Japan Airlines fuels up on hydrogen hype with eye on cleaner skies

Japan Airlines is looking into the feasibility of using hydrogen-electric engines to power aircraft in future, and is working with three engineering outfits to study issues such as safety and maintainability. The flagship carrier for Japan said it has signed agreements with three companies involved in hydrogen-electric …

[Nick Ryan]

Hydrogen is no solution to everything but niche applications do have value. While commercial airlines aren't exactly niche, they are highly regulated and controlled which given hydrogen is probably what is required.

It'd be interesting to learn how the efficiencies pan out between hydrogen fuel cells generating electricity to power motors compared to just directly burning hydrogen.

While I think hydrogen fuel cells are great/cool technology, the downsides of them including providing a clean enough oxygen supply, what they are made of and their waste heat are some challenges to overcome, particularly compared to the relatively very well understood process of "exploding stuff for movement" (internal combustion engine) and how the modifications to use hydrogen are relatively minor to do this. I suspect that once going the heat generated through either process would be used to warm up the cryogenically stored hydrogen so it's not going to be entirely wasted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping the fuel cells cold will be an interesting challenge in light weight heat exchanger design. However, it's not as big an engineering challenge as keeping the fuel cells, electric motors and pressure vessel for storing hydrogen light enough that the mass of the energy stored plus propulsion system can even be even remotely similar to that of conventional jet fuel plus a gas turbine. Bare in mind that the fuel tanks for a conventional aircraft are essentially the weight of a sealing coating of plastic on the inside of the wings, plus some fuel pumps.

The hydrogen either has to be cryogenically cooled, or kept under high pressure to achieve a reasonable energy per unit volume, so fuel tank mass becomes significant. Together with the rest of the equipment required for fuel cells, you are very likely to end end with a fairly low proportion of your take-off mass being payload.

[Nick Ryan]

Good point. Regular fuel has high energy density without having to worry about maintaining a very low temperature and/or high pressure. By comparison it's a pretty damn stable liquid that can just be poured in where it's needed. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is a pathological escape artist by way of containment and that's before temperature and pressure are considered.

[Lurko]

Well, let's see them overcome the major problems of poor energy density and immensely heavy tanks. In a demonstration aircraft it's a piece of piddle to show that an aircraft can fly on hydrogen. As a viable aviation fuel things are very very different.

Ultimately, this is more of the hydrogen madness. Assuming we had some magical source of renewable H2, the ONLY logical way of using it for air transport is by processing it into kerosene as the principal ingredient of avtur (jet fuel). Meanwhile, as the west has people promoting hydrogen aircraft, hydrogen mains gas, hydrogen cars and other poorly developed ideas, China burns over 3 billion tonnes of coal every year, and in the first six months alone of 2023 started work on 37 GW of new coal fired generating capacity, resurrected 8 GW of deferred coal plans, and additionally approved 52 GW of new coal capacity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your facts checking here.

>>> poor energy density

Specific energy is approximately 120 MJ/kg, almost three times more than diesel or gasoline. In theory you therefore need 3 times less fuel (in mass). That compensates partially the energy density (in volume). That means lower ratio of fuel mass over payload mass. Volume considerations are much less relevant. What matters is the commercial advantage.

>>> immensely heavy tanks

Type IV hydrogen tanks are just light polyamide.

>>> China burns over 3 billion tonnes of coal every year

Thank China for making solar panels that gets the MWh below 10$ in some countries. This is where Green H2 cheaper than grey H2 will come. This is cheaper than electricity from coal.

Thank China for > 50% capacity based on hydro, wind and solar

Thank China for > 17% electricity from wind and solar in 2022

[Lurko]

Re: Your facts checking here.

I can understand why chose to post AC. You quote the gravimetric energy density of hydrogen, which gives you an exciting multiple that isn't of much relevance for aviation. The volumetric energy density of hydrogen (even as a liquid) is about 10 MJ/l, and that compares to 35 MJ/l for avtur. So even before considering the weight of a tank and the decompression and control gear for liquid hydrogen, it would need three and a half times the tank capacity as avtur. If we make the reasonable assumption that liquid hydrogen is impractical, and assume it can be compressed to 700 bar, then the volumetric energy density is around 4 MJ/l, meaning you'd need almost nine times the storage space, and commensurate pressure tanks. That is not going to work.

Maybe polyamide will help? Well no, because in your attempt to puff up hydrogen, you've overlooked that polyamide is merely a liner. You'd need far stronger materials for a compression vessel, and ones that aren't brittle at aviation temperatures that can get as low as -70C. And even carbon fibre/polyamide tanks are relatively heavy and only typically rated to 350 bar, so that's then about 16x the storage volume for a similar energy volume of avtur.

H2 from solar? Cheaper than electricity from coal? H2 isn't energy, it's an energy vector. If it were as easy as you seem to think, everybody would be using PV to create clean green H2 and we'd have no energy problem - "too cheap to meter" and all the rubbish we've heard before in connection with energy. You could of course do the sums: How much H2 do we need? What's the yield per kWh of PV output? What's the electrical output per square meter of panel? What's total area required? What will that cost in capital and opex, including compression, storage, decompression and transportation? And it's at that point any sane person will think, "ah, we can't afford that, let's have another think that doesn't involve hydrogen?"

50% of capacity from hydro wind and solar? Well, you can leave out hydro, as it's now well established that flooding land for hydro (as opposed to modest alpine dams) is a bit environmental fail, flooding over a thousand square kilometres of agricultural land. 17% of electricity from wind and solar, maybe, but they're still building all that lovely coal capacity, wonder why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear, CFM, Rolls Royce, Airbus, Siemens, Boeing... You're wasting your time.

So says eminent authority Lurko (not an AC: that's he's real name).

>>> You quote the gravimetric energy density of hydrogen, [...] The volumetric energy density of hydrogen (even as a liquid) is about 10 MJ/l, [...]

Hmm. Lifting volumes to 38000ft is irrelevant. You pay for lifting *mass*. And mass is divided by ~3. So you pay x ~3 less. Sorry for the reminder.

>>> H2 from solar? Cheaper than electricity from coal?

Well, that's what IRENA folks say. But who are they to make such claims? They should study markets, PPAs, deals, and auctions. And put all this data into a database. Shouldn't they?

>>> H2 isn't energy, it's an energy vector.

This energy "vector" story is beyond ridiculous and denotes an unscientific conception of the physical nature of energy. There is simply ZERO definition of a an "energy vector" in physics. In absolute, and in Gibbs or general relativity terms, every massive entity is an energy vector. Even massless photons are energy vectors in electromagnetic physics. In organic chemistry, any chemical molecular bond is an energy vector. In classic chemistry, any electron giver is an energy vector. In molecular biology, any ion gradient is an energy vector.

You seem to imply that "energy vectors" bear some kind of economic stigma that makes them unfit economically, irrespective of their market value.

>>> If it were as easy as you seem to think, everybody would be using PV to create clean green H2 and we'd have no energy problem

[blissfully exposing one's ignorance of basic economy 101 concepts such as "learning rate" or "response lag"]

Same as: "Vaccines don't work because if they'd work nobody would be sick".

>>> How much H2 do we need? What's the yield per kWh of PV output? What's the electrical output per square meter of panel? What's total area required?

"Yeah right... why has nobody done these calculations before? Oh they did? And what was the result? Answer: around 500.000 km² (approx surface of Spain or France). Just in case you come back and claim that's a lot: it's assumed to be distributed close to the consumption points or close to Power2gas plants.

It's an economic number game that a lot of countries are willing to bet on (Chile, Morocco, Australia, Namibia).

.

Surely governments and multi-billion multinational corporations haven't studied the business case properly. Why can't they just take a look at Lurko's comments in El Reg, where all these misconceptions are easily debunked, and avoid such huge blunders?

[HobartTas]

Re: Hear, hear, CFM, Rolls Royce, Airbus, Siemens, Boeing... You're wasting your time.

The density of LH2 is 70.85 g/L or alternatively 70.85 Kg/kL so that unfortunately would mean a complete redesign of all airplanes and we saw what happened when Boeing tried to avoid doing that with the 737 Max because it would take too long and also be very expensive meaning they would lose a significant number of sales to Airbus during that period of time they would have to do all of that.

Otherwise you could possibly consider LH2 as a fuel but pressurized cryogenic tanks would probably be too heavy, if you go the unpressurized or lightly pressurized route you would have to contend with constant boil off and with an airplane that probably wouldn't be too bad because as soon as you start filling up the tanks you'd have to fire up the plane's APU for power and then start up the engines which would also cope with any boil off as well as consuming LH2 itself.

It would also mean that you'd have to keep the engines or APU running when you land and start disgorging passengers and continue doing so until you could reverse the fueling process and drain the tanks leaving behind some residual H2 gas. Also are these tanks when left empty going to warm up to normal atmospheric temperatures and how will constant cycling down to cryogenic temperatures and back up to normal atmospheric temperatures going to affect their lifespan?

Then there's the issue with cryogenic fuel tanks inside a wing or the airplane body even if surrounded by insulation causing problems with atmospheric moisture condensing and freezing inside the airplane itself so how would you cope with that exactly? How much ice would a trans Atlantic flight accumulate? Would it be just hundreds of Kg or Tonnes? There wouldn't be much accumulation at an altitude of 34,000 feet as it's cold up there and not much moisture in the air but transiting from sea level up to there and especially descending would be interesting to say the least given you wouldn't know the exact weight of the plane when it lands.

H2 could be converted to a more conventional fuel and both Methanol and Ammonia have been mentioned but Ammonia has been pretty much ruled out for both domestic and military uses because of its toxicity and because you need people to actually handle it which probably won't turn out all that well if there's any accidents occurring. The trouble with Methanol is that you need to get Carbon from somewhere as part of that molecule and the most likely source would be CO2 and since Carbon gives off a lot of energy when oxidized into CO2 then the reverse happens when you try to reduce CO2 to get back to Carbon and typically efficiencies of conversion of H2 to Methanol of only 50% are usually quoted for this reason.

Whatever is decided will in all likelihood mean synthetic fuel prices quoted in integer multiples of current jet and kerosene prices rather than simple percentage increases which will make flying very expensive in the future using any SAF.

I suspect LH2 is more hassle than what it's worth.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh God... and all these engineers still working on it.... Quick... let'em know!

Why haven't they thought about all these obvious points?

Someone has to send them all these considerations in a mail, so that they stop wasting time and money on that silly idea.

Also go and tell ZeroAvia that their first flight could not have happened as it's physically impossible.

Go and tell their partner Masdar, Japan Airlines, Air France, KLM, and the others that this is all a scam...

Go and Tell Airbus, Rolls Royce, GE, Siemens, CFM that there's no point working on it anymore. It's all debunked, here, in the comments.

Amazing how little the Air transport industry knows about it in comparison to the IT industry omniscient laymen.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Your facts checking here.

"The volumetric energy density of hydrogen (even as a liquid) is about 10 MJ/l, and......."

The rabbit hole goes even deeper when you have to calculate converting the latent energy into distance travelled or just thrust/time.

Handling large volumes of H2, especially LH2, is very dangerous. That means a highly trained workforce wrapped up in conductive bunny suits made from natural fibers (synthetics melt and fuse into skin where natural fibers will turn to ash in a fire). It was once thought that NOX was not an issue to handle until Scaled Composites had an explosion during a tanking test while developing Space Ship Two. Two people died in the explosion just a couple of meters from somebody I know when that happened. Use rocket fuel, expect rocket fuel danger.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Your facts checking here.

"Well, you can leave out hydro, as it's now well established that flooding land for hydro (as opposed to modest alpine dams) is a bit environmental fail"

The reservoir behind Hoover dam isn't backing up water into land that's all that useful for anything else. If you have an example of a more specific location, you may have a good case. To put out a general statement that dams are bad doesn't hold water. (pun intended)

[MachDiamond]

Re: Your facts checking here.

"it's an energy vector"

The uses that are being proposed make H2 a "storage and transport medium". The problem is that it's only good for that in very limited cases.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Your facts checking here.

"Thank China for making solar panels that gets the MWh below 10$ in some countries. This is where Green H2 cheaper than grey H2 will come. This is cheaper than electricity from coal."

I'd want to see some analysis with fully amortized costs. A coal fired power plant will last decades and solar panels top out at around 25 years although it can be more economic to replace them more frequently. Yes, the coal has to be mined and transported, but it's essentially dirt and doesn't need further processing or a need to be handled carefully.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I wonder who wins... This is close!

OPEX to run a thermal power station => an army of engineers, technicians, bureaucrats etc...

OPEX to run a nuclear power station => same but x10. Plus the guy who has to get into the vessel for maintenance every now and then but is not supposed to stay more than 15mn.

OPEX to run a solar farm => One guy to press the button of the automatic sweepers. Once a week.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Yeah. I wonder who wins... This is close!

"OPEX to run a......."

The trade can be MW/hectare vs. KW/hectare. If you have loads of sunny land useless for anything else (other than an open pit for lawyers and politicians), I like the idea of solar PV. If people and mother nature haven't come up with a better use over the last 4.5bn years, why not?

There's some big solar farms near me and once built, I don't notice anybody there when I drive by nearly every time. I did see the cleaning vehicle once that just drives down the lane cleaning the panels as it goes. I expect they could automate that. What was really clever is they have a shepherd bring a flock to mow the plants that manage to grow under the panels. Staff equals one guy and two dogs.

[MachDiamond]

"China burns over 3 billion tonnes of coal every year, and in the first six months alone of 2023 started work on 37 GW of new coal fired generating capacity, resurrected 8 GW of deferred coal plans, and additionally approved 52 GW of new coal capacity."

They are also working feverishly on Molten Salt Reactors to be able to start replacing coal power. Even so, they aren't going to pull back in their quest to be the source of all manufactured goods until they've proven that there is no such thing as infinite growth and they have to some up with new economic models.

China is also frequently exempted from emissions reductions that are proposed at all of these conferences that everybody takes their private jet to attend. There's no point to crippling themselves and the massive pollution is likely solving their population problems.

[Crypto Monad]

It'd be interesting to learn how the efficiencies pan out between hydrogen fuel cells generating electricity to power motors compared to just directly burning hydrogen.

And also compare to chemical conversion of H₂ to methane, methanol, or something else easier to handle but directly usable in a combustion engine.

[MachDiamond]

'And also compare to chemical conversion of H2 to methane,"

Most commercially produced H2 uses CH4 as feedstock. Sort of crazy to add more energy to turn it back.

[Crypto Monad]

Yes, but that sort of commercially-produced H₂ is completely useless(*) from a decarbonization point of view.

The only valid approach is green hydrogen, in which case, conversion to something easier to handle makes sense.

(*) If you're going to do "blue hydrogen" and capture the generated CO₂ at the point of production, that's not really much different to capturing exhaust CO₂ at point of use. Or you might as well just sequester an equivalent amount of CO₂ directly from the atmosphere.

[Doctor Syntax]

"the critical mission of decarbonizing commercial aviation,"

Whether it decarbonises aviation or not depends on the source of the hydrogen. Just developing the planes on the basis that somebody else is going to produce hydrogen is throwing the problem over the wall.

[Lurko]

"Just developing the planes on the basis that somebody else is going to produce hydrogen is throwing the problem over the wall."

Well, it worked when we outsourced our industrial base and its emissions to China, didn't it? There was much dancing around the eco-handbags when the UK more than halved it's 1990 emissions in 2020.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they know something you don't

>>> Whether it decarbonises aviation or not depends on the source of the hydrogen. Just developing the planes on the basis that somebody else is going to produce hydrogen is throwing the problem over the wall.

OMG. Why didn't think of that???

Maybe Green H2 producers also need a market. Maybe several governments are on it.

Not sure why you think airlines should push vertical integration as far as owning and operating solar panel and electrolyser factories. That doesn't seem to be the way our modern value-chain based economies are working.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Maybe they know something you don't

"Maybe Green H2 producers also need a market. Maybe several governments are on it."

There's a ready market for cheap hydrogen without the bunglers of government sticking their oar in. It can easily be methanated and put into existing gas networks, or used as a feedstock for all manner of chemicals, from aviation fuel to plastics to fertilisers. You get me that cheap hydrogen that you think is out there, I'll take all you can find.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether it decarbonises aviation or not depends on the source of the hydrogen - correct, that is the key issue in all hydrogen efforts.

That said, I would still watch China in that respect. Despite the camouflage of new coal plants in the foreground, what you really ought to watch are the Thorium reactor designs coming online in the background - THAT is where the cheap energy hides to make hydrogen not just affordable, but probably preferable from a CO2 perspective. What all the greenies and politicians are apparently keen to gently skip over is that the current transport system is the result from already spent carbon. To throw that away in favour of something that demands a significant extra new expenditure of carbon and precious resources is IMHO criminal in itself, and I suspect the choice to go electric has in reality less than benign motives riding along, if you pardon the pun.*

What really plays alongside all of this is the impact this will have on the future US economy. The US debt is in this respect a massive ticking time bomb and China is too big to bomb as they did with Iraq when one of their own (Saddam) suddenly realised he could make a lot more if he sold oil in dollars. When (not if) China starts selling safe and cheap reactors that not only use 99% of their substantially cheaper and more available fuel instead of the at best 1% in the current platforms in non-US currency (the Yuan is also listed as a reserve currency) it will throw a massive wrench in the global blackmail that keeps the US debt from becoming a problem for the US itself, and I fear that's when the real problems start..

* _{Ask yourself how that is eventually going to be taxed, and you will always end up with road tax or mileage charges - puts a whole new spin on the increasing number of average speed cameras, doesn't it?}

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

Summary:

"China, which has no debt problem [hahaha], will avenge poor innocent Saddam by selling cheap magic Thorium reactors that will make H2 dirt cheap. But USA don't want China to sell Thorium reactors because they are scared that those reactors will make the US debt explode and this is why they prefer electric vehicles. Mark my words."

Conclusion:

"Greenies => bad"

"Thorium => good"

"US debt => bad"

"China => good"

"ev => bad"

"Yuan => good"

"Dollar => bad"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: tl;dr

It has a mistake. Irag was bombed to smithereens because Saddam sold oil in Euros which is where he made more profit, an idea the US really could not afford to spread in the Middle East. Hence the massive Shock and Awe response.

Problem number one is that that is happening anyway, as (for instance) China bought oil from Russia in pre-invasion times, with no dollars in play.

Problem number two is that the massive damage the US has suffered in both reputational and organisational aspect from Trump & friends (which is still playing out as they dunked a President who found the only girl in town who could not was out a stain but the guy who started in insurrection is not only not behind bars but even seeking re-election) prevents it from reacting efficiently. There is enough money and brainpower available if they pull together, but I fear it will take a war before that actually happens :(.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Thinking outside the box

Or in this case, thinking outside the metal tube. It's impractical to store hydrogen within the fuselage, due to weight and safety issues.

However it could be stored in an outside tank. In order to save weight, we won't compress it, or use thick walled vessels to maintain it under pressure. Instead we'll store it in fuel bags. This loses us a lot of storage efficiency - the volume is going to be huge. But the advantage is that our stored hydrogen can now be used to generate lift. This allows us to do away with the cumbersome and heavy wings, which previously encumbered our plane. Now that we don't require high speed, in order to gain lift through the use of large wings, we can move at a more sedate, and fuel-efficient, speed. Which means we'll be much more environmentally friendly and generate much less noise.

So now we have an aluminum tube, suspended below a large hydrogen store. Thus separating our passengers from the burny stuff. And some nice, efficient low-powered engines that can burn some of our excess hydrogen as fuel. And we've invented a new type of aircraft never seen before. What could possibly go wrong...

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Thinking outside the box

Ah, the Hindenberg

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Thinking outside the box

To be fair to the highly explosive Hindenberg, a critical issue with it was the flammability of the hydrogen containers, not the hydrogen itself. Which is slightly astonishing considering how reactive hydrogen can be.

[ravenviz]

Re: Thinking outside the box

Can be? Is!

[LogicGate]

Re: Thinking outside the box

I am afraid that the flammability of the envelope is a red herring that has been treceiving much too much focus because it makes for exciting videography.

The hydrogen containers were not made out of doped canvas with aluminum powder. The hydrogen was enveloped in goldbeaters bladder, a thin membrane sourced from animal intestines. The outer hull was doped, but the bigger problem, especially for R101, was that these membranes were not sufficiently gas tight. Yes, this would lead to the loss of hydrogen as it leaked out of the envelope, but this would als lead to air molecules, including O2 permeating from the outside into the envelope. And the nasty thing about hydrogen is that it can explode at a wide range of mixture rates.

I suspect that a "safe" hydrogen inflated lighter than air vehicle would require constant removal of oxygen from the lifting gas. This was, as far as I know, not present in the 1920s - 1930s.

.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Thinking outside the box

Logic Gate,

It's hard to know - because it's hard to reconstruct what happened after such firey accidents. But I thought the R101 destruction was caused by a structural failure. It was massively over-weight because of several design failures - and had been stretched in order to carry more gas bags to compensate.

In the case of the Hindenburg, we know that it had been losing hydrogen for hours - because it had a trim problem and was losing lift at the back more than at the front. So there are then competing theories about what made it go kaboom! Was it the doped skin, or a hydrogen explosion that set off the doped skin.

Whereas the R100 was struck by lighting and had a large chunk of its tail blown off - and the guys simply went at the tear with the 1920s equivalent of gaffer tape and carried on flying.

[LogicGate]

Re: Thinking outside the box

R101 was a government program, run by comittee. It was overweight, and in order to save money, the hydrogen had not been replenished for many months (6 months?).

If I recall correctly, a high powered politician that came along insisted on bringing heavy gifts (rugs?) destined for India. They set of into dubious weather with rain gathering on top of the envelope and possibly soaking into the no longer pristine canvas.

From the reports that I have read, it flew at (relatively low) speed into a French hillside. In the crumbling of the structure, a water ballast tank drained into the cockpit and flooded the box where the water triggered sea illumination flares were stored.

However, setting fire to a hydrogen oxygen mixture is very different to setting fire to a volume of pure hydrogen.

Hindenburg may have leaked Hydrogen. If some of this collected in the volume between the gas balloons and the envelope then this would be "NOT GOOD". My main point was that the story about the canvas being doped with aluminum powder being the main culprit is most likely untrue.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Thinking outside the box

I'm also sceptical about the dope theory of what happened to Hindenberg. It could be true, or it could just be a really nice theory with the side-effect of helping to sell lots of books / get TV commissions.

Nevil (Shute) Norway's book 'Sliderule' is very interesting on the difference between the commercially built R100 and the disastrous R101. He was working on the R100 - which was a rather better design. I suspect (because he implies) that had Vickers built the R101 it wouldn't have got an air-worthiness certificate. But because the R100 had already successfully flown to Canada and back - there was a lot of pressure on the government team to show that they could do it. He also says that because the Air Ministry didn't have any airship experts, all the questions about safety and certification were forwarded to the R101 design team. Hence they were effectively marking their own homework, so of course gave themselves a pass. It's not like they didn't believe in their own design. Most of them died on it.

[Mooseman]

Re: Thinking outside the box

"the flammability of the hydrogen containers"

The "dope" that coated the hull was essentially thermite....

[LogicGate]

Re: Thinking outside the box

"And some nice, efficient low-powered engines that can burn some of our excess hydrogen as fuel."

The Zeppelins did not use hydrogen as fuel.

In order to avoid continous changes in lift, the engines ran on "blaugas", a mixture of combustible gases that, when stored in separate gastight but unpressurized envelopes, had the dame density as the surrounding air. Not a bad solution IMHO

[MachDiamond]

Re: Thinking outside the box

"In order to avoid continous changes in lift, the engines ran on "blaugas", a mixture of combustible gases that, when stored in separate gastight but unpressurized envelopes, had the dame density as the surrounding air. Not a bad solution IMHO"

Elon was proposing a revolutionary 6th mode of transport. There's no way you'll understand unless you read the "White Paper"..... all hail the White Paper.

[NXM]

Re: Thinking outside the box

I always thought that Agatha Christie made a big mistake not setting a murder mystery on an airship. It has everything required for the story: a collection of rich, well-dressed characters who can have a mixture of motives, a closed environment for days while travelling over the ocean, a bar and sumptuous food, possibly rebellious servants, and a method of getting rid of evidence by dropping it out of the window.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Thinking outside the box

"So now we have an aluminum tube, suspended below a large hydrogen store. Thus separating our passengers from the burny stuff. And some nice, efficient low-powered engines that can burn some of our excess hydrogen as fuel. And we've invented a new type of aircraft never seen before. What could possibly go wrong..."

Elon, the last line should be "this is really easy, I swear".

[Technical Adept]

Oh the humanity!

[Snowy]

If only

We could get energy from hype, it would solve the energy crisis overnight!

[codejunky]

Re: If only

@Snowy

"We could get energy from hype, it would solve the energy crisis overnight!"

Same goes for all of the green hype. And things just keep getting more expensive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If only

"Same goes for all of the green hype. And things just keep getting more expensive."

Same goes for all of the Tufton astroturfing. And things just keep getting more Machiavellian due to big-oil dark money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen fuel?

Have these people never watched Starflight One ?!