Wow that’s great news for the raptor program. If he’s taxied 20 miles in his demo vids to date, we can look forward to years of taxi testing.

Put me down for just one, in a Honda Civic FWIW. It was a very reliable car, but the engine control computer abruptly died about mid-life.

Mark

I lost one due to a lightning strike. Not even a direct hit, but very close. Luckily there was a fallback limp mode. I would prefer some form of backup in an aircraft engine, considering the relatively low cost and insignificant weight penalty.

That’s the thing though. A modern ECU is not an negligible cost or weight penalty. It depends on literally dozens of sensors all around the engine. Now you have to engineer in either dual sensors or dual pickups on single sensors and hope whatever took out the first ECU didn’t take out any of the important sensors. Then there are the outputs. A modern ECU controls all sorts of things from spark, injection, and valve timing in spark ignition engines to as many as 20 separate fuel injection pulses per cycle in compression ignition engines. How is redundancy going to be handled there? Dual valve trains? Dual injectors and high pressure fuel pumps? The thing will never fly.

No, give me a proven engine design with known good single systems that is mass produced for much lower cost than what we have now. If You want any power plant redundancy in a modern engine the way to get it is a second complete engine on the other wing.

But... but.... it has a chute.

If You want any power plant redundancy in a modern engine the way to get it is a second complete engine on the other wing.

Excellent point. If it flies once, gets to chute height at less than max chute speed, deploys the chute and comes down without hurting anyone, a certain type of aviation enthusiast might call that a total success!

So would anything you added to the first engine for “redundancy.”

If we’re ever going to get away from flying behind Stone Age engines were going to have to get over the irrational fear of the engines getting killed by freak events.

So would anything you added to the first engine for “redundancy.”

If we’re ever going to get away from flying behind Stone Age engines were going to have to get over the irrational fear of the engines getting killed by freak events.

A decent fall back system doesn’t need to be as complex and capable as the primary ECU. A Stone Age limp mode that offers significantly less power and lower fuel economy, but will get me 25-50 miles to a safe landing is much better than becoming an insta-glider or pulling the chute handle.

Motor plus fuel (battery), here are some latest and greatest numbers to kick around in your head.

The new Pipistrel electric airplane just got its Euro type certificate (great news for tech fans!). The motor is about 80hp and weighs 20kg (44lbs), dunno if that's with the propeller too. The battery pack weighs a bit less than 300lbs and holds 21kWh. 21kWh is about 28 horsepower·hours, which is about what two gallons of avgas will yield in a typical aviation piston engine.

Not saying whether it's a crazy idea or a brilliant idea, like I said those are just numbers for the thought experiment. They're a realistic estimate of what you'd have to do to make it work- and what the tradeoff would be in terms of what weight or payload you'd have to sacrifice from the rest of the airplane.

Pound for pound, liter for liter, and for the sake of safety of a Class 4 Flammable, nothing beats dinosaur juice!

Is 21KWh about $2.94?

It would not hurt my feelings just toying around to build time at that rate. Though those batteries have to be pricey to replace. A few of the LSAs And electric planes back at Oshkosh 2017 had replacement battery packs. I watched 6 people load the Pipistrel into a semi with the wings off and assuming the battery pack was out.

I am sad that Airbus stopped eFan development. That looked like cheap multi time!

Oh yes, I absolutely agree with you on all of your points.

I do find it appealing, the idea of an electric runabout/motorglider that makes only propeller noise- how cool would that be even taxiing the thing in near silence, including shutting down the prop at the hold short line while you're waiting your turn?

But the cost structure and the performance numbers are undeniable. It's not for me... not at this stage of the game anyway.