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GPS: Keeping things in perspective

mgiles — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:08:57 +0000

Celestial reference systems

Probably not many of us lie awake nights pondering how we can be sure our GPS positions are firmly related to reality. It just is enormously reassuring to have that machine telling us where we are. Because it is presented via flashing lights and after much button pushing we are inclined to take its accuracy for granted. Well mostly it is very accurate and a marvel of technology it is too. But when one stops to consider there are some technical difficulties which have been very ingeniously addressed. When you are a photon of electromagnetic radiation or a molecule vibrating in space and time as you go about your business, the Earth, rather than being a solid stable reference point, is a shifting plate of vibrating Blancmange. Not even once does a position on or in the earth trace out the same path. The surface of the Earth is perpetually vibrating and quivering and the centre of rotation of the earth is never the same from one moment to the next when one gets close to serious accuracy. Tides, thermal expansion, Nutation, the influence of the moon, relativistic effects due to the alterations in the earths orbital speed all mean we have to look outside the solar system for a base line to refer orbital motions to in order that we have a base line to reference our measuments to. First it was a collection of fixed stars but they too move. Now there is a new and improved base line. Called the ICRF2, this new map uses observations of about 3,000 quasars with the Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI). Sort of does put it all into perspective.

The VLBI is a special network of radio telescopes from all over the world that together have the resolving power of a telescope thousands of miles in diameter. (Though quasars burn intensely brightly, their enormous distance makes them too faint to locate accurately with a conventional optical telescope.)

The new quasar observations were able to reduce the uncertainties in the quasar positions to angles as small as 40 microarcseconds — about the thickness of a 0.7-millimeter mechanical pencil lead in Los Angeles as viewed from Washington, D.C. This uncertainty is five times better than the original ICRF.
http://www.livescience.com/space/091103-st-gps-quasars.html

Stealthy Windmills

mgiles — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:05:31 +0000

Stealth windmill

‘Stealth’ blades take wind turbines off the radar. It seems nothing is ever simple in these days of environmental concern, technological complexity and growing populations and standards of living. A recent example is the innocent windmill. Some see them as a major answers to major problems. Others see them as bird killers, infra noise generators and a con job that will cost too much and deliver too little. Most likely they will find their place but one problem that snuck up on a lot of us is that they can screw with Domestic aviation radars.
The big, fast-moving blades of modern wind turbines interfere with radar for both planes and ships. But ’stealth’ technology could solve the problem. Nothing is ever simple when building large renewable energy projects. For wind energy – which it is hoped could supply a fifth of the UK’s electricity by 2050 – there are logistical challenges and local aesthetic objections, but also a big technical issue. Any time a developer proposes a wind farm near a flight path, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) or the Ministry of Defence (MoD) gets jumpy, because windmills do strange things to radar. The British Wind Energy Association reckons that aviation objections are holding back 6GW of wind energy capacity, or enough to power 3.4m homes. About half of all proposed wind projects in the UK have some sort of aviation issue. But this problem may soon be consigned to history: inspired by stealth warplanes, the windmill manufacturer Vestas has come up with a way to make its turbines and blades almost invisible to radar. Modern windmills are massive structures that
are far better at reflecting radar signals than many of the other objects that a radar might encounter and wish to ignore. In addition, the blade tips of a large wind turbine can reach speeds of up to 200mph, comparable to the speed of a light aircraft. “They appear on a radar display as a radar track and this, from an air traffic controller’s perspective, they think it could be an aircraft and, from an air defence perspective, it means there is unwanted clutter,” says the BWEA’s head of aviation, Nicola Vaughan, who describes radar interference as “the biggest technical barrier for wind farms, without a doubt”. Marine radar operators have problems, too – waves bouncing between windmills and ships can create “ghost images”. Couldn’t planes and boats simply be informed where wind farms are, and give them a wide berth? “It might just work for civil
aircraft,” says Mark Roberts of the defence research company Qinetiq. “But I imagine the CAA wouldn’t be too happy because it would cut across their airspace. And from a defence perspective, the bad guys aren’t
going to play ball.” So the best solution is to make the windmills partly invisible to the radar, by reducing the degree to which they reflect radio waves. Then radar software could filter them out. “Radars have filters in
them that can be set to mask out returns from things like electricity pylons and buildings,” says Steve Appleton of Vestas. “The problem is, if you raise that filter level so you couldn’t see turbines, you wouldn’t see anything else.” Last week, Vestas announced that it had been working on a way to fix this, using radar-
absorbing materials developed by Qinetiq that can be inserted into the blades during manufacture.
He adds: “Vestas gave us a number of criteria when we embarked on this project,” says Qinetiq’s Roberts. “Minimal cost increase, it had to be incorporated as part of their existing manufacturing process, and it had to be of minimal weight impact.” The radar-absorbing material is similar to the composites used in stealth aircraft and, since it is inserted inside the blade, does not change the aerodynamic profile or efficiency of the windmill. In its trial, Vestas replaced one blade of a standard windmill with Qinetiq’s “stealth” blade and
found its radar cross-section was significantly reduced. Vestas plans to carry out a full-scale demonstration next year – with all three blades replaced, and the rest of the structure painted in radar-absorbing material. Appleton insists that the extra costs to a developer should be marginal enough not to put them off buying a
“stealth” turbine. Neither Vestas nor Qinetiq would reveal just how much effect the technology currently has, but Appleton said that, as it gets better, he hopes that a wind farm’s radar footprint could be
reduced by an order of magnitude. Bringing the stealth turbine to market will still require much development work and, mindful of that, the rest of the industry is not sitting in wait. At last week’s BWEA annual meeting, the Department for Energy and Climate Change announced that, along with the wind industry and the Crown Estate, it had awarded £5m to the defence company Raytheon for a project that will examine how to improve radar software. “We’d like to make the radar more intelligent so it can differentiate between a radar return from a turbine and one from an aircraft,” says Vaughan.
Step by step, tackling the radar problem from both ends, that 20% target for wind by 2050 doesn’t look so hard after all.

Frog in a pot phenomenon

mgiles — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:45:32 +0000

Frog in pot

There is a saying that if one slowly heats a pot of water with a live frog in it the frog will go to sleep and not get out and so get cooked whereas if he is dropped into a hot pot he will leap out. So it is in many situations in life. We have it in aviation where slowly evolving situations get way past a point where some action should be taken because each development is incremental and not so different from the last situation. So it is with Airbus pitots and standby instruments and now with Flight 188 overflying its destination I think we have the same thing. It does not really matter if they went to sleep or lost track of time there was considerable potential for trouble. Much has been made of the poor match of the human physiology and performance and yet steadily the man is being taken out of the loop in flying so that such things can happen. An extraordinary number of RPT flights pass uneventfully but where a trend emerges it should be addressed. Ground control is now possible and studies should be made, discussed and decisions taken. Pilots do not have to leave the cockpit. It is just another logical progression. The Helios tragedy where apparently a cabin crew member was walking about with a portable O2 system but unable to enter the cockpit is another situation where ground control could have saved hundreds. The reasons why this has not happened are many and various and to do with how aviation has evolved a rigid and inflexible regulatory process. Vested interests are many but it is mainly a sort of general inertia and no one has had the courage really to say come on guys wake up or more to the point, hear those who have been saying such. As usual there will be wails of technical difficulty and cost but it seems clear that it is going to be a small cost in the long-term and long over due for considerations. Maybe the risk of different sort of hostile take over is behind the resistance but we seem to find ways to trust our fellow men in many other situations. Why not?

911 Impact

In this last episode apparently, the pilots were so engrossed in conversation while checking their laptops that they lost contact with ground controllers for about 90 minutes.
The two pilots involved have had their licenses revoked, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.
The Wall Street Journal described the episode that occurred last week as illustrating two of the biggest problems in commercial aviation: cockpit discipline and pilot complacency. Surely, said airline experts, they must have fallen asleep. Apparently not. According to interview notes from the National Transportation Safety Board: – Both pilots are experienced and have never had an accident, incident or violation.
- Neither reported medical conditions. Both said they were not sleepy or fatigued. They had just had a 19-hour layover before the flight from San Diego to Minneapolis. Yet, from 6:46 p.m. Central Time until 8:14 p.m., the pilots did not communicate, reported The New York Times. More than a dozen controllers in three radar rooms tried to contact the pilots. Was the plane hijacked? Were the pilots in a medical crisis? Four fighter jets were on runway alert in case they were needed. What happened?
In short, the pilots radioed to controllers that there was “cockpit distraction” and “dealing with company issues.” It appears the pilots were discussing a new workplace schedule system following the merger of Northwest and Delta Air Lines, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the meantime, they failed to switch radio frequencies for a different set of air traffic controllers. Besides this inexcusable (? I’ll bet they dont ever do this again so why terminate thier careers?) example of incompetence, this points out several areas needing correction. Are cockpits too cozy? So much piloting is done automatically, in dark cockpits, that it’s easy to nod off or become inattentive. Airlines need to take steps to put the pilots at work doing something useful during that “down time” in the air. Some Boeing aircraft are equipped with warnings when pilots fail to adjust controls, The Wall Street Journal reported. Are voice recorders adequate?
The box recording the cockpit discussions only had the last 30 minutes available, leaving no record of the earlier distracted time. Every box should record every minute of every flight.
And what about video cameras? They should be used in every cockpit. This is not a privacy issue for the pilots, it’s a safety issue. When so many lives are at stake – 144 passengers, two pilots and three attendants – every reasonable means should be taken to protect them.
The good example of being prepared has been well documented, when Chester “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed an aircraft in the Hudson River with only a few minutes from warning to landing. As for the Northwest Airline pilots, every possible lesson should be learned from this strange incident. It would be appropriate for Congress to hold hearings – not to sensationalize this particular incident – but to probe for issues it has revealed. from http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2009-10-30/story/aircraft_safety_incredible_failure

Frog in pot

AIRFOILS

john — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:22:37 +0000

While researching STOL airfoils, the Cuanda effect, as well as the Dyson bladeless-ring geometry airfoil fan, as one

does, I came upon an interesting article. This I am sure will interest those of us into aerodynamics, I

suppose that is most of us. This article elucidates a surprising understanding of low Reynolds Number flow by

the ancient and medieval technologists, and also an insight into pre-industrial revolution industrialisation.

Pleas follow the link and leave a comment.published in Low-tech Magazine by Kris De Decker is a truly amazing

read follow the link below :

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html

Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills

While researching STOL airfoils, the Cuanda effect, as well as the Dyson bladeless fan (which uses a blown ring geometry airfoil) , as one does, I came upon an interesting article. This I am sure will interest those of us who are into aerodynamics. I suppose that is most of us. This article elucidates a surprising understanding of low Reynolds Number flow by the ancient and medieval technologists, and also an insight into pre-industrial revolution industrialisation.

As published in Low-tech Magazine by Kris De Decker this is a truly amazing read follow the link below :

Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills

Please follow the link and leave a comment.

Chinese Develop Space Drive

mgiles — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:06:52 +0000

SPR Emdive

Every so often there is a buzz that someone has made a stunning break through in the Physical Sciences and achieve something wondrous. Antigravity, a space warp, cold fusion, action at a distance or some such. There are persistent rumors that people who know better than us are seriously researching exotic physics and indeed physics is become so bizarre that it would take a really arrogant person (such as the English scientists who declared the end of Physics after Newton had enunciated his laws of motion) to say any of these things are really truly impossible. There is a sort of suspicion that if we can’t go through the problem maybe we can go round it.
The latest example of this is the so called Emdrive developed initially by a small English company SPR (Satellite Propulsion research) Ltd The developer Roger Shawyer has good credentials and does not seem a lunatic but that has not stopped a lot of people some of them very well qualified themselves responding to a recent article in New Scientist with a mixture of scorn outrage and the scientific version of frothing at the mouth. This is because the claim if true will transform space travel and given that the Chinese have taken up the idea ahead of the rest of the space faring world it will see the Chinese with a healthy lead in a radical new development.
The Chinese team has purchased rights to part of the process and claims to have verified the theory and made progress with its practical application since June 2007. The team headed by Professor Yuan at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi’an is building a thruster based on Shawyer’s theories scheduled to be completed by end of this year.
The device that has sparked their interest is an engine that generates thrust purely from electromagnetic radiation – microwaves to be precise – by exploiting the strange properties of relativity. It has no moving parts, and releases no exhaust or noxious emissions. Potentially, it could pack the punch of a rocket in a box the size of a suitcase. It could one day replace the engines on almost any spacecraft. More advanced versions might allow cars to lift from the ground and hover. It could even lead to aircraft that will not need wings at all. One can’t help thinking that it sounds too good to be true.

The developer Roger Shawyer, turns out to be reassuringly normal. His credentials are certainly impressive. He worked his way up through the aerospace industry, designing and building navigation and communications equipment for military and commercial satellites, before becoming a senior aerospace engineer at Matra Marconi Space (later part of EADS Astrium) in Portsmouth, near where he now lives. He was also a consultant to the Galileo project, Europe’s satellite navigation system, which engineers are now testing in orbit and for which he negotiated the use of the radio frequencies it needed.
With that pedigree, you’d imagine Shawyer would be someone the space industry would have listened to. Far from it. While at Astrium, Shawyer proposed that the company develop his idea. “I was told in no uncertain terms to drop it,” he says. “This came from the very top.”

What Shawyer had in mind was a replacement for the small thrusters conventional satellites use to stay in orbit. The fuel they need makes up about half their launch weight, and also limits a satellite’s life: once it runs out, the vehicle drifts out of position and must be replaced. Shawyer’s engine, by contrast, would be propelled by microwaves generated from solar energy. The photovoltaic cells would eliminate the fuel, and with the launch weight halved, satellite manufacturers could send up two craft for the price of one, so you would only need half as many launches.

So why the problem? Shawyer argues that for companies investing billions in rockets and launch sites, a new technology that leads to fewer launches and longer-lasting satellites has little commercial appeal. By the same token, a company that offers more for less usually wins in the end, so Shawyer’s idea may have been seen as too speculative. Whatever the reason, in 2000, he resigned to go it alone.

Surprisingly, Shawyer’s disruptive technology rests on an idea that goes back more than a century. In 1871 the physicist James Clerk Maxwell worked out that light should exert a force on any surface it hits, like the wind on a sail. This so-called radiation pressure is extremely weak, though. Last year, a group called The Planetary Society attempted to launch a solar sail called Cosmos 1 into orbit. The sail had a surface area of about 600 square metres. Despite this large area, about the size of two tennis courts, its developers calculated that sunlight striking it would produce a force of 3 millinewtons, barely enough to lift a feather on the surface of the Earth. Still, it would be enough to accelerate a craft in the weightlessness of space. Unfortunately the sail was lost after launch. NASA is also interested in solar sails, but has never launched one. Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise, as a few millinewtons isn’t enough for serious work in space.

For more go to http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125681.400 and also www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/chinese-buildin/

In flight use of cell phones

john — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:46:42 +0000

Cell phones in the cabin

Finally the capability to use mobile telephones is being offered by an increasing number of airlines. We, the passengers have been clamouring for this for years in despair. This was a fight with too many dogs. National aviation and communication regulatory authorities, Industry governing bodies, manufacturers, air crew associations, telecommunications providers, you name it, and of course us, the customers. Eventually an acceptable model emerged for the enabling technology to go forward.

Each aircraft is equipped with a picocell. This is a low power cell phone tower operating within the cabin . This interfaces with the on board satellite communications links to interoperate with the terrestrial telecommunications networks and so process the call normally with full functionality. That is actually very elegant and many enhancements are in the works for Wi-Fi internet access for example raising issues about VOIP and firewalls and the rest of it.
The main providers at the moment are OnAir (http://www.onair.aero) and AeroMobile (http://www.aeromobile.net). The rush is on….

This from aeromobile….
AeroMobile, the market leading in-flight mobile communications provider, has completed the certification of its system on the Boeing 777-300ER, its sixth aircraft type.
The AeroMobile system, which allows passengers to safely make and receive calls, text messages & GPRS data services whilst on board, in-flight, is now certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for use on six widebodied aircraft types.
In addition to the Boeing 777-300ER, it is certified for use and installed on Airbus A330s, A340-300s and Airbus A340-500s, together with Boeing 777-200 and 777-300 variant aircraft.
Launched only in March 2008, AeroMobile’s Avion award-winning system is already in full operation on 45 aircraft belonging both to launch customer Emirates Airline and Malaysian Airlines. During this time, AeroMobile has been used by more than 400,000 passengers.

Meantime the fight goes on , this from the NYT.
Cellphone use on airplanes, it would seem, is on extended hold in the United States.
The national union representing flight attendants wants Congress to ban in-flight phone calls, and survey after survey of airline passengers shows strong opposition to allowing cellphones on planes.
So while domestic airlines rush to wire their cabins to provide in-flight Wi-Fi connectivity, there is no indication whether, or when, passengers in the United States might be able to make a cellphone call at 37,000 feet.
Foreign Airlines Ahead of US on Cellphone Use

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/technology/29phones.html

One Stage to Orbit a stage closer

mgiles — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:11:06 +0000

Sabre air breathing rocket hybrid

Single stage to orbit (SSTO) is the way to go for cheaper space travel but so far it has defeated the available technology. Basically the reason for needing multiple stages is that carrying all the mass of a rocket into orbit makes the process inefficient and costly. With multiple stages mass can be dropped as the fuel in it is used. The problem with multiple stages is that re-using stages is difficult because they obviously have to be retrieved in one piece and without salt water damage if they are to be reused and there is obvious waste if they are expended. Despite the existance of some wayout plans for vastly more efficient techniques such as Space Towers which will lower an elevator down from orbit and Launch Fountains which would use a stream of projectiles to suspend structures in space, the near term technique of choice seems to be the use of air breathing engines for the initial boost to something like mach 5 after which an efficient rocket provides the remaining boost into orbit.
The suggestion that the SSTO is a step closer comes with claims by Reaction Engines Limited a British company to have under development a new form of hybrid engine which does not have the drawbacks of earlier planned hybrid strategies. They predict economically viable SSTO could be with us by 2012
The SABRE Engine represents a huge Advance over Liquid air Cycle (LACE) Technology.
In the past, attempts to design single stage to orbit rockets have been unsuccessful largely due to the weight of oxidiser such as liquid oxygen. One possible solution to reduce the quantity of oxidizer that a vehicle is required to carry is being able to use atmospheric oxygen in the combustion process. The SABRE engine achieves this with its two modes of operation: its air-breathing and conventional rocket capabilities. This is made possible through a synthesis of elements from rocket and gas turbine technology.

The design of SABRE evolved from liquid-air cycle engines (LACE) which have a single rocket combustion chamber with associated pumps, pre-burner and nozzle which are utilised in both modes. LACE engines employ the cooling capacity of the cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel to liquefy incoming air prior to pumping. Unfortunately, this type of cycle necessitates very high fuel flow.

These faults are avoided in the SABRE engine, which only cools down the air to the vapour boundary and avoids liquefaction. This allows the use of a relatively conventional turbo compressor and avoids the requirement for an air condenser.

The SABRE engine is essentially a closed cycle rocket engine with an additional pre-cooled turbo-compressor to provide a high pressure air supply to the combustion chamber. This allows operation from zero forward speed on the runway and up to Mach 5.5 in air-breathing mode during ascent. As the air density falls with altitude the engine eventually switches to a pure rocket propelling SKYLON to orbital velocity (around Mach 25).

Air collection is via a simple conical two shock inlet with a translating centrebody to maintain shock-on-lip conditions. The centrebody moves forward to close the inlet for re-entry. A bypass system is used to match the variable captured air flow to the engine demand. This bypass flow is reheated in order to recover the momentum lost through the capture shock system.

The thrust during air-breathing ascent is variable but around 200 tonnes. During rocket ascent this rises to 300 tonnes but is then throttled down towards the end of the ascent to limit the longitudinal acceleration to 3.0g.
Space.co.uk have a video of Richard Varvill, Technical Director of Reaction Engines Limited, discussing the SABRE engine. Richard discusses the remarkable technology being developed to support a single stage to orbit spacecraft.
See http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre.html

Time for a change in ATC? 4D Flying

mgiles — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:34:46 +0000

ATC is complex and resistant to computerization as many failed attempts to introduce advance automation into ATC has shown. Despite this the need to remove human error and to optimize trajectories which will over time lead to massive fuel and cost savings as well as efficiencies and time savings for the consumer has meant that the goal has been doggedly pursued. Numerous trials of various systems have taken place and are still talking place. Modern FMS and autothrottle and autopilot systems now permit such precise management of cruising speed that the time is now deemed by many to have come for the NextGen ATC which will provide these efficiencies.
In an announcement on 21st of August the FAA and Embry Riddle said that the dimension of time would be introduced into a demonstration of flight management.
Today’s systems that manage flights employ three dimensions: altitude, latitude and longitude. A fourth dimension – time – will be introduced in demonstrations beginning later this year under a new agreement reached between FAA and Embry Riddle’s aviation consortium.The new technology, called 4D trajectory based operations, will optimize an aircraft’s flight path through its entire flight – or trajectory – by adding the element of time. Time, in this case, means the ability of an aircraft to cross a specific navigation fix at a specific time. This type of precision – knowing an aircraft will be where it’s supposed to be at a certain time – will improve efficiency and capacity in the nation’s skies. It also gets to the heart of the Next Generation Air Transportation System: moving aircraft from Point A to Point B with greater efficiency, saving time, money and fuel.Beginning in the fall, flight demonstrations of the new flight management system in 4D trajectory based operations will help determine how well aircraft avionics predict and execute the optimum trajectory of an aircraft while sharing the information with ground systems. Data collected from flight management systems will help us understand how well aircraft systems are able to compute the most efficient path between Point A and Point B and their ability to comply with time constraints. The new technology is expected to be used on flights in medium-density markets such as Orlando. These 4D trajectory based operations will help determine the impact on traffic capacity and efficiency of operations.

Electric planes

mgiles — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:36:47 +0000

A number of pioneers have been chipping away at the problems involved in creating electrically powered aircraft. A variety of approaches are being actively pursued and as yet it is not clear which direction will prove to be the most successful. Contemporary electric motors are already up to the job of powering aircraft up to the light twin level with motors up to 500 kwatts being feasible and available but the problem of power storage or fuel remains opaque to really successful commercially useful solution. Exceptions to this are some niche application such as drones and long duration UAVs where applications are being perfected now.

It has been claimed that the first commercially available electricity-powered plane will revolutionize aircraft design.
GM has earned high praise this summer – and deservedly so – for its announcement that the forthcoming Chevy Volt electric car will get as much as much as 230 miles per gallon for in-town driving. But while Detroit was stealing headlines on the ground, a little-known Chinese company was doing something even more incredible in the skies. At the Oshkosh AirVenture show a few weeks ago, Beijing startup Yuneec International took the wraps off the world’s first commercially produced electric aircraft, the E430. Powered by lithium polymer batteries, weighing close to a thousand pounds, and sipping about $2.50 worth of electricity per hour of flight, the E430 has completed more than 20 hours in test runs during the last couple months, including one in Camarillo, CA, that can be seen here. Little more has been revealed about the E430, other than some technical specifications and that it can operate for up to three hours without a charge.
While the E430 may be the aircraft equivalent of an auto show concept-car, there’s a good deal of progress being made in the advancement of electrical aeronautics on the whole. “What’s going on with modern aircraft is a revolution, whether you’re thinking about commercial or military aircraft,” says Bob Smith, VP of advanced technology at Honeywell Aerospace, a unit of Honeywell (HON). Smith doesn’t mean fully electric-powered aircraft – at least not yet. In aeronautic jargon, he’s talking about developing More Electric Architecture (MEA). Enabled by much larger and more sophisticated next -gen aircraft and more efficient generators, Honeywell is replacing the pneumatic and hydraulic power transference systems of with new electric versions. “If you look at how much power a Boeing 777 generates, it’s on the order of 200-300 kilowatts. If you look at the 787, a next-gen aircraft, it’s 1.5 megawatts,” he says. “That’s a massive change, because the generator technology has improved so much.” Moving power around aircraft has always been cumbersome. In last-gen aircraft, high-pressure gas is taken from the engine and transported through bleed valves to the auxiliary power system, which controls air -conditioning, for example. This is a massively inefficient process due to the energy required to heat and cool the gases and because of the weight of the systems. “If you can put a more efficient generator in there, you have a power station as opposed to a boiling room,” says Smith. Electrical systems are now being used to power reverse-thrusters – air brakes, essentially – in aircraft like the A380 – and for de-icing wings. The upside: gains in fuel efficiencies But two of the greatest benefits electrical systems provide are simplicity and merely lightening the load. Eliminating hydraulic systems reduces the complexity of repairing leaks and eliminating hundreds of pounds of tubing. This can lead to as much as 30% gains in fuel consumption. For military aircraft, such a system is revolutionary. In the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, Honeywell’s system carved 1,000 pounds off the weight and 11 inches off the length of the plane.
Does Honeywell have its own E430 read for prime time? Not quite, but Smith agrees the real near-term potential for fully electric aircraft comes in the form of unmanned drones. Think about light-weight drones that travel constantly, their electric systems being continually replenished by advanced technologies like super capacitors, fuel cell systems and solar power. “Once you have large power-generating systems, you have the capability of moving the power around a lot of different ways,” says Smith. “Then things get pretty interesting, allowing you to get into very long surveillance periods.”
Some content From http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/24/the-future-of-airplanes-electricity/?section=magazines_fortune

NASA Offers $1.5 millions prize for 100 mpg aircraft

mgiles — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:02:00 +0000

Very long range aircraft

Oshkosh, Wisconsin, July 31, 2009

The NASA Innovative Partnerships Program and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation today announced the CAFE Green Flight Challenge (CGFC), a flight efficiency competition for aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles-per-gallon. The prize for the aircraft with the best performance will be $1.5 million. This is the largest prize ever offered for a general aviation competition. A $150,000 prize for best score by a bio-fueled aircraft is also offered.

The competition is slated for July 2011 at Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California. A variety of innovative experimental aircraft that fly with either electricity, solar, bio-fuel or hybrid propulsion are expected to enter. Several major universities and EAA aircraft builders have already expressed their intention to form teams to compete. The competition is now officially accepting entrants at cafefoundation.org