Boeing flies a hydrogen powered airplane?

Question

Any comments?

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/04/03/boeing-hydrogen-plane.html

Answer 1

62MPH in a Katana?  Must be pretty underpowered.

It will be years before they could make a commercial aircraft run on hydrogen cells.

Also, if the hydrogen is split from water using coal, oil, or nuclear supplied electricity, it isn't really green.

Answer 2

All the same issues with hydrogen cars are multiplied in an aircraft. You still need an energy efficient source of hydrogen gas, that's the biggest killer of the hydrogen concept at this point.

Answer 3

Hydrogen is extremely inefficient, there is no way to store enough of it to equal the amount of fuel aircraft usually carry and for the same weight. Its never going to work.

Even at 10,000psi, you would not be able to fit enough hydrogen into an aircraft to equal the amount of fuel it can carry now, and Im talking about if you used the entire volume of the aircraft just for hydrogen.

Answer 4

In the 70s Lockheed drew up plans for an experimental L1011 Tristar that ran on liquid hydrogen. I may have been a freighter configuration.   Unfortunately the large hydrogen tank took up at least 1/5 of the cabin.  It was just an exercise and never left the drawing board.

Answer 5

While there isn't a lot of promise right now, it's a start, right? You gotta learn to walk before you learn to run. I think it's really cool.