HS2, whats the current status ?
Discussion
garyhun said:
petop said:
Watching the BBC1 program on HS2 now. The spokesperson for HS2 comes across as typical PR person employed to deflect from the truth!
Felt so sorry for that Birmingham company - sounds like a right stitch-up!PositronicRay said:
To replace HS2 they'll need quite a decent range, + some contingency. Compared to surface transport use of energy must be pretty poor. Any prototypes yet?
This is the Pipistrel Electro Alpha, you can buy this pure electric training aircraft today for $125,000, its operating costs are a fraction of a comparable petrol plane.
On the eVTOL side: Cora by Kittyhawk is manned and flying, obviously this demonstrator is a test mule the actual production aircraft would be much cleaner.
Blackfly (pictured) and the Kittyhawk flyer are electric ultralight VTOL's that are intended for leisure use but obviously also form a minimum viable product for eVTOL's in general. You will be able to buy these next year.
This is the remotely piloted 1/3 scale prototype of the Eviation Alice a 1000km 9 seat aircraft, initially targeted at business aviation, expect this to be stretched up to 19 passengers which is is the current limit for the revised part 23 regulations where eVTOLs are being certified. They claim they will fly the manned prototype next year.
This is Zunum, they don't have a publicly revealed prototype but they are funded by Boeing who also bought Aurora flight sciences last year to strengthen themselves in this area.
The current business case is that they start hybrid but are able to replace the single turboshaft with a further battery pack. I suspect that as they are targeting a 2022 ISD they are probably banking on the hybrid plane being a minimum viable product and going full electric very rapidly.
This is the Airbus Zephyr, it is solar powered using batteries to keep flying over night. At most latitudes it can essentially fly for an indefinite amount of time. Its record is several weeks.
While it is very light and is targeted at operating as pseudo satellite obviously it is also being used to develop and prove systems. Its batteries at 400wh/kg solid state lithium batteries, these aren't ready for the big time yet for safety and degradation issues but are a good example of the possibilities.
By the time someone assembles these building blocks it's too late!
one of the things those flying machines DOESN'T do is connect the rest of country
the thing that HS2 has done a very bad job of promoting is that there will be two types of trains running on the new railway
HS2-only trains and HS2-compatible trains. So as soon as Phase 1 is open then times to and from London will start improving e.g the compatible trains will travel down from Glasgow, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester etc and then join the high speed network from Birmingham. This is why so many stations are being built or revamped and when the whole route is finished train times and capacity will have improved massively over a very large part of the country
the thing that HS2 has done a very bad job of promoting is that there will be two types of trains running on the new railway
HS2-only trains and HS2-compatible trains. So as soon as Phase 1 is open then times to and from London will start improving e.g the compatible trains will travel down from Glasgow, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester etc and then join the high speed network from Birmingham. This is why so many stations are being built or revamped and when the whole route is finished train times and capacity will have improved massively over a very large part of the country
Saleen836 said:
garyhun said:
petop said:
Watching the BBC1 program on HS2 now. The spokesperson for HS2 comes across as typical PR person employed to deflect from the truth!
Felt so sorry for that Birmingham company - sounds like a right stitch-up!rover 623gsi said:
one of the things those flying machines DOESN'T do is connect the rest of country
the thing that HS2 has done a very bad job of promoting is that there will be two types of trains running on the new railway
HS2-only trains and HS2-compatible trains. So as soon as Phase 1 is open then times to and from London will start improving e.g the compatible trains will travel down from Glasgow, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester etc and then join the high speed network from Birmingham. This is why so many stations are being built or revamped and when the whole route is finished train times and capacity will have improved massively over a very large part of the country
Are these the same high speed trains that were supposed to connect ‘the North’ to the channel tunnel?the thing that HS2 has done a very bad job of promoting is that there will be two types of trains running on the new railway
HS2-only trains and HS2-compatible trains. So as soon as Phase 1 is open then times to and from London will start improving e.g the compatible trains will travel down from Glasgow, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester etc and then join the high speed network from Birmingham. This is why so many stations are being built or revamped and when the whole route is finished train times and capacity will have improved massively over a very large part of the country
abzmike said:
rover 623gsi said:
one of the things those flying machines DOESN'T do is connect the rest of country
the thing that HS2 has done a very bad job of promoting is that there will be two types of trains running on the new railway
HS2-only trains and HS2-compatible trains. So as soon as Phase 1 is open then times to and from London will start improving e.g the compatible trains will travel down from Glasgow, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester etc and then join the high speed network from Birmingham. This is why so many stations are being built or revamped and when the whole route is finished train times and capacity will have improved massively over a very large part of the country
Are these the same high speed trains that were supposed to connect ‘the North’ to the channel tunnel?the thing that HS2 has done a very bad job of promoting is that there will be two types of trains running on the new railway
HS2-only trains and HS2-compatible trains. So as soon as Phase 1 is open then times to and from London will start improving e.g the compatible trains will travel down from Glasgow, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester etc and then join the high speed network from Birmingham. This is why so many stations are being built or revamped and when the whole route is finished train times and capacity will have improved massively over a very large part of the country
The problem there was that the building of the tunnel more or less coincided with a huge increase in short-haul flights as the industry was deregulated and the budget carriers came on the scene. It was an idea that would have worked, and indeed happened, if it hadn't been overtaken by events.
You could perhaps draw an analogy with Concorde. Introduced at a time when generally only the hyper-rich could afford to fly. The aviation market changed at much the same time making Concorde something of an anachronism from the outset.
Having said that, there are plenty of trains that come through the Channel Tunnel and go on beyond London to places elsewhere in the UK, but a lot of people don't know or con't care about them because they are all freight trains. I am not sure how these flying batteries would shift 3000 tonnes of stuff from London to Brum or vice versa - perhaps Talksteer could tell us
Talksteer said:
This is the Pipistrel Electro Alpha, you can buy this pure electric training aircraft today for $125,000, its operating costs are a fraction of a comparable petrol plane.
On the eVTOL side: Cora by Kittyhawk is manned and flying, obviously this demonstrator is a test mule the actual production aircraft would be much cleaner.
Blackfly (pictured) and the Kittyhawk flyer are electric ultralight VTOL's that are intended for leisure use but obviously also form a minimum viable product for eVTOL's in general. You will be able to buy these next year.
This is the remotely piloted 1/3 scale prototype of the Eviation Alice a 1000km 9 seat aircraft, initially targeted at business aviation, expect this to be stretched up to 19 passengers which is is the current limit for the revised part 23 regulations where eVTOLs are being certified. They claim they will fly the manned prototype next year.
This is Zunum, they don't have a publicly revealed prototype but they are funded by Boeing who also bought Aurora flight sciences last year to strengthen themselves in this area.
The current business case is that they start hybrid but are able to replace the single turboshaft with a further battery pack. I suspect that as they are targeting a 2022 ISD they are probably banking on the hybrid plane being a minimum viable product and going full electric very rapidly.
This is the Airbus Zephyr, it is solar powered using batteries to keep flying over night. At most latitudes it can essentially fly for an indefinite amount of time. Its record is several weeks.
While it is very light and is targeted at operating as pseudo satellite obviously it is also being used to develop and prove systems. Its batteries at 400wh/kg solid state lithium batteries, these aren't ready for the big time yet for safety and degradation issues but are a good example of the possibilities.
By the time someone assembles these building blocks it's too late!
Most of those are conventional take off/landings. They'll need runways the same as current planes. Of the other two one definitely looks like it stovl rather than vtol, and the other is ambiguous. While the idea is great, unless we flatten all the existing bus/train stations and convert them into vtol stations then i'm not sure where they'll go. As a replacement for helicopters or planes operating from existing facilities great, but otherwise the craft is only part of the problem.On the eVTOL side: Cora by Kittyhawk is manned and flying, obviously this demonstrator is a test mule the actual production aircraft would be much cleaner.
Blackfly (pictured) and the Kittyhawk flyer are electric ultralight VTOL's that are intended for leisure use but obviously also form a minimum viable product for eVTOL's in general. You will be able to buy these next year.
This is the remotely piloted 1/3 scale prototype of the Eviation Alice a 1000km 9 seat aircraft, initially targeted at business aviation, expect this to be stretched up to 19 passengers which is is the current limit for the revised part 23 regulations where eVTOLs are being certified. They claim they will fly the manned prototype next year.
This is Zunum, they don't have a publicly revealed prototype but they are funded by Boeing who also bought Aurora flight sciences last year to strengthen themselves in this area.
The current business case is that they start hybrid but are able to replace the single turboshaft with a further battery pack. I suspect that as they are targeting a 2022 ISD they are probably banking on the hybrid plane being a minimum viable product and going full electric very rapidly.
This is the Airbus Zephyr, it is solar powered using batteries to keep flying over night. At most latitudes it can essentially fly for an indefinite amount of time. Its record is several weeks.
While it is very light and is targeted at operating as pseudo satellite obviously it is also being used to develop and prove systems. Its batteries at 400wh/kg solid state lithium batteries, these aren't ready for the big time yet for safety and degradation issues but are a good example of the possibilities.
By the time someone assembles these building blocks it's too late!
anonymous said:
[redacted]
The real thing will always be better:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NacppJ_vWQg
NSFW!
anonymous said:
[redacted]
I assume that you are ex forces, try to look at this creatively. When the iPhone was released it was "an iPod, a phone and a Browser", however few fully appreciated how many applications there could be for a combination of processor, touch screen, GPS and various sensors.
I posted those images to answer a posters question as to whether electric flight was a paper exercise, it isn't.
Zunum is a minimum viable product, the intent is to demonstrate regional ranges for a hybrid then full electric aircraft.
The initial advantage of the system is that it's operational cost should be substantially lower (as will noise) than a similar 12 seat aircraft, Zunum is staffed by ex Boeing people and funded by them their assessment of costs is thus credible.
As I've been talking about we are replacing specialist low volume aerospace components made from noble metals containing air at 1900k for stuff derrived from consumer electronics.
The initial market for Zunum is regional flying in North America. The transformational market will be the developing world, where it will be much cheaper to build small airports than railways or good roads.
Zunum originally looked at a VTOL aircraft but decided that was too much to bite off in one go.
Where the possibilities of electric flight really start being differential is when you start exploring the design space around novel configurations.
The cost savings over combustion engines are magnified once you start taking off vertically and with substantial less noise.
Once you can do VTOL, with less noise and with a cheap vehicle then you are in the space where you can now fly from centre to centre of cities or more like from town to city or suburb to city centre.
Compared to rail this is relatively infrastructure light, you need some flat ground a building and a three phase power connection. It is perfectly possible that a city would have more InterCity flying locations than railway stations.
I have no doubt that they are technically possible and are potentially disruptive technologies, but that in itself does not drive disruption.
Segway was supposed to disrupt personal local transportation. Postmen, delivery, warehouse, etc.
Is it a solution looking for a problem? (at least vs HS2)
Segway was supposed to disrupt personal local transportation. Postmen, delivery, warehouse, etc.
Is it a solution looking for a problem? (at least vs HS2)
Vaud said:
I have no doubt that they are technically possible
I 'm sorry but basic maths tells you that other than demonstrating that an electric plane can fly, these demonstrate nothing. I mean, a bumblebee can fly, but it's not much use getting you and your family and your luggage a couple of thousand miles away so you can go on your holidays now is it!(also, note, that conventional planes loose mass as they burn their fuel, ie they land significantly lighter (to the tune of nearly 50% on a long range aircraft!!) a battery electric plane weighs the same at all times, irrespective of the SoC of the batteries. That on it's own is a massive challenge! (Hint, have a look at the wing area, profile and myriad lift enhancing devices to enable a current wide body jet to land safety, now scroll up to the render of that electric private jet, look at the wings, see the problem???)
Take a small commercial aircraft, say an Airbus A320. That relatively small plane has around 30,000 litres of Jet-A1 on board, that's about 25 tonnes of fuel, and contains roughly 320 MWhrs of energy.
A Tesla P85 KWhr battery weighs 520kg, so 320 MWhr is going to weigh 1,946 tonnes
See the problem!
(ok, lets say we double the specific battery energy density, double the propulsive efficiency of the engines and double the L/D ratio of the airframe (all currently impossible) to get the same range as an A320 would still need 243 tonnes of batteries or about 3 times the mass of the currently fully loaded, fully fuelled A320)
mcdjl said:
Most of those are conventional take off/landings. They'll need runways the same as current planes. Of the other two one definitely looks like it stovl rather than vtol, and the other is ambiguous. While the idea is great, unless we flatten all the existing bus/train stations and convert them into vtol stations then i'm not sure where they'll go. As a replacement for helicopters or planes operating from existing facilities great, but otherwise the craft is only part of the problem.
As per the previous poster, this is a flavour of current prototypes there are plenty more. The Blackflys short take off distance is ~1m and it can hover.See many previous posts on eVTOL types being a fraction of the cost and noise of helicopters.
As for ground infrastructure, let's look at how much space it would need and see how much space to replicate a major railway station.
Liverpool Lime Street is the tenth most popular at 15 million passengers per year:
Assume weekend is 50% capacity 15,000,000/ (52*6.5)=44,500 per day
Assume 18 hour day: 3,700 per hour 9 Platforms: 205 per hour per platform
I'm sure the peaks are much higher.......
For reference 1 landing pad can have around 30 landings and take offs per hour so with 20 people per aircraft that is up 600 people per hour per pad. The pad would be around 30 m square and we'd have somewhere between 5-10 aircraft charging/boarding stands per pad.
So to replicate Liverpool Lime street we need in the region of 6-9 pads (to allow up to 150% average capacity) and around 30 boarding/Ch pads. If we lay all that out it comes to around 3-4 hectares assuming that we lay it all out on one level which we don't have to, we could build a stationary aircraft carrier. If we scale up the aircraft to 50 seats the footprint doesn't go up that much so we need an even smaller site.
Liverpool Lime street is around 2 hectares.
I think the take away points for VTOL stations are that they are comparable in size to a railway station of similar capacity. However unlike a railway station you don't have to link the platform's together or connect them to a railway line.
As a exercise open Google maps and look for location within 1km of the centre of a UK city with 2-4 hectares of space and relatively tolerant neighbors/high ambient sound levels (business, industry, bodies of water, existing railway stations). It's not too difficult to find lots of locations.
Lots of small aircraft in an urban environment? It will be carnage, even more so when someone loads the passenger space with gas cylinders. Police guarding the Houses of Parliament to be armed with anti-aircraft weapons?
Stop the madness of HS2, invest the money in roads and automated road vehicles.
Stop the madness of HS2, invest the money in roads and automated road vehicles.
Vaud said:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Quite... elderly, inform, hand baggage, faffing. What's the turnaround time of an island hopper - 30 mins? Regulations will mandate visual aircraft checks, even with autonomous or partially autonomous flight.Digga said:
Plus, look at the struggle people have piloting road vehicles in only (effectively) two dimensions. Do you really want Arnold Clark to start selling cheap aircraft to these twits?
I think there is (eventually) a niche for them (and probably more in the US at first). BUT there will face the same regulatory constraints as passenger aircraft for the immediate to long term. Regulators move very, very slowly.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Heathrow manages 90 movements per hour off two runways with conventional ATC.We are talking about a computer controlled system landing VTOL aircraft.
Once the aircraft lands on the pad it will immediately taxi off the pad or the pad itself will shuffle the aircraft out the way. The passengers can disembark on a much more leisurely pace while the eVTOL charges.
I knew you'd jump on the timing, so some points:
1: eVTOL or regional eVTOL don'[t need to achieve such high space utilisation on day one, there is plenty of time to develop solutions capable of dealing with whatever the demand is.
2: Electric air mobility can be tested at reasonably small scale, there is no time anyone has to commit £10 billion and freeze all aspects of the design. That is why private companies are proceeding with eVTOL quickly and governments are plodding along with HS2.
3: It wouldn't matter is my numbers were 200% or 300% the basic point that a regional eVTOL station could handle high capacity and be located in existing urban spaces stand, so I have to find two sites of 4 hectares, or build a station with multiple tiers.
4: What you have provided is lots of examples of why some existing solutions can't do something they weren't designed to do. If something in future tech is a requirement the correct lense to look through is a first principles one.
It isn't a requirement that we get everyone to board in 2 minutes, but is it possible, yes, we could have one door per 4 passengers in our unpressurised aircraft and we could use something akin to the techniques used on roller coasters to line everyone up in advance.
Edited by Talksteer on Wednesday 19th December 19:41
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