Is it possible to have a wind and electric powered airplane?

Question

Is it possible to have a wind and electric powered airplane?

Answer 1

Yes, check out coolingearth.org

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Answer 2

Possible, sure.  Feasible, maybe.  The real problem is what is used to generate the electricity.  If you use batteries, there is a pretty big weight component to take into account, plus there is the question of how far you could go.  Solar generated electricity probably wouldn't be enough to do anything.

The best you could hope for would be something along the lines of the Gossamer Albatross, the human powered plane from a few years back.  It would have to be incredibly light.

As far as any kind of commercial, or even private transportation application, probably not.

Answer 3

Yes and may be. Sanyo electric company had experimented with a solar powered plane. It was more a glider than a plane. If  the technology developes to a stage were batteries of high storage capacity and have size and weight of a paper rolled capacitor ca be manufactured, it is possible. until then the only way is to draw power from a ground station  by mens of wire.(Like a wire guided missile)

Answer 4

electric powered plane is possible.

Answer 5

You can't have a wind powered airplane because the wind turbine will produce more drag than power (and thus thrust).

Most commercials airliners have a wind generator that drops out if all engines fail (called a Ram Air Turbine) which provides power to run the hydraulics and basic instruments but it adds drag and also doesn't supply much (only enough for basic control and at low speed even that is marginal, it's really only a last resort).

Electric aircraft could be done but the batteries are going to be very heavy (which is a bad thing in an aircraft).

Aviation is a minor contributor to global warming as well as very hard to improve from an environmental point of view so it's probably better to deal with the bigger and easier sources first.

Answer 6

NO !!! U can not get something for nothing...