PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Cruise altitude for electric airplanes.
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Old 30th Dec 2018, 00:33
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Bend alot
 
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There is also the possibility that the battery packs could be quite small in large airliners.

Telephones use to be fixed to the wall and get its power from that plug, we then had cordless phones that had a battery in the handset and would charge in a cradle at the end of the call. Years later we had "mobile phones" that had a battery pack the size of a brick, these eventually became very small and truly mobile and you plug the charger in once or so a day. Phones then became smart (and bigger again) and use more power again needing plugging into the charge a couple of times a day. From a few years ago many phones do not need to be "plugged" in to charge simply place them on a charging pad.

So it seems a new system will be required for large airliners, as the current battery and fuel cell technologies will not work.

But if we can charge during flight we might only need enough battery storage equivalent to that of the current twin engine ETOPS range.

So if there is a big breakthrough in wireless energy transfer, then heated/cooled pressurised airliners can certainly be a reality.

Will it be mini lightning strikes at set locations like in Back to the Future along flight paths or a more steady continuous charge from lasers tracking the flight from space? I do not have any idea, but I don't expect that a electric powered aircraft will carry "batteries" with the capacity for the entire flight.

As for the height, similar to now I expect.

Wireless Energy Transfer
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