On January 19th 1911, Eugene Ely took off in his Curtiss pusher airplane from the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno and landed on the USS Pennsylvania anchored off the San Francisco pier. Ely was the first pilot in history to land an airplane aboard a warship. Nearly 100 years after the inception of Naval aviation here in San Francisco, Bay Area spectators watched the sky again for the Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter plane air show. Watching the Navy’s aerial display of precision and power was truly an impressive sight, and it got me thinking about how far we’ve come with technology. Despite my respect for where technology is today, I couldn’t help but wish fighter planes like the F/A-18 were more energy efficient. Not only would it be better for the environment, but more cost effective, considering the U.S. government uses between 60 to 75 million barrels of (mostly foreign) oil per year on jet fuel. Fortunately, the U.S. Navy has begun to look for ways to incorporate biofuel.
Last Earth Day (April 22nd) the U.S Navy flew an F/A-18 fighter plane off the Chesapeake Bay with it’s gas tank filled with 50% Camelina sativa biofuel. So far Camelina sativa seems to be a good option since the plant provides a high biofuel yield, doesn’t compete with food consumption, and needs very little rainfall to grow. Although 50% less petroleum consumption sounds pretty good to me, NASA has made even bigger strides with their Green Flight Challenge held this October.
The Pipstrel-USA.com aerospace engineering team won the challenge and proved that the reality of electric fighter planes may not be that far-fetched. The Pipstrel team won a $1.35 million prize for creating a four-seat electric airplane that flew 200 miles at 100 mph using less than 1 gallon of gas! In stark contrast, the FA-18 maxes out at 1190 mph, and ranks as the highest fuel consumer of any fighter plane in the U.S Navy. Although considerably slower, the Pipstrel team’s broke serious ground for aerospace technology.
Since NASA’s funding has recently been cut, their Green Flight Challenge was an ingenious strategy for advancing technologies while staying under budget. Not surprisingly, NASA’s challenge proved to be a difficult one– out of the fourteen engineering teams who signed up for the challenge, only three met the requirements for the competition. The second place prize went to the eGenius team for their electric airplane, receiving a prize of $120,000 and another $10,000 from the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize awarded for the quietest aircraft (about the sound of a kitchen blender).
I commend the 14 aerospace engineering teams who even attempted such a daunting task, and I look forward to the day when electric airplanes become advanced enough to function for Naval Aviation. I have to say, the Blue Angels show wouldn’t have been as cool if the fighter planes roared overhead with the power and the fury of a Cuisinart–but hey, who says the high-efficiency fighter planes of the future have to be quiet?
References:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100420-energy-biofuel-fighter-jet/
http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2011/111005pipistrel-wins-nasa-green-flight-challenge.html
http://www.sky-flash.com/speed2.htm
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