The future of Jet travel?

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Daz Man
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The future of Jet travel?

Post by Daz Man » Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:43 am

I often wonder what the future holds for powering large passenger planes? The oil crisis and escallating costs of fuel will eventually make it unviable to power these craft with fossil fuels. Ships can be powered via nuclear power and land based vehicles have many options, but the massive power (thrust) and need for safety required for flight??? I can't help but feeling that we don't have any answer for this one - so what is the future of fast "jet" air travel. Does anyone have any ideas or alternative technologys that may be viable?

Daryl

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Jim Berquist » Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:27 am

Contrary to popular belief, fossil fuel is not going to run out soon! When times get tough people will be more willing to pull it from where it is! When they find them self walking or biking the 7 or 10 miles to work , they will rethink the NOT IN MY BACK YARD THING. By the time that it does get there , you will see transport aircraft with wings as wide two foot ball fields. They will be taken aloft by solar motors not unlike those on experimental craft that we play with today! Only the Elect will be able to fly via Jet! The common people will be via solar sail Inc....As Solar sail Inc would be faster and cheaper then overland travel.

Just another stupid thought!!!!!!
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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Anders Troberg » Tue Jul 25, 2006 9:09 am

We will never run out of oil. No one will be rich enough to buy the last liter.

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Jonny69 » Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:15 pm

^^^ Nice Anders, I like it!

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Re: re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by hinote » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:09 am

Ben wrote:I'm sure jet fuel could be made from vegetable oil or biodiesel, with sufficient market pressure. As the price goes up on Jet A-1, interest in alternative fuels will increase.
Several independent efforts are in place to produce jet-fuel equivalents, from coal. Although this hardly solves the problem of dependence on hydrocarbons, it accesses a resource (in the US) that is still available in substantial quantities. It also is compatible with the existing (refining) infrastructure, with minimal changes involved.

Check this link out (there's a lot of similar to look at):

www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/2532
Bill H.
Acoustic Propulsion Concepts

".......some day soon we'll be flying airplanes powered by pulsejets."

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by mk » Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:20 am

One thing is, where to take from the energy to distil high-percent alcohol liquids? If you take that energy from fossile resources, you do even run in a larger problem.

Wrt. biodiesel and co., it appears, that the resources, which means the cropping areas are suffciently limited, too. However, as long as (at least) in many Western countries crops are getting burned, because of over-production, there would be some hope to support biofuels to some larger degree.
In any event, it's a bit schizophrenic to see large amounts of watter getting pumped into deserts to grow crops. While afterwards those crops are just getting burned without any use, in short: thrown away for nothing. Well, and how many people are starving each day?
mk

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Re: re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by vhautaka » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:56 pm

mk wrote: One thing is, where to take from the energy to distil high-percent alcohol liquids? If you take that energy from fossile resources, you do even run in a larger problem.
Easiest: you use energy from the same biomass to power the conversion. Now humanity uses more and more fossil fuel to get the oil/coal/gas out of the ground, and to refine and transport them. This is terrible waste.

The biomass however is produced by solar energy and is renewable and "free" in the only way that energy can be, also this energy can be produced locally taking away a lot of inefficiency.


However you are right about the farming thing. It's not very efficient to grow corn/potatoes/whatever in the traditional way, and then break it down, ferment and distill into alcohol.

Food crops need water, they need heaps of fertilisers and they need to be sown and harvested at the optimum time. Energy farming should focus on plants that make lots and lots of biomass with little or no care, no ferts, no pesticides - and that can be harvested whenever the crop's energy density is high enough, no matter what time of year or whether they are bearing fruit at all.

The main requirement for such a crop is just to grow fast and absorb lots of carbon from the atmosphere. Such hardy and fast plants as phalaris and willow are ideal. The earth need not be disturbed as there's no weeds that can compete with these plants (and if there were, they'd be just as good for the purpose). Just cut off most of the plants and in a few weeks they grow back.

Do it right and there's nothing wasted, no nutrients flushed away, no erosion caused. On the contrary, the plant roots keep the soil together and also store carbon and nutrients in there.

Once you have a constant supply of some sort of biomass, it's just a question of rendering that into usable hydrocarbon fuel, or using it as it is for direct energy production in a burner.

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Jim Berquist » Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:15 am

Ben! I live in New Mexico, and eight miles from my place of work. It's not a pleasant experience to bike it to or from work when it's 80 degrees in the morning and 104 degrees coming home. I get treated real bad when I smell like the south end of a north bound buffalo.


On the other end , winter! Wind is blowing about 20 mph. It's any thing from 50 degrees to -17...Not Good!! The Bike is not my answer! I want air conditioned/heated trans port. The donkey can't do that. Until upstate or someone else steals my water I'm good. I live on the Membres river basin. I have tastie water at about 60 ft. My well is set at 160. I can't drink the crap in town any more! It's up to the good people of Iowa and other states to produce the Biomass required to produce the required amounts of fuel for America! We would need whole states covered with green to even have a start!!

Not a bad thought , but it won't happen!!!

Jim
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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Jim Berquist » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:27 am

Yep! People from the big Apple just don't know what it's like in the other parts of the world! In the desert you have two extremes..Hot or Cold..Not much in between!!!!

I need to get to bed and wake up , get in my E-150 van and head to work. Any bit of luck ,I can do the same and head for the lake..come the week end!!!

ZOOOOOOM goes the boat!! Ho! no gas and only ores and or electric power!!! No P.J.

Jim
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Re: re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by vhautaka » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:45 am

Ben wrote: Making fuel from random biomass is no trivial task. You can use bioreactors, but they require ideal conditions and you don't get very fast methane production. They also create a lot of sludge. Simply burning it isn't the solution either; anyone who's ever seen a grass fire knows that it isn't a clean process.
If you spread gasoline on sand and set it alight, that's not a clean process either.

If you have ever used an acetylene torch or a bunsen burner, you know that simply by providing a little more oxygen at the right point, you can make a very dirty, inefficient and unusable fire into a clean-burning, very much energy releasing concentrated flame.

Wood pulp and other organic waste has been used for heating for ages, and the modern burners are very advanced and just as environmentally sound as oil or gas heating plants.

I just read more about the biomass conversion. No need for bacteria or enzymes at all!

Thermochemical reactions for biomass rendering have been well studied, as an example:

http://www.memagazine.org/pejun04/swine ... neoil.html
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/Biomass/AnythingIntoOil.htm

"If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water."

"Just converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil."

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by vhautaka » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:56 am

As for riding bike to work, I've done that for years, summer and winter. Only a 20-30 minutes ride, though, weather ranges from -20 to +30 C. Just a question of choosing the right clothing, and if I ride fast or have to pedal in snow, then also need a shower afterwards - but that's just a timing question.

In downtown Helsinki rush hour traffic, public transport is usually slower than bike, and car is even slower than that. Besides, I can ride pretty straight through the large parks that slice through the city and are obstacles to motor vehicles.

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Anders Troberg » Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:26 am

"If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water."
In other words, we can solve the problem by discreetly giving a lot of 175 a shove in the right direction! Wait, that's me...
As for riding bike to work, I've done that for years, summer and winter.
But you are Finnish, so it's not a fair comparison. Finland is so used to cold and is so tough that not even the water starts to freeze until -30 degrees Celcius.

Some relative comparison of temperatures

+15 °C:
The Spanish use cap, gloves and winter jacket.
The Finnish try to get a tan.

+10 °C:
The French desperately try to get the central heating to work.
The Finnish plant flowers in the garden.

+5 °C:
Italian cars will no longer start.
The Finnish drives cabriolet.

0 °C:
Pure water freeze.
The Finnish lakes becomes slightly thicker.

-5 °C:
In California, people start to freeze to death.
The Finnish stop celebrating midsummer.

-10 °C :
The Scots turn on the heating in their home.
The Finnish start to use long sleeved shirts.

-20 °C :
The Swedish stay inside.
The Finnish BBQ the last sausages before the winter.

-30 °C :
Half the Greek freeze to death.
The Finnish start to dry the laundry inside.

-40 °C :
The fake santas move south.
The Finnish army cancel their winter exercise due to too warm weather.

-50 °C :
The Danish's teeth fall out of their mouth.
The Finnish rent movies and stay inside.

-60 °C :
The polar bears flee from the north pole.
The Finnish army starts its winter exercise.

-70 °C :
The Siberians move to Moscow.
The Finnish suffer a nervous breakdown because they can no longer store their Koskenkorva outside.

-273 °C :
Absolut zero.
The Finnish tell each other: "Perkele, it's cold outside".

-300 °C :
Hell freezes over.
Finland wins the eurovision song contest.

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by vhautaka » Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:49 pm

Anders,

Hehe, I like especially the last line. Many anti-heavy metal Finns actually promised that they'd migrate to Sweden if Lordi won. Any sign of them yet?

Just Sunday I was in heavy karaoke again, sang Master of Puppets, Two minutes to midnight and Symphony of destruction. My neck is still a bit stiff from the headbanging (dreadbanging?).

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by Anders Troberg » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:13 pm

Hehe, I like especially the last line.
Yep. The fun thing is that it was actually written before that happened.
Many anti-heavy metal Finns actually promised that they'd migrate to Sweden if Lordi won. Any sign of them yet?
Nope. Many Swedes promised that they'd move to Finland if we didn't get the euro. Have they arrived yet?

I suspect that most of the travel between our countries is in the form of drunken trips back and forth on the cruise ships, almost without even going ashore...

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re: The future of Jet travel?

Post by tufty » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:58 pm

Frankly, Lordi winning Eurovision was a disgrace. The Lithuanians should have won it.

How could this not win?

For the benefit of the USAians reading, "Eurovision" is a Europe-wide pop music contest, every country has one group representing them by singing one song; the quality of music is generally dire in the extreme. This year, however, it got turned upside down by the fact it was won by a rather zany Finnish black metal band (although their actual entry was, frankly, bland). The Lithuanian entry linked above was made up of, I am told, well-known Lithuanian TV presenters and the like. And although their song was entitled "We are the winners", they weren't.

Simon

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