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[wierd]

Agreed; Nowhere near it.

But the tech is slowly being developed.  We would probably need ultra-compact fusion to power trans-oceanic flights with the electric jet engine tech.

[Madman198237]

I'm pretty sure that modern fission is more than capable of doing it. The problem is getting people to agree to having a fission reactor aboard a passenger jet

[Egan_BW]

What if we threw in some nukes as a package seal? That way it could simultaneously serve as a passenger plane and a nuclear bomber.

[Naturegirl1999]

If we’re doing that kind of stuff, everyone needs Protection against ionizing radiation
(It was the first link that came up)

[McTraveller]

For wide-body class jets, we will have to use synthetic fuels.  I don't think electric will ever be commercially viable unless we are willing to make it less convenient and more expensive.

Routing 10MW of electric power through an airframe in a reliable manner is a substantially less forgiving situation than flowing 10MW of hydrocarbon fuel.

That order of magnitude between 10MW and 1MW is a huge deal for electric power.

[Starver]

Reminds me that when Greta Thunberg was investigating means of getting across the Atlantic, one way or other, an airline apparently suggested they could fly her over in a plane fuelled with bio(jet)fuel. They were already geared up to use a small percentage mix of the bio-derived, routinely. They couldn't actually do 100% bio, though, so they suggested a special 50% mix on both legs of a return flight, instead, which "adds up to 100%"(!).


Which further reminds me that, in times BCE (Before Corona Epidemic), there was a lot of fuss about flight/travel taxation geared up to allow "one flight a year", per person, before introducing punitive environmental taxes on further extravagances. As a sop to the then-current trend[1] for even the lowest of the lower-classes (especially them?) to jet off to somewhere with a beach and sun[2], they didn't want to make the first flight expensive, as there'd be a revolution, just make the Simon Cowells of the world pay more, not those who were more distant cousins of Joey Essex, as the closest they got to such a true jet-set lifestyle.

But they never said "return flights", which I thoroughly enjoyed the mental image of[3]. Chavvy McChavface and family could afford to go to Costa Del Smallchange, but would not be able to afford to fly back until the next calendar year. Or they'd have to revert to a continental ferry/etc for one of the legs.


[1] Not entirely beaten out of us, CE (Coronavirus Era), given the number of people who snuck in a sneaky holiday to Croatia/etc then had to rush back before a certain desdline when it was announced that their destination was added to the Mandatory Quarantine On Return list.

[2] Usually as the UK enjoys "Hotter than Corfu/Morocco/The Bahamas" weather, here at home, or so the newspaper headlines tend to say a lit these last few years...

[3] Myself oonly ever been on one 'holiday' airplane (return-)trip, in a school outing to ski in the alps for a week or so. Every other visit to the continent (not on company business, and with no intention of just broiling myself mahogany-brown on a beach), including another one to the alps, was ferry/Chunnel and then road. And all but one of those that were family ones we only took the bikes across and cycled the whole rest of the journey in the country(/ies) concerned. Yeah, that's right... I was a Hipster before it was considered cool to be one!

[Reelya]

Reminds me that when Greta Thunberg was investigating means of getting across the Atlantic, one way or other, an airline apparently suggested they could fly her over in a plane fuelled with bio(jet)fuel. They were already geared up to use a small percentage mix of the bio-derived, routinely. They couldn't actually do 100% bio, though, so they suggested a special 50% mix on both legs of a return flight, instead, which "adds up to 100%"(!).

A good sanity check is the fuel consumption of planes vs driving. It's about the same adjusted for passenger count and distance.

A good common sense point is that airlines don't actually get a kick out of using up heaps of fuel, they do minimize this, and the trend towards bigger planes with more passenger capacity is in fact part of that. Flying a big plane is more fuel efficienct than flying two smaller planes with the same number of passengers. If they made a special plane trip for Greta Thunberg that would probably be horrendously inefficient thus produce more waste than otherwise.

The best way to minimize her footprint would in fact be to travel on the largest plane she could, but give it more wiggle room before and after, and buy tickets on a flight just before sales run out. Then she'd be using a seat that would have been empty anyway, and the marginal extra fuel used by the plane would be absolutely negligible.

So, flying somewhere could be far cleaner than driving, if you buy tickets to seats that would have gone to waste otherwise. For example if there were 100 seats, and 99 were filled and you bought the 100th seat that nobody actually wanted then the marginal extra load wouldn't be 1%, since most of that 1% was already used anyway just hauling the plane itself - the percentage you're adding isn't 1% despite their being 100 passengers. If that seat was destined to be vacant, you're adding whatever percent of the plane's weight that you weight, which is something like 1 in 5000. So you're adding 0.02% extra load.

[McTraveller]

Stop it with the mathematical wizardry! What do you think this is, the engineering thread? 

[Naturegirl1999]

There’s an engineering thread?

[Maximum Spin]

There’s an engineering thread?

Yes.

[Starver]

So, flying somewhere could be far cleaner than driving,

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Stockholm,+Sweden/New+York,+USA/
...loadsa metadata snipped from URL for readability only, as extraneous (the encoded map scale/centre stuff, mostly). Doesn't actually matter, it admits to no route in either form...

(I'm sure that, in the past - possibly not Google Maps but a precursor service - there was actually a 'land' route from Europe to the US, featuring Bering Straits ice-bridge. Perhaps it's actually still programatically there but seasonal and thus not current without changing date-data too.)


((The first version of that also required me to scroll down to the second Stockholm, the first being in the US (before I went into Directions, flipped it to be From and then added NYC), but Google obviously learned what I meant and won't replicate for me to examine at leisure.))


Anyway, to go via the Atlantic I'm obviously now off to electrically-retrofit a DUKW chassis.  6 ton(ne~) and 400 mile (road) range in its WW2 incarnation, with the 91HP engine. So definitely gonna need a solar-cell awning(-cum-sail?), for recharging, and likely some severly enhanced flotation/waterproofing/drainage systems too to deal with pelagic conditions.

[Maximum Spin]

(I'm sure that, in the past - possibly not Google Maps but a precursor service - there was actually a 'land' route from Europe to the US, featuring Bering Straits ice-bridge. Perhaps it's actually still programatically there but seasonal and thus not current without changing date-data too.)

It was probably google maps, as google maps used to do all kinds of coy things like that before they started to hate fun.

[Naturegirl1999]

What other coy things were done?

[Maximum Spin]

What other coy things were done?

The only one I clearly remember was that giving inputs on different continents would give you a route saying to kayak or swim across the ocean.
There were listicles on the subject at the time that are probably still on the dark web somewhere if you care to look.

[Reelya]

So, flying somewhere could be far cleaner than driving,

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Stockholm,+Sweden/New+York,+USA/
...loadsa metadata snipped from URL for readability only, as extraneous (the encoded map scale/centre stuff, mostly). Doesn't actually matter, it admits to no route in either form...

(I'm sure that, in the past - possibly not Google Maps but a precursor service - there was actually a 'land' route from Europe to the US, featuring Bering Straits ice-bridge. Perhaps it's actually still programatically there but seasonal and thus not current without changing date-data too.)


((The first version of that also required me to scroll down to the second Stockholm, the first being in the US (before I went into Directions, flipped it to be From and then added NYC), but Google obviously learned what I meant and won't replicate for me to examine at leisure.))


Anyway, to go via the Atlantic I'm obviously now off to electrically-retrofit a DUKW chassis.  6 ton(ne~) and 400 mile (road) range in its WW2 incarnation, with the 91HP engine. So definitely gonna need a solar-cell awning(-cum-sail?), for recharging, and likely some severly enhanced flotation/waterproofing/drainage systems too to deal with pelagic conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_New_York_to_Paris_Race

The 1908 New York to Paris Race was an automobile competition consisting of drivers attempting to travel from New York to Paris.

"attempting".

But as for Greta Thunberg, they airline could definitely have seen about getting her some spare tickets on a plane with below 100% occupancy rate and her actual carbon footprint would have been near-zero.