What will happen to Air Travel when fossil fuels run out?
Discussion
Prompted by another thread on what would happen if air travel was made illegal, I was pondering what will happen to air travel when fossil fuels finally run out (as they inevitably will, albeit we don't know if that will be 100, 200 or x years down the road)?
Obviously advances are being made in alternative fuels for cars but do the underlying qualities of batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or A N Other work in the context of passenger jets? And, if not, what are the alternatives? There are solar powered planes but these are a) slow and b) extremely limited in payload. Or will we be forced to go back to airships, which have much greater payloads but again are very slow?
In short, are we living in the hey day of mass, cheap and fast air travel, or is there an expectation that technology will solve the problem before the fossil fuels run out?
Obviously advances are being made in alternative fuels for cars but do the underlying qualities of batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or A N Other work in the context of passenger jets? And, if not, what are the alternatives? There are solar powered planes but these are a) slow and b) extremely limited in payload. Or will we be forced to go back to airships, which have much greater payloads but again are very slow?
In short, are we living in the hey day of mass, cheap and fast air travel, or is there an expectation that technology will solve the problem before the fossil fuels run out?
Boatbuoy said:
Watching a CNN ... suggests that there's some 200 years worth of natural gas available.
Yippee, 200yrs! It only took 100million years to make that gas so we have no problems... :-)The only way forward is nuclear, (fire up the Fusion reactor and off to Vegas!) currently the only power source we can make that is small and powerful enough to move around other than burning things.
Didn't the US and Soviets both have, or at least look in to developing nuclear powered planes during the cold war?. Maybe tech has come far enough to see if the idea is halfway feasible these days. Although cleaning up after a crash might take a bit longer than it does today.
Seem to recall watching a doco on it ages ago on Discovery.
Seem to recall watching a doco on it ages ago on Discovery.
reminds me of this texaxile said:
Didn't the US and Soviets both have, or at least look in to developing nuclear powered planes during the cold war?. Maybe tech has come far enough to see if the idea is halfway feasible these days. Although cleaning up after a crash might take a bit longer than it does today.
Seem to recall watching a doco on it ages ago on Discovery.
The US flew a nuclear reactor in the NB-36 but it wasn't connected to any of the aircrafts power systems, there was also going to be the X-6 which would have been powered by a nuclear engine but that was cancelled.Seem to recall watching a doco on it ages ago on Discovery.
The Americans did manage to run an engine that produced actual thrust via a nuclear reaction but after spending over $1 billion the whole thing got cancelled by Kennedy.
The rumours about a Soviet nuclear powered aircraft turned out to be just that, rumours.
Working for a company with a rather big stake in this I do have some view on this!
1) The oil won't as such run out it will just get more expensive as it becomes more difficult to get and global demand goes up. On one hand aviation is very susceptible to cost increases fuel as it makes up a high portion of the cost, on the other hand the amount of fuel it uses it relatively low in comparison to ground transport shipping and space heating. It would not be too difficult to reserve enough oil for aviation even assuming that aviation expands in proportion to the world economy.
2) You can obtain aviation fuel from coal, environmentally this is pretty bad but it is still possible and was used by the Germans in world war ii. You can also derive aviation fuel from bio fuels with all the same issues that you get with bio fuels. Though if ground transport was entirely electrified the amount of land required for aviation alone is entirely sustainable.
3) Battery technology had the potential to power aircraft, lithium air batteries have the theoretical capability to fly long haul. Though you have issues of packaging and battery life as a technology it is very much in the lab. For issues of local air pollution, noise and maintenance an electric aircraft would actually be preferable were it feasible. Don't expect this before 2040!
Nuclear aircraft are not feasible for passenger flight, while reactors with the necessary power density were designed they had the following issues.
1) The oil won't as such run out it will just get more expensive as it becomes more difficult to get and global demand goes up. On one hand aviation is very susceptible to cost increases fuel as it makes up a high portion of the cost, on the other hand the amount of fuel it uses it relatively low in comparison to ground transport shipping and space heating. It would not be too difficult to reserve enough oil for aviation even assuming that aviation expands in proportion to the world economy.
2) You can obtain aviation fuel from coal, environmentally this is pretty bad but it is still possible and was used by the Germans in world war ii. You can also derive aviation fuel from bio fuels with all the same issues that you get with bio fuels. Though if ground transport was entirely electrified the amount of land required for aviation alone is entirely sustainable.
3) Battery technology had the potential to power aircraft, lithium air batteries have the theoretical capability to fly long haul. Though you have issues of packaging and battery life as a technology it is very much in the lab. For issues of local air pollution, noise and maintenance an electric aircraft would actually be preferable were it feasible. Don't expect this before 2040!
Nuclear aircraft are not feasible for passenger flight, while reactors with the necessary power density were designed they had the following issues.
- They didn't have enough power for takeoff so you still needed a second set of booster turbojets.
- The shielding was only barely light enough to alloy takeoff and that was achieved by having it only cover the small crew compartment positioned as far from the reactor as possible, in a civil airliner the fuselage is the passenger compartment.
- Maintenance would be conducted from behind movable lead shields
- While you could design the fuel to survive being ejected from the reactor in a crash the public acceptance issues are totally insurmountable.
Edited by Talksteer on Friday 3rd January 20:29
scubadude said:
Boatbuoy said:
Watching a CNN ... suggests that there's some 200 years worth of natural gas available.
Yippee, 200yrs! It only took 100million years to make that gas so we have no problems... :-)The only way forward is nuclear, (fire up the Fusion reactor and off to Vegas!) currently the only power source we can make that is small and powerful enough to move around other than burning things.
Friggerpants said:
scubadude said:
Boatbuoy said:
Watching a CNN ... suggests that there's some 200 years worth of natural gas available.
Yippee, 200yrs! It only took 100million years to make that gas so we have no problems... :-)The only way forward is nuclear, (fire up the Fusion reactor and off to Vegas!) currently the only power source we can make that is small and powerful enough to move around other than burning things.
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