Wirrrrrr goes the airplane. Oshkosh Lives up to its Mission of Innovation

I attended the annual summertime EAA’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin last week. It was the first time in twelve years I attended the so called Mecca of aviation on my own and was not part of a company exhibiting an airplane or looking for investors. It was a refreshing way to enjoy what has become an annual destination and see dear friends again.

The one thing that EAA and its many exhibitors worked hard to demonstrate is that the concept of an alternative energy aircraft is morphing from bar talk to becoming something that flies and there is much sweat equity being invested into making this a reality and eventually commercialized. Given the skepticism of most investors towards airplane companies, this may be a bright spot in aerospace innovation for the next several years.

Demonstrating the inertia behind this initiative, Cessna announced last week that it intends to fly an electrically powered 172 with Colorado based Bye Energy as its R&D partner by the end of 2010.

Electric Helicopter

Another Fortune 100 company spending R&D dollars on this concept is Sikorsky, the company owned by United Technologies. It brought an electrically powered helicopter called the Firefly, a Hughes 269 airframe with the piston engine removed and replaced by an electric motor driven by batteries in pods on either side of the fuselage.

Electrically Powered Airliner

In the “WTH” category, Boeing announced last week that it is working on a concept plane called the SUGAR Volt that would use turbine engines and electric motors connected to the fans to more efficiently propel the electric airliner. The hybrid-powered jetliner of the future would operate on batteries or jet fuel, depending on whether it's cruising or taking off and climbing, when the most thrust is required. On flights of up to 900 miles, the SUGAR Volt would cruise almost exclusively on battery power, said Marty Bradley, a technical fellow at Boeing's research and technology division in Huntington Beach, Calif. An electric propulsion system would help slash the amount of fuel burned as well as noise around airports by about 70 percent compared with today's airliner fleet, say aerospace researchers who believe they can have such a flying machine up and running by about 2035.

GE Aviation sponsored an all day symposium, THE FUTURE OF ELECTRIC FLIGHT at Oshkosh to highlight and educate the public on electrically powered flight. At the July 30th symposium, a contest was announced to develop by 2011 a personal commuter aircraft that operates on electricity or fuel cells and can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger mpg. The Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by NASA and the CAFE Foundation, offers a $1.5 million first prize for the aircraft with the best performance.

Some of the competing teams already presented their designs at the symposium last week. The participants included aerospace engineers and students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Georgia Tech University, Penn State University and the University of Colorado.

If money is the real fuel that makes airplanes go, then the challenge in front of these aerospace companies pursuing electrically powered aircraft is persuading the Federal government to view the aircraft industry as equally important as the automobile industry. The electric automobile industry receives substantial Federal investment and U.S. companies Tesla and Fisker have benefited from this mezzanine financing structure. Perhaps Boeing, UTC and Cessna and their DC lobbyists can pry open the wallets of Congress to shovel some its alternative energy R&D dollars towards this potentially lucrative and important new sector.

On the technical side, it is generally agreed that the battery technology does not yet exist for making this a practical alternative. And certainly not at a cost structure that approaches something reasonable. Simply said, it is going to take a B-I-G battery or lots and lots of normal sized batteries to drive a prop with enough torque and for a long enough period of time to make it commercially viable. First flight of the Sikorsky Firefly is imminent, but being a technology demonstrator, endurance is just 15 minutes.

In an alternative energy corollary, Porsche AG is already racing a 911 GT3 R Hybrid in Europe for LeMans-style endurance racing. The vehicle features two electric motors that power the front wheels in addition to a 480hp gas engine that drives the rear wheels. The hybrid system stands to offer significant fuel savings, reducing the need for pit stops and cutting down on the vehicle’s weight.

Rather than relying upon heavy lithium-ion batteries, the high-performance vehicle has a flywheel generator mounted in its passenger seat that can spin at up to 40,000 rpm. This generator stores energy each time the vehicle brakes, and then for 6-8 seconds afterward the driver can release a 160hp boost by merely tapping a button on the steering wheel. Logic suggests that this engineering driven company will use this “racing lab” to solve the many challenges of bringing alternative energy powered technology to a 911 sports car (maybe hybrid, maybe not) for commercial sale. Similarly, aerospace companies must continue their persistence and determination to solve the pure technical hurdles related to flight but only budgets similar to a Porsche will lubricate the path to make it commercially acceptable.

The announcements and projects presented last week demonstrate that this embryonic industry has advanced past the science fair project stage to show a bridge between what is possible and what is practical. And it just may be the only way to inject some growth into the declining general aviation market segment.

In case there were any doubts whatsoever, innovation remains alive and well. And that is what Oshkosh is all about.