Europe to Australia in less than 5 hours
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Australia
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ollie,
As Cypher observes, hydrogen is an energy transfer medium rather than a fuel in its own right, as pure hydrogen occurs nowhere in nature. To produce it by electrolysis of water requires electricity generated from coal, natural gas, solar cells, windmills or turning your breakfast cereal into ethanol. Steam reforming is a process that reacts natural gas with steam, using up some of the natural gas's energy in the process and producing CO2.
There is no free lunch.
This thread is probably not an ideal place for an extended discussion of renewable energy vs global warming, but interested readers might check out this optimistic report the other day, which estimates that $7 trillion could be invested by 2030 in production of clean energy.
While this sounds a huge amount of money - and it is and we should expect it to achieve a lot - to put it in context, US gross domestic product is just under $14 trillion per year, and $7 trillion over more than 20 years is rather less than the US annual military budget (estimated next year to top $650 billion).
If anything's lacking to attack the climate problem, it's not money.
As Cypher observes, hydrogen is an energy transfer medium rather than a fuel in its own right, as pure hydrogen occurs nowhere in nature. To produce it by electrolysis of water requires electricity generated from coal, natural gas, solar cells, windmills or turning your breakfast cereal into ethanol. Steam reforming is a process that reacts natural gas with steam, using up some of the natural gas's energy in the process and producing CO2.
There is no free lunch.
This thread is probably not an ideal place for an extended discussion of renewable energy vs global warming, but interested readers might check out this optimistic report the other day, which estimates that $7 trillion could be invested by 2030 in production of clean energy.
While this sounds a huge amount of money - and it is and we should expect it to achieve a lot - to put it in context, US gross domestic product is just under $14 trillion per year, and $7 trillion over more than 20 years is rather less than the US annual military budget (estimated next year to top $650 billion).
If anything's lacking to attack the climate problem, it's not money.
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Sydney
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This is a million years way. Why release a picture if the design is extremely far fetched? Windows, fuel system, skin temperature control: all solvable with technology.
Would anyone like to comment on the controllability, Vmcg and Vmca aspects of putting your power source on the wingtip and combining this with the smallest possible rudder.
I think Channel 9 have come in spinner.
Yawn
Man Bilong Balus long PNG
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Looking forward to returning to Japan soon but in the meantime continuing the never ending search for a bad bottle of Red!
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Vmca aspects
''Hmm, in cruise at Mach 5 and an outer engine suddenly fails......''
Some of the stories re the SR 71 having an engine failure in the cruise made for interesting reading. Apparently 'The Sled' behaves somewhat alarmingly!
