.
This does NOT mean that we should never try to advance the state of the art in small aircraft design. While battery electric is not viable for commercial transportation, it’s a great idea for “self launched gliders.” Hell, I have flown hang gliders for 20 years and once in the air I can often stay up as long as my bladder will allow. If I had a small, efficient plane that could self launch and climb to 5000′, I’d be able to fly it for as long as I was interested in flying for pleasure anyway. If it would stay in the air for a few hours, I could use it to fly to destinations in about a 200 mile radius for much less than I could with a conventional private airplane.
Imagine a personal, sleek, four-person aircraft (already in the $100,000 range for a new craft) that uses a powerful electric engine (100 hp for takeoff, 20 hp for level flight) with a small fuel cell running to sustain flight when flying and charge the small “take off” batteries for the few minutes needed to get the plane to altitude. It would be a good fit for someone who can already afford to fly a private plane. For those who can’t, well, they weren’t going to buy an new airplane anyway.
View from the Solent says:
October 4, 2011 at 2:51 am
“How does an individual become diverse?”
By following the concensus that the science is settled. And by being so rich that you can play with these toys in your spare time, and otherwise use your private jet.
I built a GlaStar (experimental two seater) with a Subaru Engine. I get 30 mpg at 130 mph and around 40 to 50 mpg at 90 mph. All for less than the cost of the batteries in the winning plane.
Here you go, I am sure this group is “diverse”. Not everyone has a purple shirt, some have a dark purple shirt (Archer).
http://cafefoundation.org/v2/img_maingraphics/section_maingfx_cafeboard2009.jpg
I have the perfect glider solution, and there are no messy engine batteries or even engines (on the glider, this is). It does comes equipped with a small radio for comunication.
The standard propulsion unit is fixed, and consists of a catapult launcher.
The mobile version is semi-flatbed mounted and can sit on a railcar.
Power is optionally supplied by a Conan-the-Barbarian windup device, or your choice of conventional fossil fuel engine affixed to the catapult launcher.
There is also (for a substantial sum) a rocket-assist package (ejectable). We like to call it the “Dr. Strangelove” package, as it is remote control steered.
If you want to go higher/glide longer, you simply build a bigger mousetrap.
Comes complete with 500 copies of lease agreement/damage or death waivers.
Electric aviation development has been picking up speed for some time. GE Aviation now has an electric power R&D center in Dayton, Ohio. Boeing’s already built and tested an experimental electric prop powered by fuel cell. The energy density of aviation fuel is a large advantage, but there other advantages of electric motors and batteries are too large to dismiss: noise reduction allowing arrival/departure into otherwise closed-hours airports, no flight ceiling due to the engine, up to 99% efficiency of HTS electric motors, energy cost savings per mile of electric kWh vs Jet-A, thrust from GE90 turbo fan engine is already mostly from the fan (9:1 bypass), etc. While battery based electric jets may not be used to cross oceans in fifty years, if the NY-Boston shuttle is not making electric runs after the noise curfew with a five minute battery swap turn around within thirty years I guess it will not be because of technical or economic limitations.
o 2010 Economist article on numerous electric experimental aircraft.
http://www.economist.com/node/16295620
…completing development of a two-seater called the ElectraFlyer-X. It will be able to fly for two hours and reach a top speed of 128kph (80mph). It can be recharged in around three hours from a built-in charger, has a 15-metre wingspan and a lift-to-drag ratio of around 30:1. The plan is to sell the ElectraFlyer-X in kit form for around $65,000; the batteries cost an extra $15,000.
o GE Aviation plans:
http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/27532/Electric-cars-planes-behind
o Beyond Aviation and Cessna partnership to produce electric Cessna Skyhawk 172. Plan is to carry sufficient batteries for two hours of flight, with a cost per mile flown “several multiples” less than aviation fuel equivalent. Target is the flight training market (multiple 1-2 hour flights per day).
http://www.cessna.com/NewReleases/New/NewReleaseNum-1192324720455.html
http://www.beyond-aviation.com/
o 2009 Masson, Luongo IEEE paper “Next Generation More-Electric Aircraft: A Potential Application for HTS Superconductors.”
http://www.drives.co.uk/fullstory.asp?id=2033
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/srchabstract.jsp?arnumber=5153109&isnumber=5166701&punumber=77&k2dockey=5153109@ieeejrns&query=%28%28masson%29%3Cin%3Eau+%29&pos=5&access=no
http://www.masbret.com/asc08/ASC08_Tuesday_Plenary_Electric_Aircraft.ppt
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4275231&tag=1
o NASA Puffin. Vertical takeoff dual prop aircraft.
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/business_aviation/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=2f16318d-d960-4e49-bc9f-86f1805f2c7f&plckPostId=Blog%3a2f16318d-d960-4e49-bc9f-86f1805f2c7fPost%3ad341a5a0-b4d4-4ae1-a99b-9488d0b1d281&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest
300 lb air frame, cruise 150 mph, sprint 300 mph, ceiling 30k feet, 50 mile range at cruise w/ current batteries, eventually 175 miles.
Yes, new airplanes like the A380 and 787 easily exceed 100 miles per gallon per passenger. Interestingly, a 4 passenger car (full-size) that gets >25 miles per gallon achieves the same. I believe a realistic goal for the next 10-20 years is to develop airplanes and cars that get a fuel efficiency of 120-150 mpg per passenger (fleet average).
This allows for a number of things, such as insulating consumers and manufacturers of fuel price shocks, allows for increased standard of living in developing countries, and stretches out the horizon needed for new energy development.
Very interesting. but i will only be convinced when Al Gore uses one!