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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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OK. Tell me how to get the energy density needed to drive an airliner. Solar ain't gonna fly (heh) and batteries weigh too much.
FFS, the world ain't going vegan tomorrow and this fat is mostly waste. Waste that, left to rot, will produce methane witch is FAR worse than CO2.
Lemmy: "Not good enough!"
Nuclear trans-oceanic jumboliners would be rad af.
How about accepting that passenger air travel is a luxury we simply can't afford... (let the downvotes flood in)
Just to be clear, ethical considerations aside, relying on fat from animals requires an extremely environmentally damaging industry (I.e. Livestock industry) to either sustain the current numbers or increase output, just to keep airplane fuel going.
The immediate solution, at least for regional airtravel is electric planes. This is already doable, so more investments should be put into that.
We can then look at solutions for international and long haul flight, even if that includes hybrid planes or fully electric, or a totally different (sustainable) fuel source.
If you consider that whatever solutions we come up with need to work in the long-term, it makes sense to prioritize more realistic goals, rather than create an entirely different set of problems.
What about Trains? We don't need short-range aircraft, we need high speed trains. Trans-oceanic flights can still use fuel, it's fine.
Hydrogen
Miniature nuclear reactors have the power density to run a nuclear-electric airplane. If we developed a thorium airplane reactor, we wouldn’t even have to worry about the terrorism implications.
In that case it would only take a couple of planes worth of stealing before you jad enough plutonium for at least a dirty bomb if not a nuclear weapon lol.
Like wut? Thorium still needs plutonium to work and plutonium can be used for both cases just as uranium afaik.
Absolutely true, but the consequences of a crash are too dire to ever let this be a thing.
Plus, the ROI on a nuclear plane would be a joke. How you gonna pay for it? Maybe break even after 500,000 flights? :)
And then there's the maintenance and professionals and on and on.
Yes the ROI would be abysmal. It would have to be operated at a loss, like lots of public transportation is.