Hydrogen-powered VTOL aircraft completes groundbreaking 523-mile flight across California

[zohaibahd]

Editor's take: Celebrities often draw criticism for using private jets for short trips. Such aircraft have a disproportionate impact on the environment, emitting up to two tonnes of CO2 per hour. It's too early to know for sure, but opting for hydrogen air taxis instead of private jets could be a no-brainer once they hit the market.

A hydrogen-powered VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) flying taxi just went the distance – literally. Joby Aviation's sleek six-rotor aircraft, which resembles an oversized DJI drone with seating, completed a 523-mile journey across California on June 24. And the only thing it expelled was pure H2O.

This flight tripled the previous distance records set by Joby's electric prototypes. Despite that, the hydrogen tank still had 10 percent fuel remaining, indicating that the aircraft could have flown even farther if permitted.

More surprisingly, Joby's air taxi wasn't originally designed to carry hydrogen fuel. The model started as a purely battery-powered aircraft before the company gave it a hydrogen makeover.

Engineers essentially removed the batteries and added an 88-pound liquid hydrogen tank along with a fuel cell system. The fuel cells generate electricity from hydrogen and oxygen to spin the rotors, while water – the only by-product – harmlessly exits as vapor. A smaller battery pack is kept onboard for power boosts during takeoff and landing.

The original electric design had already accumulated an impressive 25,000 miles of testing over California and New York City while battery-powered.

"Imagine being able to fly from San Francisco to San Diego, Boston to Baltimore, or Nashville to New Orleans without the need to go to an airport and with no emissions except water," said Joby's founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt. "That world is closer than ever, and the progress we've made towards certifying the battery-electric version of our aircraft gives us a great head start as we look ahead to making hydrogen-electric flight a reality."

It will still be some time before you can book a hydrogen air taxi. While Joby plans to launch its original battery model for commercial flights in 2025, the hydrogen version is a bit further off.

Joby is making significant strides in leading the electric aviation revolution on multiple fronts. They recently acquired Xwing, a pioneer in autonomous flight software that has already completed hundreds of self-flying flights and landings.

The company has also reached a critical certification milestone with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), securing approval for its core aircraft systems. The next stage will involve the FAA examining the complete aircraft along with each of its integrated systems.

Joby envisions a future where its battery and hydrogen models can operate side-by-side using the same landing pads and infrastructure. It has already raised $2 billion from heavyweight investors like Toyota, Delta, and Uber, ensuring it is well capitalized to realize its vision.

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Hydrogen-powered VTOL aircraft completes groundbreaking 523-mile flight across California

 

[MSIGamer]

It's not emission free, because it emits water vapor and water vapor is a greenhouse gas

So this: 'while water – the only by-product – harmlessly exits as vapor' won't be so harmless anymore when all machines and vehicles are emitting.

But those are problems for later right.

Lmao humanity.

 

[stewi0001]

Can we apply it to cars?

 

[RudyBob]

The Hindenburg, a German passenger airship, was filled with hydrogen gas, which played a crucial role in its tragic fate. And remember, Your data is safe with us

 

[Lew Zealand]

Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's an energy storage medium like a battery. What is the fuel source and what production method did it take to produce that hydrogen?

 

[umeng2002]

Just wait until tree huggers find out where hydrogen comes from on Earth.

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

Can we apply it to cars?

Hydrogen fuel cell cars exist; you can buy/lease a handful of models in California, where they have some hydrogen pumping stations. That said they seem to be failing hard, with stations closing down and automakers only producing them in limited test numbers. Hydrogen fuel cell cars have several issues that end up making them unattractive; first is the price of H2 itself; fueling a car off hydrogen is now about twice as expensive per mile as a similar sized gas car, or 3 to 4 times more expensive than a similar sized electric (and that is using California gas & electric prices, to keep things fair). Next up is that the fuel cells themselves have remained expensive to make; while automakers won't share the exact costs, most estimates place them at more expensive than a big old battery pack is these days. And finally, hydrogen fuel stations themselves are much more expensive to build than fast electric charging stations, and subject to more strict zoning rules, as compressed flammable gas is quite dangerous.

 

[umeng2002]

There are hydrogen IC engines, but haven't caught on for various reasons. Namely, hydrogen is hard to handle because it's such a small molecule. Look at the Boeing space craft stuck in space at the ISS... due to hydrogen leaks. The Space Shuttle had lots of delays due to hydrogen leaks on various missions. Apollo didn't use it. SpaceX doesn't use it.

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

There are hydrogen IC engines, but haven't caught on for various reasons. Namely, hydrogen is hard to handle because it's such a small molecule. Look at the Boeing space craft stuck in space at the ISS... due to hydrogen leaks. The Space Shuttle had lots of delays due to hydrogen leaks on various missions. Apollo didn't use it. SpaceX doesn't use it.

Well, even if hydrogen wasn't a pain to handle, its price alone would make it super unattractive; right now 1 kg of H2 at the pump in CA costs ~$36; conveniently 1 kg of H2 has pretty much the same energy content of 1 gallon of gas, so its easy to compare prices. Even with a fuel cell having ~double the thermodynamic efficacy as an ICE, that is still equivalent to $18/gallon gas.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

It's not emission free, because it emits water vapor and water vapor is a greenhouse gas

So this: 'while water – the only by-product – harmlessly exits as vapor' won't be so harmless anymore when all machines and vehicles are emitting.

But those are problems for later right.

Lmao humanity.

LOL yeah those HTOLS will contribute maybe 0.000000000000001% of the water vapor in the earth's atmosphere. Quick hide inside.

 

[toooooot]

500+ miles, that is the real flying device!
But I am still waiting on new and improved ways of handling this very dangerous substance.
Imagine if it was converted to something else, something less flammable/explosive but as useful.
A mix of elements that still allows converting it into energy, but give far less stress to people handling it.

 

[toooooot]

Hydrogen fuel cell cars exist; you can buy/lease a handful of models in California, where they have some hydrogen pumping stations. That said they seem to be failing hard, with stations closing down and automakers only producing them in limited test numbers. Hydrogen fuel cell cars have several issues that end up making them unattractive; first is the price of H2 itself; fueling a car off hydrogen is now about twice as expensive per mile as a similar sized gas car, or 3 to 4 times more expensive than a similar sized electric (and that is using California gas & electric prices, to keep things fair). Next up is that the fuel cells themselves have remained expensive to make; while automakers won't share the exact costs, most estimates place them at more expensive than a big old battery pack is these days. And finally, hydrogen fuel stations themselves are much more expensive to build than fast electric charging stations, and subject to more strict zoning rules, as compressed flammable gas is quite dangerous.

Who the heck would buy a hydrogen auto now? Or 5, or 10 years ago.
I find it hard to believe a sane person would. I would buy it to promote a
nature friendly business, to receive a government handout, but not because it is better in any way.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

LOL yeah those HTOLS will contribute maybe 0.000000000000001% of the water vapor in the earth's atmosphere. Quick hide inside.

The same for the CO2 they would emit, but they are lauded for those tiny savings and given huge taxpayer money grants for “saving the planet”.

 

[Endymio]

I am still waiting on new and improved ways of handling this very dangerous substance.
Imagine if it was converted to something else, something less flammable/explosive but as useful.
A mix of elements that still allows converting it into energy, but give far less stress to people handling it.

Potentially we could add small amounts of carbon to it, converting it into a hydrocarbon in liquid form for much easier and safer handling, with a higher volumetric energy density, and without the leakage and embrittlement problems those tiny H2 molecules entail. And even though it's no longer a gas, we could give it a catchy name like gas-oleum or maybe gas-oline.

If only, eh?

 

[Uncle Al]

A great application that needs to be adopted across the board for fossil fuel burning engines ....

 

[TommyBoyFL]

Just wait until tree huggers find out where hydrogen comes from on Earth.

Well there are multiple ways to produce hydrogen, some clean some not so much.

 

[Endymio]

Well there are multiple ways to produce hydrogen, some clean some not so much.

The only ways to produce hydrogen that don't involve fossil fuels (e.g. direct hydrolysis) require far more energy, and are thus correspondingly much more expensive. When hydrogen fuel is already far more expensive than gasoline, tripling the price again is a real show stopper.

 

[DavevaS]

Isn't water vapor an ideal gas? Respectively it's just gonna transform in clouds then water again?

It's not emission free, because it emits water vapor and water vapor is a greenhouse gas

So this: 'while water – the only by-product – harmlessly exits as vapor' won't be so harmless anymore when all machines and vehicles are emitting.

But those are problems for later right.

Lmao humanity.

 

[corvard]

Hydrogen-powered vehicles have no practical use. It's just a very expensive toy. At best, it can become a piece of luxury for some rich people if subsidized by taxpayer money.

 

[sreams]

There are hydrogen IC engines, but haven't caught on for various reasons. Namely, hydrogen is hard to handle because it's such a small molecule. Look at the Boeing space craft stuck in space at the ISS... due to hydrogen leaks. The Space Shuttle had lots of delays due to hydrogen leaks on various missions. Apollo didn't use it. SpaceX doesn't use it.

Those are actually helium leaks. Not hydrogen leaks.

 

[toooooot]

Hydrogen-powered vehicles have no practical use. It's just a very expensive toy. At best, it can become a piece of luxury for some rich people if subsidized by taxpayer money.

Yes, but our scientists believed they could perfect it, like it was done with many other things we used today.
Unfortunately, not. Not today, not in 5 years. Maybe in 50?

 

[Mr Majestyk]

The same for the CO2 they would emit, but they are lauded for those tiny savings and given huge taxpayer money grants for “saving the planet”.

Maybe do some basic science. Water vapour is not a forever molecule or trace chemical like CO2, methane or NO2. It last an average of 9 days in the atmosphere. Without water vapor earth would be much colder, it's 50% repsonsible for our livable temperature. Do you not think climate scientists don't know it's role. CO2, Methane and NO2 are vastly more potent at altering our climate and we keep increasing the concentration of those to now 50% more than pre-industrial levels.

Keep you head in the sand, but aviation is major problem for climate. Not only do they put out a lot of CO2, it turns out their contrails are even worse for warming as there are now so many producing cirrus clouds. Overall aricraft are already producing an extra 200mW/m^2 on earth's surface. Water vapor won't produce be anhwere near as much of a problem.

 

[Endymio]

Maybe do some basic science....[snip]

Advice you should take to heart, given your post. Water vapor comprises up to 4% of the atmosphere, 100X as much as CO2. And each H20 molecule absorbs up to 12X the LWIR (long-wave infrared) ( H20 and CO2 absorption spectrum -- use Wien's Law to locate the wavelength band for terrestrial temperatures)

So water vapor roughly 10,000X the warming effect of CO2. Furthermore, even ignoring water vapor entirely, an atmospheric CO2 concentration of just 120 ppm (<1/3 current level) already blocks all LWIR. This why, even though we've known for nearly 200 years that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas", when Arrhenius first proposed it affecting climate in 1896, his claims were discounted.

Simulations in the '60s on radiative transfers in the mesosphere altered this thinking slightly, but the picture didn't change substantively until the 1980s, due to claims by James Hansen and his sidekick Reto Ruedy (both at GISS) that CO2's minor role was amplified drastically by a positive-feedback loop. CO2 warms the earth an infinitesimal fraction of a degree, increasing the lifetime of water vapor in the atmosphere, which causes further warming, leading to even more water. Never mind that Hansen's original models predicted truly absurd values (up to 10.5C degrees climate sensitivity) and that the geological record of the earth demonstrates irrefutably that such an effect, if it exists, must be extremely limited -- this assumption became ipso facto the cornerstone of modern CAGW theory.

Some other fun facts. The forcing response curve to CO2 (and all GHGs) is logarithmic, meaning every molecule added warms the planet exponentially less. And even today, natural sources on earth emit more than 25 times as much CO2 annually as does mankind (and no, they're not "in a delicate balance" with uptakes). There have been many periods in the past with CO2 levels above 1,000ppm, yet the planet was considerably colder; and during the early Carboniferous, CO2 levels were as high as 8,000ppm, yet this was perhaps the most fertile, biologically diverse period in history.

As for the silliness that "cirrus clouds from aviation" are drastically affecting climate, these clouds are short-lived; naturally-formed cirrus clouds outweight those from aviation by 5-10X over land and up to 100X over the ocean; and -- most importantly of all -- the radiative balance between the amount of LWIR they trap from below compared to the amount if incoming solar insolation they reflect back into space is very nearly zero ... it can even be negative, meaning they exert a cooling effect.

https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aan3325

 

[wiyosaya]

Hydrogen-powered vehicles have no practical use. It's just a very expensive toy. At best, it can become a piece of luxury for some rich people if subsidized by taxpayer money.

I bet that was said when the automobile was first invented. I bet the horse-**** PAC was knee-deep in it at that time, and lobbying against it.

 

[wiyosaya]

Advice you should take to heart, given your post. Water vapor comprises up to 4% of the atmosphere, 100X as much as CO2. And each H20 molecule absorbs up to 12X the LWIR (long-wave infrared) ( H20 and CO2 absorption spectrum -- use Wien's Law to locate the wavelength band for terrestrial temperatures)

So water vapor roughly 10,000X the warming effect of CO2. Furthermore, even ignoring water vapor entirely, an atmospheric CO2 concentration of just 120 ppm (<1/3 current level) already blocks all LWIR. This why, even though we've known for nearly 200 years that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas", when Arrhenius first proposed it affecting climate in 1896, his claims were discounted.

Simulations in the '60s on radiative transfers in the mesosphere altered this thinking slightly, but the picture didn't change substantively until the 1980s, due to claims by James Hansen and his sidekick Reto Ruedy (both at GISS) that CO2's minor role was amplified drastically by a positive-feedback loop. CO2 warms the earth an infinitesimal fraction of a degree, increasing the lifetime of water vapor in the atmosphere, which causes further warming, leading to even more water. Never mind that Hansen's original models predicted truly absurd values (up to 10.5C degrees climate sensitivity) and that the geological record of the earth demonstrates irrefutably that such an effect, if it exists, must be extremely limited -- this assumption became ipso facto the cornerstone of modern CAGW theory.

Some other fun facts. The forcing response curve to CO2 (and all GHGs) is logarithmic, meaning every molecule added warms the planet exponentially less. And even today, natural sources on earth emit more than 25 times as much CO2 annually as does mankind (and no, they're not "in a delicate balance" with uptakes). There have been many periods in the past with CO2 levels above 1,000ppm, yet the planet was considerably colder; and during the early Carboniferous, CO2 levels were as high as 8,000ppm, yet this was perhaps the most fertile, biologically diverse period in history.

As for the silliness that "cirrus clouds from aviation" are drastically affecting climate, these clouds are short-lived; naturally-formed cirrus clouds outweight those from aviation by 5-10X over land and up to 100X over the ocean; and -- most importantly of all -- the radiative balance between the amount of LWIR they trap from below compared to the amount if incoming solar insolation they reflect back into space is very nearly zero ... it can even be negative, meaning they exert a cooling effect.

https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aan3325

I guess we need to revisit endy's past and debunked bs spew WRT this subject that Endy claims infinite and ultimate knowledge - https://www.techspot.com/community/...-detects-co2-thread-per-staff-request.276859/ especially since Endy has referenced an article that few, if any, here at TS will be able to access. Very convenient, Endy that your appeal to authority cannot be verified by anyone without access. It makes you look beyond knowledgeable. Why not put the actual paper up? What? That would violate copyright? Why Endy, I did not know you even cared about copyright since its your effort to promote your BS.

How about this one - https://www.climate.gov/news-featur...arbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources

I think this one paragraph sums up the paper well

This extremely rapid build-up of carbon dioxide is happening because humans are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than natural sinks can remove it. By burning fossil fuels, we have essentially taken millions of years of carbon uptake by plants and returned it to the atmosphere in less than 300 years.

Ah, I know. It was produced by the deep state. By real scientists instead of bureaucrats toeing the Project 2025 line.

My my, Endy. You are a true scientist.