NASA and CAFE Foundation Announce $1.5M Green Aircraft Challenge
31 July 2009
The NASA Innovative Partnerships Program and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation today announced the Green Flight Challenge. The contest is a flight efficiency competition for aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles per gallon.
The prize for the aircraft with the best performance is $1.5 million. The competition is scheduled for July 2011 at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif. A variety of innovative experimental aircraft using electrical, solar, bio-fuel or hybrid propulsion are expected to enter. Several major universities and aircraft builders have expressed their intention to enter teams in the challenge.
To win, teams must use cutting-edge technologies in mechanical and electrical engineering, structures, aerodynamics and thermodynamics. The challenge is expected to help advance all three of the major climate mitigation initiatives: efficiency, conservation and zero-carbon energy sources. These technologies will support advances in aviation and may have broader applications in transportation and energy storage.
The Green Flight Challenge is administered for NASA by CAFE. Founded in 1981, CAFE is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the understanding of personal aircraft technologies through research, analysis and education.
NASA is providing the prize money as part of the Centennial Challenges program. The program seeks innovative solutions to problems of interest to NASA and the nation from diverse and unconventional sources. Competitors may not receive government funding for their entries in this challenge.
Best guess would be a glider retrofitted with an OPOC diesel engine.
Thielert was getting some good figures with their diesel.
Zero carbon indeed; the passengers and pilots have to breathe.
Don't fly! use oxen!
Cogeneration is right now the fastest cheapest way to generate electricity.
..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 01 August 2009 at 02:56 AM
I am thinking carbon fiber and a fuel cell. They do not say what the gallon is, presumably aviation fuel. They would have to standardize on BTU for gallon, but that is a technical point.
Put a gallon of liquid hydrogen into a fuel cell, cover the upper wing surface with solar cells and make the plane out of light weight and strong carbon fiber.
Posted by: SJC | 03 August 2009 at 10:53 AM