The Wall Street Journal’s News Hub has recently put together a short video segment about NASA’s green aviation competition where team Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, Pennsylvania won $1.35 million – the largest green aviation prize in history. The green flight challenge competition had invited citizen innovators and aviators from around the US to compete on the basis of fuel, speed and noise level standards with the winners being the designers of a first fully electric four passenger aircraft that is capable of 2 1/4 hours of flight at 100 mph (The runner up for the prize also had entered a fully electric aircraft).
Of course, it was mentioned that fully electric commercial planes are still a long way off but electric general aviation and recreational aircraft may be here sooner than we think. However, the Wall Street Journal’s News Hub segment did leave one technical or scientific question unanswered: Can you use your cell phone on an electric aircraft?!!
Moving forward it makes big sense for the UAS industry, and I now have a Pipistrel Taurus Electro as my screensaver image, my new dream aircraft!
Was it Einstein or Leonardo that said imagination was the futures preview?
Either way it does not take much imagination to see electric aircraft operating very soon.