Xeroque_Holmes

Xeroque_Holmes t1_je4qaja wrote

> the only thing they've mentioned will be challenging

There's plenty of challenging aspects, from the lack of inside knowledge in the company to the fact that H2 occupies 4x the space of regular fuel, is non-conformal, requires cryogenic storage and all sorts of new systems. Which in turn will probably make the aircraft manufacturers to shift to some sort of BWB configuration to be able to store all this volume and still be economically viable. Which in turn poses a myriad of other questions from manufacturing to certification to airport infrastructure itself.

Even Airbus is not pulling this any time soon, lol. Airbus real main priority right now is still single aisle ramp-up, the backlog is huge and the level of digitization is still lacking. We might see an H2 aircraft the size of an ATR at a prototype level, but I really doubt we will se anything concrete beyond that in the next decade.

> the only thing they've mentioned will be challenging is the lack of a hydrogen economy

And of course they are not advertising their weak points to the public, lol. On powerpoint everything is beautiful, but manufacturers have plenty of failed projects like this one. Boeing bet a lot on supersonic, BWB and transonic concepts that never materialized. At this point there are WAY more questions than answers, and SAF might be a much safer bet.

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Xeroque_Holmes t1_je4gnw5 wrote

Not gonna happen any time soon. Commercially viable supersonic, let alone hypersonic flight is a huge endeavor in itself, that probably won't be solved any time soon and plenty of companies have failed. If anything planes have been getting slower for better fuel efficiency.

And hydrogen airplanes is another massive topic in itself that even industry giants as Airbus are having trouble tackling.

Now, combining both problems into one is just insane.

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