Why solar-powered planes are still a long way from carrying passengers

Solar power has gotten so good we can use it to power airplanes

An airplane has flown across the United States, powered only by sunlight. The impressive feat was made possible by improvements in solar cell and battery technology. This chart, produced by the Department of Energy, shows how solar technology has improved:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The efficiency is the fraction of captured solar energy that is converted into electrical power. The Web site for the plane, named Solar Impulse, reports that the vessel was powered by monocrystalline silicon solar cells, represented by blue squares on the chart. Interestingly, this is not the most energy-efficient category of solar cells. However, Solar Impulse's designers were less concerned with absolute efficiency than they were with the ratio of efficiency to weight. The lighter the solar cells, the farther the plane could fly on each kWH of energy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Because the flight across the United States took more than 24 hours (specifically, about 2 months), the plane needed to collect energy during the day and then use it at night. It used lightweight lithium polymer batteries to do this. The Solar Impulse team says the "total efficiency of the propulsion train"—counting power lost by the solar cells, the batteries and other components—was about 12 percent.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Solar-powered airplanes won't replace traditional airplanes any time soon. Airplanes powered by traditional jet fuel fly much faster and can carry much heavier loads. But the flight across the United States was an impressive feat of engineering. And the Solar Impulse team now has its sights on an even bigger goal: flying around the world on solar power.

First leg completed in bid to pilot solar-powered plane around globe

A solar-powered aircraft attempting a historic around-the-world journey completed its first leg Monday, landing in darkness in Oman after a flight of more than 13 hours from Abu Dhabi. The Swiss-made, single-seat plane — as light as a minivan but with the wingspan of a jumbo jet — left Abu Dhabi’s Al Bateen Executive Airport just as the sun was rising. It touched down in Oman’s capital, Muscat — more than 300 miles by air over desert and mountains — with its wings dotted by rows of lights. “Confirmation: We’re down!” said the commentator on the mission’s official Web site. Applause broke out in the control room in Monaco. The plane is to leave early Tuesday on its next leg, across the Arabian Sea to Ahmedabad, India. The plane runs only on solar power and cuts through the air mostly silently on a battery charge. Its wings, spanning as wide as those of a Boeing 747, carry more than 17,000 solar cells, which transfer energy to four electric motors that power the plane’s propellers. Electric bikes followed the plane, the Solar Impulse 2, as it taxied for takeoff, to prevent the wings from touching the runway, the BBC reported. Solar Impulse founder André Borschberg flew the plane on the first leg of its 21,700-mile journey. He will trade off with fellow Swiss co-founder Bertrand Piccard during layovers. “After 16 years of a dream and 12 years of hard work, we hope it will work,” Piccard told the BBC after the plane took off. Some legs of the 25-day journey, spread over five months, will entail five full days and nights of flying solo, such as when the plane crosses the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It is due back in Abu Dhabi in late July or August. The plane will stop at various locations around the world for the pilots to rest and do maintenance — and also to spread the message about clean, renewable technologies. _[Related: U.S. utilities wage campaign against rooftop solar]_ The plane’s cockpit, about the size of a telephone booth, is so cramped that it holds only one person. The pilot will not be able to stand while flying, but the single seat reclines for stretching and its cushion can be removed to access a toilet. “We never feel alone in the cockpit, though,” Piccard told the BBC. He pointed out that flight pioneer Charles Lindbergh also flew in a small cockpit. Piccard said millions of people around the world were behind the prototype effort to find a more sustainable and cleaner alternative to aircraft powered by fossil fuels. _[Related: Can a solar eclipse shut down Europe?]_ The Solar Impulse 2 weighs just over 5,000 pounds, about as much as a minivan or a mid-size truck. An empty Boeing 747 jet weighs about 400,000 pounds. Solar cells line the top of the Solar Impulse’s wings, and energy-dense lithium-ion batteries sustain it during nighttime flying. The best speed for the plane is about 28 mph, the pilots told the Associated Press. The slow speed means the journey’s legs will take several days and nights of nonstop flying. Borschberg has been practicing yoga and Piccard self-hypnosis to get ready for the historic endeavor, the AP reported. They aim to rest a maximum of 20 minutes straight, repeating the naps 12 times over a 24-hour period — akin to how a lone around-the-world yachtsman sleeps in snatches. Goggles will flash lights to wake the pilot up, the AP said, and armbands placed underneath the flying suit will buzz if the plane isn’t flying level. The aircraft will reach an altitude of about 28,000 feet during daytime hours to catch the sun’s rays. When flying over oceans at night, it will drop to about 5,000 feet. After two stops in India, the plane will head to China, where it will stay for a month until the days are longer so more of the sun’s energy can be tapped. It is to stop in Burma, Hawaii, Arizona and at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The path across the Atlantic will depend on the weather and could include stops in southern Europe or Morocco. People can follow the flight at www.solarimpulse.com, tracking the plane’s battery status, energy consumption, location and path, as well as how much the pilot has slept and how much food and water he has left. There is also a live feed of the plane’s control room, with occasional footage from the cockpit. Prince Albert of Monaco, a Solar Impulse supporter, attended Monday’s takeoff. Other sponsors include Masdar, an Abu Dhabi clean-energy company; Omega; Google; and Moët Hennessey, the AP reported. “Now the adventure has started,” Piccard told the news agency at takeoff. **Related stories:** Report: Wind, solar energy have tripled since 2008 Bad news: The world’s energy supply isn’t getting any cleaner The world is spending $550 billion per year on fossil-fuel subsidies

Solar plane lands in Hawaii, breaks record for longest nonstop solo flight

A plane powered by the sun’s rays landed in Hawaii on Friday after a record-breaking five-day journey across the Pacific Ocean from Japan. Pilot André Borschberg and his single-seat aircraft landed at Kalaeloa, a small airport outside Honolulu. His 120-hour voyage from Nagoya broke the record for the world’s longest nonstop solo flight, his team said. The late U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett set the previous record of 76 hours when he flew a specially-designed jet around the globe in 2006. But Borschberg flew the Solar Impulse 2 without fuel. Instead, its wings were equipped with 17,000 solar cells that charged batteries. The plane ran on stored energy at night. The plane’s ideal flight speed is about 28 miles per hour, though that can double during the day when sun’s rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds or about as much as a minivan or mid-size truck. Borschberg and co-pilot Bertrand Piccard have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off in March from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. After Hawaii, it will head to Phoenix, Arizona. The project, which began in 2002 and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, is aimed at highlighting the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. Solar-powered air travel is not yet practical, however, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft. Borschberg took naps and practiced yoga to cope with the long hours. “Yoga is a huge support for this flight above the Pacific: it positively affects my mood and mindset,” he wrote in a tweet from the plane on Thursday. ** — Associated Press  **

Solar-powered plane resumes round-the-world trip

Update: Solar Impulse 2 took off April 21 from Hawaii. It landed in Mountain View, California, on April 23. Early one morning last June, pilot André Borschberg stepped aboard an odd-looking plane — its wings long like those of an albatross, its cramped cabin as small as a refrigerator — and guided it into the sky above Japan. In a typical airliner, it would have taken him eight hours to arrive at his destination in Hawaii, but Borschberg was at the helm of Solar Impulse 2, a plane powered entirely by the sun’s rays. Lightweight but slow, traveling at an average of 38 miles per hour, it landed in Hawaii after 117 hours 52 minutes, or five days and five nights — the longest solo flight in history. Borschberg, 63, and fellow Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard, 58, were in the middle of attempting the first round-the-world trip in a solar-powered plane, taking turns at the controls of the single-seat aircraft. They left Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, in March 2015, and have divided their trip into 13 segments. The flight from Japan to Hawaii was the longest and most dangerous. On the first day, a quick ascent overheated the plane’s batteries, which store energy supplied by hair-thin solar cells that cover the top of the plane. The batteries could not be cooled enough during the long flight to prevent permanent damage. Now, after replacing the plane’s batteries and waiting for calm, sunny weather, the pilots are ready to resume their journey. Later in April, Piccard will make the four-day flight from Hawaii to North America, where, depending on the weather, he’ll land in Arizona or California or near the Canadian city of Vancouver. From there, he and Borschberg will continue across North America to Europe and finish their journey in Abu Dhabi this summer. Piccard answered some questions for KidsPost last weekend during an 18-hour flight above Hawaii to test the plane’s instruments before continuing the big trip. Solar cells work well enough to power a plane, but the plane needs to be extremely lightweight to conserve energy. The cabin fits just one pilot at a time, and there’s no room for baggage. The walls are thin and the plane isn’t pressurized, which means that the pilot has to dress like a mountaineer and wear an oxygen mask at high altitudes. Piccard says he was born for this kind of adventure. His grandfather was a balloonist, and his father, Jacques Piccard, explored the deepest part of the ocean. “I remember very clearly saying to myself . . . that I also wanted to have that kind of life; the life of an explorer, interesting and useful,” he said. He made the first nonstop, round-the-world balloon flight in 1999. Soon after, he set his sights on a round-the-world solar flight and joined up with Borschberg. The flight is all about promoting cleaner, environmentally friendly technologies, he said, adding that using such devices as LED lamps and electric or hybrid vehicles “will make a big difference in the world” by helping conserve energy and resources. Flying for four or five days at a time with only occasional 20-minute naps can take a lot of focus. The plane weighs about as much as a small car but has the wingspan of a jetliner, making it very sensitive to wind and to little adjustments at the controls. “A few moments ago I saw hundreds of dolphins swimming in the water near the coast of Hawaii,” Piccard said. “It was so beautiful I got distracted and the airplane went outside its flight path for just a couple seconds.” An alarm rang in the cockpit, alerting him to make an adjustment so he would not lose control of the plane. Unfazed, Piccard tweaked the controls and flew on. The dolphins kept swimming.

Solar-powered plane takes off on longest leg of around-the-world trip

A solar-powered plane attempting to travel around the globe without fuel took off from Japan early Monday after an unscheduled, month-long stop. The Solar Impulse 2 departed around 3 a.m. local time from an airport in Nagoya in central Japan. The plane with one pilot is attempting a 120-hour flight to Hawaii, the longest leg of its journey so far. The plane requires the right weather conditions, and organizers were withholding an official announcement of the takeoff until they are sure the flight can continue. “A formal communiqué will be issued once Solar Impulse has passed the Point of No Return and that we know that the pilot André Borschberg is on a safe track to reach Hawaii,” the media team said in an e-mail to journalists. The Solar Impulse originally left Nanjing, China, for Hawaii, but diverted to Japan on June 1 because of unfavorable weather ahead. It has been waiting for the right conditions to depart. The flight over the Pacific to Hawaii is risky because there is no place to land in an emergency. The Solar Impulse 2 is powered by more than 17,000 solar cells on its wings that recharge its batteries, enabling it to fly. The project is meant to demonstrate the potential of improved energy efficiency and clean power. ** — Associated Press  **

Solar-powered plane ready for takeoff

A solar-powered plane that can fly at night is gearing up to be the first airplane of its kind to fly across the United States. The Solar Impulse has spent the past few weeks around San Francisco, California, taking practice runs before its cross-country tour. “That’s a mythical step in aviation,” Andre Borschberg, one of the plane’s pilots and creators, said about flying cross-country. He compared the Solar Impulse team to early-20th-century aviators who tried to fly coast to coast in propeller planes. He said a solar-powered trip around the world could happen in two years. The Solar Impulse is powered by about 12,000 photovoltaic cells. They cover the plane’s massive wings and charge its batteries, allowing it to fly day and night without fuel. It has the wingspan of a large passenger airplane but the weight of the average family car, a combination that makes it vulnerable to bad weather. Its creators say the Solar Impulse is designed to showcase the potential of solar power and will never replace fuel-powered commercial flights. The delicate, single-seat plane cruises at around 40 miles per hour —a lot slower than ordinary planes — and it can’t fly through clouds. Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse’s co-founder and chairman, had predicted that the plane would be ready for the cross-country journey this week, depending on the weather. “We like nice weather,” Borschberg said. “We like sunny days,” Friday is now the first possible day for takeoff, a Solar Impulse spokeswoman said Monday. Stops are planned in Phoenix, Arizona; Dallas, Texas; Northern Virginia; and New York, with conferences and events in each city. Each flight leg will take 20 to 25 hours, with 10-day stops in each city. The plane is expected to be at Dulles International Airport from late June until mid-July. Between Dallas and Dulles, the plane will stop at one of three other cities: Atlanta, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; or St. Louis, Missouri. Borschberg said his group is close to being able to launch the nonstop flights needed to go around the world. Using solar power, “we are close to the notion of perpetual flight,” he said. ** — Associated Press  **

Solar plane suspends around-the-world flight because of battery problem

A team trying to fly a solar-powered plane around the world said Wednesday it is suspending the journey in Hawaii after the plane suffered battery damage during its record-breaking flight to the islands. The Solar Impulse team said in a news release that it will continue the attempt to travel around the globe, but irreversible damage caused by overheating batteries has grounded the flight until at least April. The batteries aboard Solar Impulse 2 overheated on the first day of its trip from Japan to Hawaii, and there was no way to cool down the system, the team said. The company says there was no weakness with the technology, but the team didn’t anticipate temperature fluctuations associated with rapid altitude changes in a tropical climate. Pilot André Borschberg and his single-seat aircraft landed at Kalaeloa, a small airport outside Honolulu, on July 3. His voyage of nearly 118 hours from Nagoya, Japan, broke the record for the world’s longest nonstop solo flight, his team said. “Solar Impulse is attempting a historic first of flying around the world only on solar energy,” the pilots said in a statement. “And while Solar Impulse has completed eight legs, covering nearly half of the journey, setbacks are part of the challenges of a project which is pushing technological boundaries to the limits.” The wings of Solar Impulse 2, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane ran on stored energy at night. The aircraft took off in March from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, then made stops in Oman, Burma (also called Myanmar) and China. It then made an unplanned stop for nearly a month in Japan after high winds damaged a wing. The leg across the Pacific Ocean was the riskiest part of the plane’s global travels, as there was nowhere for it to land in an emergency. The plane’s ideal flight speed is about 28 miles per hour, though that can double during the day when the sun’s rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds, or about as much as a minivan or midsize truck. The airplane will be kept in a University of Hawaii hangar at the Kalaeloa airport on Oahu while repairs are made. The team says it will also research and test other cooling methods to prevent more overheating. ** — Associated Press  **

Solar-powered plane takes off on longest leg of round-the-world trip

The takeoff was planned under the cover of darkness. After two months of setbacks, delay and dismay, the team aiming to accomplish the first ever solar-powered plane trip around the world wanted to start its longest and most difficult leg in secret. If they had to turn back yet again, Solar Impulse co-founder and pilot Bertrand Piccard explained in a video interview (he’s not flying this leg), the team didn’t want to disappoint their fans, or the news media. Better to take off from Japan and see what happens before making the flight public.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So they waited. And waited. And Monday morning, 10 hours after takeoff, Piccard’s fellow pilot and founder Andre Borschberg tweeted an image from the air: the plane’s wing silhouetted against the sunrise, pointing forward. “Very strong emotions as I passed the point of no return: exploration starts here,” he wrote. This is the project’s the moment of truth, Piccard elaborated from the ground. Either Solar Impulse 2 makes it to Hawaii, or it doesn’t make it at all. [ _Meet Solar Impulse 2, the solar-powered plane that never has to land_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The five-day flight from Nagoya Airfield in Japan to Kalaeloa, Hawaii will be the ultimate test of Piccard and Borschberg’s project, conceived more than a decade ago. If it’s successful, the trip will be the longest ever made by crewed plane running entirely on solar power. The team is depending on 120 hours of good weather, good light and good luck to keep the tiny aircraft aloft. Solar Impulse has no fuel on board, other than the energy from the sun stored up in its batteries. But they believe it’ll be enough to carry the plane through the five nights it’ll take to get to the next runway. Borschberg is ready if it’s not. He’s equipped with a dinghy, enough supplies to last him several days, and the training to bail out of a failing aircraft. But neither he nor his partner is the type to dwell long on negative possibilities. Especially not Piccard, the grandson of a famed physicist and balloonist and the son of the undersea explorer Jaques Piccard. If nature didn’t incline him toward this type of quixotic quest, nurture certainly did. Piccard said in 2013 that his household growing up was brimming with heady tales of discovery and discussions of mankind’s endless potential for progress. He didn’t realize there was any other way to look at a problem except as a possibility. “All the most incredible things seemed to be completely normal,” Piccard told an audience at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, according to the New York Times. “I thought this was the normal way to live and I was very disappointed to see that there are a lot of people who are afraid of the unknown, afraid of the doubts, afraid of the question marks.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In 1999, he and fellow aeronaut Brian Jones became the first people to complete a nonstop trip around globe in a balloon. But that journey was nearly cut short by a propane shortage. For the sake of exploration, and the environment, Piccard began dreaming of a way to fly without fuel. He and Jones launched a feasibility study in 2001 at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, bringing Swiss Air Force pilot and entrepreneur Borschberg on board as manager. They publicly launched the project two years later and began work on a prototype in 2003. Their original model, Solar Impulse 1, made its first flight in 2009 — a 350-meter “flea hop” that took it just one meter above the runway in Dübendorf, Switzerland. It was not the first time a solar-powered plane had ever left the ground, but it was the first time that a plane with the potential to fly through the night had done so.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[First leg completed in bid to pilot solar-powered plane around globe]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Solar Impulse 2, the plane attempting this year’s round-the-world trip, is loaded with nearly 50 percent more solar cells than its predecessor but is incredibly lightweight. Though it has roughly the same wingspan as an Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial aircraft currently in service, it’s less than 1 percent of the Airbus’s weight — even when the A380 isn’t carrying passengers. So long as the sunlight holds, the tiny plane could feasibly fly around the world forever. Really, Piccard jokes during speeches, the only thing that isn’t sustainable about Solar Impulse 2 is its pilot. The telephone booth-sized cockpit fits only one person, and humans — unlike the plane — can only fly through the night for so long. That’s part of the reason that this round-the-world trip is being undertaken in stages, with Piccard and Borschberg alternating time at the controls. The Nagoya to Hawaii trip is leg eight of a 13-part journey that began in Abu Dhabi in March. The numerous stops allow the pilots to trade off, gives crews a chance to inspect and repair the craft and provides an opportunity for Piccard and Borschberg to evangelize about clean, renewable technology. Their project is sponsored by Masdar, an Abu Dhabi clean-energy company; Omega; Google and Moët Hennessey, among others. The month-long layover in Japan was unplanned; Borschberg had originally intended to make the six-day flight from Nanjing, China to Kalaeloa in one go. But bad weather in early June grounded the plane, and a second flight attempt later in the month was cancelled because of concerns about weather conditions. Even Borschberg and Piccard began expressing doubts about their ability to complete the journey. “If we cannot finish this year, we will finish next year,” Borschberg told CNN on June 19.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Finally this week the 150 meteorologists, flight experts and engineers behind the project found the right five-day weather window to set off on the plane’s riskiest flight yet. Now Solar Impulse 2 moves noiselessly through the air at a modest 28 miles per hour, rising to 28,000 feet during the day to catch the sun’s rays, and sinking to just 5,000 above the ocean while flying at night. There’s no room in the tiny cockpit for standing or moving around — the toilet is simply a hole beneath a cushion on the pilot’s seat. But Borschberg needs to keep his eyes on the controls. The lightweight plane responds to the slightest changes in weather and wind, meaning he must be constantly alert. He and Piccard trained themselves to sleep for a mere 20 minutes at a time, 12 times a day. During flight they wear goggles that flash lights to wake them up, and armbands beneath their flight suit will buzz if the plane isn’t flying straight. In a livestream of the flight available on the Solar Impulse web Site Monday, sunlight poured through a window into the plane, glinting off the equipment and the thin plastic coils of Borschberg’s oxygen mask tubes. The rhythmic scratch of his breathing was the only sound coming from the cockpit. He was just 13 hours into the 120 journey, with nothing but open ocean beneath him and no place to land should anything go wrong.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “It was really a jump in the unknown,” Piccard said in the video interview. “… Until now we have been in a protected environment, in controlled airspace, with our references, with all our benchmarks. And here we lose everything at once.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico That made the decision to take off difficult for the rest of the Solar Impulse team, Piccard explained. They almost didn’t let Borschberg fly out into that risky unknown. But in his final Twitter dispatch before takeoff, Borschberg was determinedly optimistic about the endeavor.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “All scientific breakthroughs start with a crazy idea and are first said to be impossible,” it read.

Solar-powered plane lands at Dulles

Solar Impulse, the first solar-powered plane that can fly at night, landed at Dulles International Airport on Sunday as part of its first U.S. cross-country trip. The plane landed at 12:15 a.m. after taking off a little after 10 a.m. Saturday from Cincinnati, Ohio. Bertrand Piccard piloted the one-seat aircraft, which flies about 40 miles per hour. The airplane uses no fuel. Its wings are covered with 12,000 photovoltaic cells that charge its batteries during the day. Its wings are long — 208 feet — but skinny. The entire plane weighs only about as much as a small car. Visitors to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center were able to look at the plane Sunday. A second viewing is scheduled for Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The plane’s cross-country trip began May 3 in San Francisco. Dulles was its last stop before reaching New York by early July. The Solar Impulse team aims to fly a similar plane around the world in 2015. **— Staff and wire reports  **

Solar plane completes round-the-world flight to champion clean technology

Solar Impulse 2, an airplane powered only by the sun, completed its round-the-world flight early Tuesday by landing in Abu Dhabi, covering more than 27,000 miles in 550-plus hours in the sky. Bertrand Piccard piloted the final flight, a turbulent two-day ride from Egypt to the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Piccard, who is 58, and André Borschberg, 63, took turns in the airplane for the 16 other flights in the single-seater, which has the wingspan of a 747 jumbo jet but weighs only as much as a car. The trip began in March 2015 with early stops in India, China and Japan. While heading from Japan to Hawaii, Borschberg was at the controls for four days, 21 hours, 52 minutes — a world record for the longest flight with only one pilot onboard. That flight was Borshberg’s most challenging, he said by phone from Abu Dhabi. “It was the first time we could and had to fly many days and many nights over the ocean. It was what I call the moment of truth,” Borschberg said. “The tension was incredibly high. . . . When I left Japan, I had technical difficulties. The engineers wanted me to go back.” Borschberg said he was convinced that he could succeed despite the equipment problems. Pilot and plane arrived safely in Hawaii last July, but the batteries overheated and needed replacing. The problem caused a nine-month delay in the trip. New batteries allowed the journey to resume in April. Stops in the United States included San Francisco, California; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Dayton, Ohio, the childhood home town of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. At several of the layovers, the public was invited to see the plane. Borschberg said he enjoyed the kids’ reaction. “So many classes of kids, when they see the airplane you see the eyes get bright,” he said. Borschberg said he hopes Solar Impulse 2 will inspire children around the globe. “They can develop better solutions, clean solutions,” he said. “We have showed the way that we can go, but there is so much potential.” That potential includes aircraft powered by electricity — something Borschberg said should be developed in the near future. But as he and Piccard continue to spread the message of using clean technology (or using renewable resources) in the air and on the ground, Borschberg is hoping the sun will play a significant role. “There’s something that is truly special about solar power,” he said.

Article explores human-powered aircraft; a book seeks answers to the root of evil

Way back in 1485, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out plans for a human-powered aircraft. Even now, engineers are having a hard time getting such a device off the ground. The main problem is that sustained flight requires more lift and power than the human body can generate for itself. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying. In this month’s issue of Popular Science, Rebecca Boyle writes about recent efforts to take flight without engines and jet fuel. Engineers have been trying to alleviate the limitations of human-powered craft by tweaking their designs — adding larger wings to give more lift or interconnected rotors to allow for helicopter-style flight. Some of these devices work, but don’t expect to be cruising to work in them anytime soon. Most of these machines can attain only limited altitudes and fly only short distances. In 2010 a pedal-powered ornithopter — an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings — made it only 11 feet into the air. When people do terrible things to other people, we label them as evil. But doing so does not explain their actions. In “The Science of Evil,” psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen attempts to find a more concrete explanation for horrible deeds. He defines evil as the absence of empathy — when people treat others like objects rather than like thinking, feeling individuals. How does empathy get whittled down? Baron-Cohen offers a host of explanations, from environmental factors to neurological and psychiatric problems such as Asperger’s syndrome, which impairs social interactions. Examples of severe human cruelty abound in this book, which is not for the faint of heart. At least Baron-Cohen is upfront about it: “You can’t write about human cruelty in a cheerful way,” he writes in the introduction to the book, which was first published last year and is now available in paperback. “So if you’re looking for a fun read, proceed no further.” **— Aaron Leitko  **

Aviation is about to get its next Charles Lindbergh moment

In early May, two solar aviation pioneers at Solar Impulse are going to attempt what has never been done before — a coast-to-coast flight across America, from San Francisco to Washington (and then on to New York), powered only by sunlight.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University They will not expend an ounce of fuel during the entire journey, and will be able to fly at both day and night, when the disappearing sun will effectively turn the one-seat plane covered with 12,000 solar cells into a subzero refrigerator. The epic journey – which the two co-founders and pilots of Solar Impulse (Solar Impulse CEO Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg) are calling Mission 2013: Across America – could help to usher in a new era of aviation powered by renewable energy sources, much as Charles Lindbergh’s celebrated non-stop, solo flight across the Atlantic from New York to Paris spurred the launch of the era of modern commercial aviation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It is all the more remarkable that Across America is just the latest step in the march toward the ultimate goal – an around-the-world solar-powered flight in 20 days and 20 nights, scheduled for 2015. Along the way, the Solar Impulse team has racked up an impressive number of firsts – the first day-and-night flight for a solar-powered plane, the first European flight in a solar-powered plane and the first intercontinental trip (Europe to Africa) in a solar- powered plane. And they’re doing it all in an incredibly light airplane that weighs less than an SUV but has the massive wingspan of a jumbo jet.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University *[WSU]: Wayne State University Across America is reminiscent of the earliest days of flight aviation, when events like Kitty Hawk and Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic stirred the popular imagination. To see a solar-powered craft glide over the Golden Gate Bridge is to understand what the first aviation pioneers felt when they learned that humans could, indeed, fly. Just as Lindbergh went from a relatively unknown aviation pilot for the U.S. Air Mail to one of the biggest celebrities of his era, the same could be true for the modern-day version of Charles Lindbergh. Piccard, building on the exploration legacy created by his father and grandfather, already has made a name for himself by becoming, along with Brian Jones, the first person to travel around the world by hot air balloon non-stop. (That balloon is now in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Yet, as with any potentially disruptive technology, there are the skeptics. Even though the Solar Impulse team has proved that it’s capable of making day-and-night flights, any solar-powered plane is still highly susceptible to weather and wind conditions. Clouds, for example, pose a significant problem. And, by having room for just one passenger, the HB-SIA is not exactly a threat to the commercial airline majors anytime soon. With a max speed of less than 50 mph for the solar-powered plane, it’s theoretically possible that you could crisscross the country’s highways in your gas-guzzling SUV in a shorter time than it takes Solar Impulse to make the trip from San Francisco, Calif. to Washington, D.C. But that’s missing the bigger point. Aircraft powered by alternative energy sources—such as solar energy—are a classic type of disruptive innovation in that they appear only on the low-end before the benefits in price and performance push the innovation higher up the value chain. Increases in solar performance over time could lead to even larger airplanes carrying more passengers at faster speeds over longer distances. Eventually, you may be able to book a flight on a solar-powered commercial airline. And, as with any disruptive innovation, the entrenched incumbents will then be scrambling to come up with their own solutions—such as new bio-fuels that are cheaper to burn than traditional fossil fuels. The U.S. Air Force, for example, is already working on renewable energy solutions for its fleet of planes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In nearly every interview or press conference, Solar Impulse’s Bertrand Piccard uses the word “pioneer” or the term “pioneering spirit.” There’s a reason for that—it speaks to the type of courage and vision required for a cross-country mission of this magnitude. In a similar way, Charles Lindbergh named his plane the “Spirit of St. Louis” to showcase the spirit and resolve needed to accomplish such an audacious goal. Flying coast-to-coast across America using only the energy from the sun renews hope that the era of “perpetual flight” is around the corner—an era when expensive aviation fuel has been replaced by the cheap, plentiful fuel of the sun. If you look up at the Washington Monument as the Solar Impulse plane glides overhead, you might just glimpse the future of aviation. **Read more news and ideas onInnovations:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Innovations in 5: Of God and Iron Man    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Why the Internet is a false idol    *[WSU]: Wayne State University ‘Okay, Glass’: Google’s wearable tech starts to spread    *[WSU]: Wayne State University *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Solar-powered plane takes off for round-the-world flight

A Swiss solar-powered plane took off from Abu Dhabi early Monday, marking the start of the first attempt to fly around the world without a drop of fuel. Solar Impulse founder André Borschberg was at the controls of the single-seater when it took off from the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a Middle Eastern nation. Borschberg will trade off piloting with Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard during stopovers on a journey that will take months to complete. The Swiss pilots say their aim is to create awareness about replacing “old polluting technologies with clean and efficient technologies.” The plane was expected to reach its first destination — Muscat, Oman — after about 10 hours of flight. Some legs of the trip, such as over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, will mean five or six straight days of flying solo. The lightweight Solar Impulse 2, a larger version of a single-seat prototype that first flew five years ago, is made of carbon fiber and has 17,248 solar cells built into the wing that supply the plane with renewable energy. The solar cells recharge four lithium polymer batteries. The company says the plane has a 236-foot wingspan, larger than that of the Boeing 747, but weighs about as much as a car at around 5,070 pounds. The plane in June made an inaugural flight of two hours and 17 minutes above western Switzerland, just two months after it was unveiled. After Oman, the plane will head to India, where it will make two stops, then to China and Myanmar before traveling across the Pacific and stopping in Hawaii. Then it will head to Phoenix, Arizona, and New York’s biggest airport, John F. Kennedy International. The path across the Atlantic will depend on the weather and could include a stop in southern Europe or Morocco before ending in Abu Dhabi. The round-the-world trip is expected to end in late July or even August. Borschberg and Piccard say they want to push politicians, celebrities and private citizens to “confront the Conference on Climate Change of the United Nations,” which will take place in December in Paris.” All countries are supposed to present targets for a new global climate agreement that governments plan to adopt at the meeting. ** — Associated Press  **

Why you should care about Solar Impulse and renewable energy’s long, long journey

It has now been more than 45 days since Solar Impulse took off from San Francisco for an across-the-nation journey powered only by the sun, and already there’s fatigue in some corners. When Solar Impulse finally landed in Washington, DC this weekend, there were no jubilant crowds of the type that met Charles Lindbergh when he arrived in Paris after his epic transatlantic flight.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In fact, if you’re not getting regular e-mails from the Solar Impulse team or following along on social media in real-time, there’s a good chance that you missed the landing of Bertrand Piccard at Washington Dulles International Airport – it was just past midnight eastern time on Sunday, a time when most of the nation was already asleep.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University If you were asleep, and the news passed you by, stop for a second and take stock. There’s a reason you should care — and care deeply — about the journey of Solar Impulse. There’s more to the story than a funky solar-powered craft that looks like “an outsized balsa wood toy airplane”. Solar Impulse’s journey, in many ways, is a microcosm of our nation’s love/hate relationship with renewable energy. We love the promise of clean energy and celebrate the arrival of the latest green gizmos, but we have very little patience for renewable energy strategies that take years, if not decades, to pay off. Our ability to embrace the journey of a zero-fuel airplane over a sustained, 45-day flight from San Francisco to Washington offers a gut-check: Are we, as a nation, able to sustain the march to a zero-fuel economy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University From the outset, the Across America mission from San Francisco to Washington (and then on to New York City) was about bringing awareness of clean energy technologies to America while celebrating the innovative spirit that challenges what is possible in today’s world. There’s a reason why the two pilots of the Solar Impulse plane – Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg – award each city they visit with a “Clean Generation” flag to celebrate that city’s embrace of clean technology. The Solar Impulse plane itself is a symbol of how renewable energy is a movement as much as a technology.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It may be easy to minimize the accomplishments of an airplane that took 45 days to reach the Right Coast from the Left Coast. But think of what the Solar Impulse team accomplished. They proved that an airplane could make the coast- to-coast trip at day or night — in other words, with or without the sun. They also proved the resilience of two men who could pilot an airplane for upwards of 24 hours at a time – the next time you take a summer road trip, just count the number of times you’re tempted to take a break after just a few hours of driving. And they did this while finding solutions to counter the conditions of Mother Nature – strong headwinds, for example, forced the Solar Impulse team to make an unplanned pit stop in Cincinnati before continuing on to Washington.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University More importantly, Solar Impulse’s flight across America could unlock the future potential of solar energy. There’s a reason why the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum welcomed the arrival of Solar Impulse in Washington with open arms, and why Department of Energy chief Ernest Moniz said the journey highlighted “a cleaner energy future for the nation.” The technologies aboard Solar Impulse could be used in the air as well as on the ground to power the next generation of clean technologies – greener cars, cleaner appliances and more energy-efficient buildings. Moniz also pointed out ways that Solar Impulse could lead to better solar panels, better batteries (capable of storing the energy of the sun at night), and better, lighter materials.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So, as the Solar Impulse team prepares for a journey around the world in 2015 that will include a voyage across the Atlantic and Pacific, let’s focus as much on the Journey as on the Jump. We live in a world where, as Seth Godin writes, we “get it” after reading a 140-character updates and watching 6-second videos. But that means ongoing narratives about the remarkable achievements in renewable energy sometimes get lost in our daily news feeds. So, we sometimes lose sight of the long-term impact one success story may have on another group of innovators located somewhere halfway around the globe. Sometimes the innovation story – even when it features a solar-powered plane traversing America or a solar-powered boat circling the world’s oceans – is not as easy to “get” as we might think.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Meet Solar Impulse 2, the solar-powered plane that never has to land

The Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered plane designed to fly around the world next year, took its maiden flight Monday, taking off from Payerne Airfield in Switzerland and landing two hours later. Its predecessor, Solar Impulse, made it across the United States last year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The new plane was unveiled in April. The Associated Press reported the plane has larger wings — about the size of a larger passenger plane — and uses roughly 17,200 solar cells and improved batteries. The plane also has amenities such as autopilot, a toilet, and a large enough cockpit for the pilot to lie down. Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, the project’s founders, told the AP that the plane can theoretically stay airborne indefinitely.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday “I mean, the airplane can fly a month. The question is, ‘What can the pilot do?'” Borschberg told the AP. “So we have a sustainable airplane in terms of energy; we need to develop a sustainable pilot now.” The around-the-world-journey will be split into several stages and take about 20 flying days in three months. Watch the plane’s maiden flight below or check out its Web site, which offers its current location, space, altitude and other fun tidbits.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

For solar-powered plane, China-to-Hawaii flight is a test of skill and energy

Update: Poor weather conditions caused the Solar Impulse to land Monday in Nanjing, Japan. Pilot André Borschberg will resume his around-the-world flight when the weather improves, according to the flight team. It took longer than expected to find the right weather, but a Swiss pilot is now airborne attempting something never attempted before — flying a plane across the Pacific with no fuel, only solar power. André Borschberg took off in the Solar Impulse Plane from Nanjing, China, at about 2:40 a.m. Sunday. If all goes well, he will land the slow-moving, solar-powered plane in Hawaii after five or six days, after traveling 5,000 miles across the Pacific. After that, Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard is slated to fly the plane to Phoenix, once he finds a “weather window” that long eluded the team in China. “Good flight to Hawaii, @andreborschberg my solar brother!” Piccard tweeted soon after Borschberg departed. “Enjoy every moment of it!” Swiss pilots Borschberg and Piccard are taking turns attempting to fly the one-seat plane around the world. The product of a decade of work and fundraising, the Solar Impulse plane gets its energy from 17,000 solar cells on its 236-foot wide wings. In a previous interview, Borschberg described the challenges of the flying the plane, which has wings wider than those on a Boeing 747 but is lighter than a minivan. “It is difficult to fly, especially at the beginning,” said Borschberg, 62, a former fighter pilot with the Swiss air reserve. With its lightness and wide wingspan, the plane reacts slowly to a change in controls, making it easy for a pilot to overcompensate, he said. During his Pacific crossing, Borschberg will have to avoid cross-winds and thunderstorms. He will also need to use techniques to maximize energy efficiency. To do that, the Solar Impulse pilots fly the plane high during the day and then slowly descend during part of the night, with the engines turned off. The danger, however, is that if there are clouds in the morning, it can be difficult to recharge the plane’s batteries. The pilots says they are prepared if, for whatever reason, they are forced to ditch the plane in the ocean. Each pilot carries a parachute and life raft and has been trained in ocean survival. The flight’s progress can be tracked at www.solarimpulse.com. Solar Impulse took off from Abu Dhabi, in the Middle East nation of United Arab Emirates, on March 8. After several stops, it landed in the southern China city of Chongqing on March 29. Piccard and his support team hoped to be there for only a few days, but bad weather delayed the flight to Nanjing, China, until April 20. They then were stuck in Nanjing until Sunday, unable until then to find the right weather window to continue to their journey. The team says their goal isn’t to set speed records but to make a statement about sustainability and the potential of advanced technologies to do things never before attempted. “We really want to prove that energy efficiency, solar power and modern technology can achieve the impossible,” Piccard said in an earlier interview. He watched Borschberg take off Sunday from the team’s mission control center in Monaco. ** — MCT News Service  **

Want to slow Arctic melting? Stop flying over the North Pole.

As the world keeps warming up, sea ice in the Arctic has been disintegrating rapidly. We've reached the point where scientists are now mostly just debating whether it will take a few years or a few decades before we start seeing ice- free summers up north. So is that it? Is the Arctic doomed? Perhaps not just yet. A new study suggests one way that humans could slow the melting of the sea ice — by preventing international flights from crossing over the Arctic circle. These cross-polar flights are a surprisingly large source of black carbon pollution in the region. And if those planes diverted course, that could help fend off the day when the Arctic sea-ice collapses for good. Commercial flights didn't start routinely traveling over the Arctic until 1998, when Russia finally gave other countries permission to use its airspace. Since then, these routes have become increasingly popular for air travel between Europe, North America and Asia. By 2010, some 50,000 flights a year were crossing the poles. This has had a major impact on the Arctic. True, these cross-polar flights are just a small source of the greenhouse-gas emissions that are warming the planet. But they are a significant source of pollutants like black carbon, which absorb sunlight and warm the region. And pollutants from cross-polar flights tend to linger in the Arctic for a particularly long time, in part because the planes fly through the stratosphere, a relatively stable layer of the atmosphere. (Indeed, such pollutants could explain why Arctic ice is vanishing so much faster than scientists even expected.) That's why, in a new paper (pdf) in Climatic Change, atmospheric scientist Mark Jacobson and his colleagues suggest that airlines could start diverting flights away from the Arctic Circle. Their modeling work suggests that if this happened, less black carbon would linger in the local atmosphere, the polar region would cool a bit (by about 0.015°C), and Arctic sea ice would even recover slightly in the next 22 years. Here's an example of a diverted flight from Frankfurt to Anchorage:  Now, these diversions wouldn't be entirely cost-free. After all, airplanes currently fly over the Arctic because it's quicker. If all cross-polar flights had to be diverted, they would have to use more fuel. Not only would that cost about $99 million per year, but it would slightly increase the greenhouse-gas emissions that are warming the entire planet. The rest of the world would take a slight hit in order to slow down the drastic changes that are currently taking place in the Arctic. That might be a trade-off worth making. After all, some scientists have suggested that the Arctic sea ice could disappear irrevocably once it reaches a tipping point (the exposed ocean water absorbs more sunlight than ice, which heats the region even further). And the collapse of sea ice could potentially have all sorts of dramatic effects, from speeding up global warming to boosting extreme weather in the United States and Europe. Slowing that process down could be prudent. Still, rerouting flights is only a way of buying a bit of time — in the modeling work, the sea ice recovers slightly over the next 22 years, but it's not clear what happens after that. The world would still need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from all sources, including airplanes, if it wants to save the Arctic. Diverting flights is a small reprieve, not a lasting solution. **Further reading:** — Arctic sea ice hit a record low. Here's why it matters. — When will the Arctic be ice free? Maybe four years. Or 40. — A look at how a carbon fee for flights could reduce aviation emissions.

Updated solar-powered plane is designed to circle the world

A team from Switzerland that is planning to complete the first round-the-world solar flight next year has unveiled a new version of the plane they say can remain in the air indefinitely. Pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg say the Solar Impulse 2 — which uses no fuel — improves upon the prototype that first took to the air five years ago. The updated plane, presented to the world Wednesday at the Payerne Air Force Base in Switzerland, has better batteries for storing energy soaked up from the sun by the thousands of solar cells that cover its 236-foot wingspan. The plane weighs 2.5 tons and can fly at up to 87 miles per hour. The single-seater prototype demonstrated that a solar airplane could fly through the night, between two continents and across the United States. The pilots took turns flying it from California to New York last summer. The plane and its crew stopped at Dulles International Airport from June 16 to July 6. The round-the-world trip is expected to take place next year. — _Wire and staff reports_

Air travel is terrible for the environment. Can new technology change that?

Summer is upon us, and with it peak U.S. airline travel: this July, more than 80 million passengers will cross American skies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But what’s good for vacation relaxation is terrible for the environment. According to the WWF, airline travel is the fastest growing source of global greenhouse gas emissions, leaving trucking and coal-burning power plants in their wake. Already, the 3 billion flights each year produce about 5 percent of the world’s output from all sources. **** Every round-trip commercial flight between New York and L.A. generates the equivalent of two tons of carbon dioxide per passenger, as much as the average Nepalese family generates in five years. A Prius would have to travel 10,500 miles to have the same carbon impact.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Yet even those who want, urgently, to fight global warming have been slow to deal with the impact of air travel. (Think of those high-profile do-gooders who flew 550 private jets to confab at Davos about carbon dioxide levels in January. The Environmental Protection Agency only just declared that air travel contributes to global warming and that it will begin regulating greenhouse emissions by carriers under the Clean Air Act.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Why, when car travel is perennially in the hot seat, has this issue gotten so little attention? We’ve got electric cars, smaller cars, cars with great gas mileage. Why haven’t we seen the same technological evolution with planes? The answer is that airplanes pose a fundamentally different engineering problem. They have to do work to carry their fuel through the air, so are limited by the energy density of the storage medium. Increasing efficiency of aircraft engines and wings will help, but only to a point. And a lot of the “easy” fixes have been made. Companies like Boeing and Airbus have been working for five decades to build planes that burn less fuel, innovating materials and making computer-aided tweaks to aerodynamic design. They’ve increased use of strong, lightweight materials like carbon fiber laminates that now make up more than 50 percent of a modern passenger jet’s airframe. They also developed sophisticated turbofan engines that are significantly more efficient than older models. Their newest aircraft (released in 2000) use half as much fuel per mile as the jets of a half-century ago (Cars and SUVs are about 40 percent more efficient today.) And engineers say there are few fixes left. “The present technology is already highly optimized,” says writer and aircraft designer Peter Garrison. “The low-hanging fruit has been plucked.” An alternative idea would be to write off conventional technology as a dead- end, and instead invest in radical approaches like solar-powered aircraft. The topic has been in the news lately, thanks to the photovoltaic-encrusted experimental plane Solar Impulse. The plane, currently in Japan, is part of a 12-year project by Swiss adventurers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, who want to fly around the world. If successful, the plane is expected to return to its starting point in Abu Dhabi in August.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico If you squint, it’s easy to see in Solar Impulse the dawn of the eco-friendly airliner. With four engines and wings as broad as a 747’s, it physically resembles a commercial aircraft. But appearances deceive. To achieve its long-distance flights, Sunseeker not only uses advanced materials and design techniques, it also relies on extreme design choices. It is extremely light: At just 5,000 pounds, the 70-foot-long aircraft weighs less than a Chevy Avalanche. A fully laden 737,  on the small side for a commercial jet, weighs about 150,000 lb or 30 times more than Solar Impulse. In order to carry the additional weight of passengers and their baggage, a commercial airliner built using the same technology would have to be impractically enormous. It would also be bare of all familiar amenities. To save energy, Solar Impulse is neither pressurized nor climate controlled, so that temperatures in the tiny cockpit swing between 86 F and -4 F. And it is slow. Solar Impulse cruises at a languid 56 mph, about one-tenth the speed of a typical commercial jet. The reason is simple aerodynamics. As it flies, a plane disrupts the air it moves through, and this takes power. The faster it goes, the more power it will consume. Very efficient airplanes, like gliders or human-powered airplanes, have long, thin wings designed to move slowly through the air. That’s appealing for aeronautical engineers, but not to travelers on tight schedules. To get from Hawaii to Arizona for the eighth stage of its round-the-world journey Solar Impulse will require more than four days of continuous flight. Really, the only way for commercial aviation to become green would be for science to come up with a storage medium that’s as energy dense as fossil fuel, but that doesn’t release net carbon into the atmosphere. Someday, our descendants may find out a way to build super-batteries that can be charged using renewable energy sources or nuclear power. At present, however, the only technology that fits the bill is bio fuel: a hydrocarbon energy source that we make in the here-and-now, whether from crops or from recycled cooking oil and animal fats. Last year, aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Embraer teamed up to open a biofuel research center in Brazil that will promote the development of sustainable aviation fuel. In December, Boeing carried out the first test flight of a 787 Dreamliner using “green diesel.” So far, this kind effort represents baby steps: the Dreamliner flight used just a 15 percent blend of green diesel with 85 percent conventionally derived fuel, and that only in one of its two engines. One problem with using higher percentages than that is that biofuel tends to freeze at typical airliner cruising altitudes. It’s also more difficult to store, and can damage engine parts. We’re a long way from running the world airline fleet on the stuff. So as you sling your beach duffel into the overhead bin in the summer, know that your fun in the sun this year will unavoidably play a role in making next’s years summer even summerier. If you want to minimize your carbon footprint, there’s really only one option. Just ask Slate writer Eric Holthaus. He’s come up with an effective strategy — one that allowed him, he writes, to go “from having more than double the carbon footprint as the average American to about 30 percent less than average.” His trick? He gave up his 75,000-mile-a-year travel habit cold turkey. “This has to be the last flight I ever take,” he tweeted as he boarded a plane last year. “I’m committing right now to stop flying.”

Solar-powered plane set for cross-country flight

MOFFETT FEDERAL AIRFIELD, Calif. — The first plane that can fly day and night powered only by the sun on Friday began a transcontinental journey that will reach Washington by mid-June. Solar Impulse, which lifted off from this World War II-era airfield shortly after 6 a.m. Pacific time, has room for only one person and an average cruising speed of about 43 miles per hour. But its Swiss developers say the technology suggests the possibilities of clean-energy flight. The plane has an ultra-light carbon-fiber frame that allows it to weigh 3,500 pounds — about the same as a mid-size car. It has the wingspan of a 747 and a slender fuselage, giving it the look of a giant high-tech dragonfly. The plane’s power is drawn from the sun by 12,000 photovoltaic cells that form the top of its wings. The juice is collected in a series of batteries arrayed behind the craft’s four electric engines. It routinely reaches altitudes of up to 28,000 feet, about a mile below the thin air traversed by big commercial airliners zipping around at close to 500 miles per hour. On-board instruments alert the pilot if the plane banks even a degree too far. For all of its innovations, at this stage of development, Solar Impulse is no more practical for commercial flight than was the single-engine Spirit of St. Louis that Charles Lindbergh piloted across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. The plane’s engines put out about 10 horsepower — roughly the same amount of power as the Wright brothers’ first planes. Solar Impulse cannot take off or land in windy conditions, nor can it fly through clouds. The lone pilot wears a parachute and is confined to an area the size of a “bad economy seat,” noted the project’s chief executive and co-founder Andre Borschberg, 60, an engineer and former fighter pilot. The tiny cockpit is unheated and unpressurized, meaning the pilot must endure extreme heat and cold and wear an oxygen mask. On long flights, Borschberg practices meditation and advanced breathing techniques to stay energized. His co-founder and the plane’s other pilot, Bertrand Piccard, a psychiatrist, does self-hypnosis. And as for bodily functions — the pilot relies on spent water bottles and eschews fibrous foods in the days before a flight to make sure that diapers do not have to be pressed into service. But comfort is not the project’s goal. “The point of this is to underscore how far we’ve come and how far we need to go to develop alternative sources of power, particularly solar energy,” said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “This will help push the technology along.” He said there are some possible applications raised by Solar Impulse’s innovations, including high- and long-flying unmanned planes that could be used for mapping purposes. But any broad commercial uses, he said, lie beyond the horizon. None of this dims the enthusiasm of the project’s founders. The idea to build the plane started with Piccard, 55, a hang-gliding pioneer, who earned international acclaim in 1999 when he and co-pilot Brian Jones won a competition to fly around the world non-stop in a hot air balloon. Although they won, Piccard was struck that while they started the trip with 8,200 pounds of propane, they had only 88 pounds remaining when the balloon landed. That steeled his determination to again circle the globe but this time without consuming any fossil fuels. “For me, it was obvious that an airplane that could fly around the world without fuel was the next big adventure of the 21st century,” Piccard said. He took his idea to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which initiated a feasibility study headed by Borschberg. Design of the plane began in 2003, with Borschberg and Piccard assembling a team of 80 partners — which includes racing yacht maker Decision, the precision instruments firm Omega and the Bayer materials company — to build it after traditional airplane manufacturers told them it was impossible. In all, the project has cost more than $140 million. The plane has performed well. Borschberg piloted the first solar-   powered night flight in 2010, spending 26 consecutive hours over Switzerland. In 2011, it flew from Switzerland to Belgium and then on to France, where it was a showpiece at the Paris-Bourget International Air Show. And last summer, the plane crossed the Mediterranean from Spain to Morocco. After being transported to this California airfield aboard a 747 cargo plane, Solar Impulse has soared over the Golden Gate Bridge, raising curiosity across the Bay Area and drawing several thousand visitors to its temporary home inside a cavernous hangar that a couple of generations ago housed military dirigibles. The plane will make five stops on its flight across the United States, spending up to a couple of weeks in each city it visits: Phoenix, Dallas, St. Louis and Washington, where it is slated to land at Dulles International Airport. From there, it is on to New York. The U.S. tour is a prelude for a planned around-the-world flight in 2015. That journey will be taken by a second-generation solar plane, with accoutrements necessary for long-haul flights, including automatic pilot, a more ergonomic cockpit and a toilet beneath the pilot’s seat. That vessel should be ready for testing next year. Although even Piccard and Borschberg do not expect to see development of a more practical solar-powered plane anytime soon, they are confident that some of the lessons from Solar Impulse — the use of lighter materials, more gradual descents to airports and more direct routes to destinations — can help make aviation more energy-efficient in the short run. In the long run, they added, anything is possible. “I think people have a tendency to forget [the limited capabilities of] the airplane of the Wright brothers. How was the airplane of Charles Lindbergh? How was the first one of Chuck Yeager? All these airplanes, they were very limited,” Piccard said. “They were just the maximum of what could be done in those days. So the people who criticize Solar Impulse are like those who looked at the Wright Brothers and said, ‘This has no future.’ ”

Bullet Planes!

I am a techno optimist. How can one live through the computer age and not be? Things can be done, have been done and will be done that stagger the imagination. I am also a techno scoffer. The sci-fi presumption that you can think up something cool  and then science will make it happen is lazy. It’s lazy when you are talking about physical laws that are really realy difficult to overcome or work around. This is why we have robot cars but don’t have flying cars. Robot cars are a computer issue, with a little robotics and satellite positioning thrown in. Flying cars are a gravity and infrastructure issue. That’s why I started reading this story with a raised eyebrow. Super-fast air travel sounds great! But in what way, I wondered, had the prior physical constraints been overcome? The story started out seeming like there would be some new breakthrough announced.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The story takes us on a not-so-high-speed journey. It takes an odd little detour to talk about tiltrotor aircraft. But when it finally starts talking about the shimmery promise of a two-hour trip from London to Sydney, it turns out that some major problems still loom. But just when the story needs to turn and start down the runway for actual takeoff, you see the hilarious sub-head: “100 other obstacles”. Well then! What are we left with? We’re left at the airport with our flight listed as ‘delayed,’ as usual.

Solar-powered plane takes flight across America Friday (live video)

Here’s what we’re reading and watching Friday: 1) The Solar Impulse flight began Friday. The team is offering a live video feed of mission control, so you can track the flight as it makes its way across the country:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The plane, piloted by Bertrand Piccard, is powered by solar energy and will fly the first leg of its trip from Moffett Airfield in California to Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. A clean-energy promotion initiative called “Clean Generation” is coordinating the start of the mission. The takeoff, scheduled for 9 a.m. Eastern time (6 a.m. Pacific time) was slightly delayed when air traffic controllers determined a new flight plan was needed. Solar impulse has a live map of the flight as well.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Update 10:41 a.m.:** If you missed the takeoff, Solar Impulse has posted the video:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University 2) “Iron Man 3” comes out Friday. According to our colleagues over at Comic Riffs the film is a loud, flashy good time — and, no, there is no “Iron Man” fatigue.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University 3) The folks over at PSFK have a fun gallery chronicling the design evolution of some of the world’s most popular Web sites.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University 4) In more serious news, the U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in April, with the unemployment rate falling to a four-year low of 7.5 percent.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University 5) And, in other aeronautics news, yes, a helicopter can land on a guardrail. One did in this video, at least:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Have a great weekend!

Space weather forecasters remain vigilant in 2017 for potentially crippling solar storms

As ridiculous as it sounds, the fiery, roiling sun was “tame” in 2016. It spewed very few solar storms and had minimal impact on our electrical, digital life on Earth. Our star is in a declining phase of activity — it sounds good on paper, but seemingly quiet moments on the sun can still produce crippling geomagnetic storms. Huge eruptions of radiation and plasma from the surface of the sun can, if headed toward Earth, impact or bring down the electrical grid, radio communications, GPS and other satellite services and increase radiation exposure for passengers on high-latitude flights. And they can last for days to weeks to months, depending on the strength of the invisible storm. One such storm in 2012 was particularly concerning — the near-miss was moving even faster than the historic “Carrington Event” of 1859, scientists speculate. If that type of event happened in the 21st century, some suggest it would knock us back into the stone age. Power would be out. Cellphones and GPS would be dead. If left unprepared, electrical infrastructure over a large portion of the globe would go dark and could stay that way for weeks or months.  The sun also plays a powerful role in Earth’s climate. The distance between us and our star is the reason this planet is inhabitable. You don’t need to look farther than the millennia of data stored in ice cores to see how the amount of radiation impacts Earth’s climate. Looking back over hundreds of thousands of years, we see that even small changes in Earth’s orbit and tilt have dramatic consequences. Climate scientists also have reason to suspect when the surface of our star is calm — not producing many solar storms — temperatures tend to be cooler; when the sun is active, the planet’s climate warms. So it would be nice to know what the sun is going to do, say, over the next few years. What kind of cycle will we see, and how might that affect Earth’s climate and society’s digital infrastructure? Space weather forecasters are vigilant. In 2017, the sun will be in a solar minimum, when solar storms will be few and far between, though individual storms could be quite large. This behavior — fewer eruptions, more large-scale stability — is typical for the sun at the low point in its cycle. It’s in the process of doing some “housekeeping.” The large-scale magnetic fields are in a state of change. The polarity of the sun reverses every 22 years, and that process is now well-underway.    From an operational perspective, Bob Rutledge, who leads the NOAA’s Space Weather Forecast Office, expects a low-activity year for eruptions — much like 2016 — but cautions that an isolated big event could happen with little warning. And, he writes, “we could see activity, including significant activity, essentially at any phase of the solar cycle.” Both forecasters and researchers will be watching closely in the coming months, trying to unravel the clues the sun gives for both short and long-term forecasts.

Can 17,248 solar panels power one pilot around the world?

**Mission:** To complete a round-the-world flight in 2015   **The plane:** Solar Impulse 2   **Its top speed:** 87 mph   **Seats:** 1 pilot   **Weight:** 2.5 tons   **Wingspan:** 236 feet   **Number of solar panels:** 17,248   **Cruising altitude:** 27,887 feet (day); 4,921 feet (night)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Solar Impulse chief executive Andre Borschberg told the Associated Press the trip around the world will take 20 flying days. The newly finished plane will be tested in May and June with plans of making the global trek in 2015. Here’s a closer look at the plane being unveiled in Switzerland:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

NASA’s new electric plane could be a significant step toward a cleaner era of aviation

Flying cars are almost here, just as they always are

I’m going to see whether I can go a day without blogging about President Trump, and instead turn to one of my former favorite subjects, the flying-car fantasy.  If the definition of a flying car is a vehicle somebody gets into and uses it to leave the ground and fly through the air and land in another place, we already have them. They are called airplanes. Some of them are even small enough for just one or two people! So why don’t we think of them as flying cars? Because you need to fly them from an airport! And why do you need to fly them from an airport? Because you need a runway and you need air traffic control. You can build an airplane with foldable wings that you can drive on a highway if you want, but why would you? It would be vastly simpler and cheaper to land your airplane and rent a car-type car, which, you know, is designed to drive on roads without hauling folded wings around with you everywhere. To illustrate the point, you can buy a boat with wheels that you can drive on a highway, and how many of those do you see? Well, what about vertical takeoff vehicles? Yes, we have those, too. Those are called helicopters and jump jets. You don’t need a runway, but neither can you land them anywhere near pedestrians, and there’s still the air traffic control thing, which would compound the problem somewhat significantly if everyone was trying to get to the ballgame in a helicopter or jump jet. We can’t even get the accident rate down with vehicles that drive within painted lines and don’t also have to fight gravity. An airplane with foldable wings that you call a car is really still an airplane. An actual car that can fly off the road and land at the 7-Eleven isn’t an option. Some things that seem to be what you want just aren’t possible, as you think they ought to be. There, I have avoided the subject of Trump. Except to say that his campaign platform was like a flying-car proposal.

NASA tests plane coating designed to cut through bug guts

You might not think tiny insects pose a problem for massive jets. But when a plane plows through a bug (which usually happens during takeoffs and landings), that bug leaves its guts behind. And over time, those guts accumulate and make the surface of the craft's wings less smooth, which creates drag. More drag means more fuel use and a less efficient plane. So NASA and Boeing engineers are working on coatings that let planes cut right through bugs without getting sticky. In a test of five potential coatings run by the Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project, one reduced bug residue by 40%. That's a pretty preliminary test -- just a bunch of takeoffs and landings out of a single airport. But developing the coatings -- 200 of them in total, which were narrowed down to five in wind tunnel experiments -- involved some pretty cool bug science. "We learned when a bug hits and its body ruptures the blood starts undergoing some chemical changes to make it stickier," Mia Siochi, senior materials scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, said in a statement. "That's basically the survival mechanism for the bug." And to avoid that stickiness, they looked to something else in the natural world: Lotus leaves. "When you look at a lotus leaf under the microscope the reason water doesn't stick to it is because it has these rough features that are pointy," added Siochi. "When liquid sits on the microscopically-rough leaf surface, the surface tension keeps it from spreading out, so it rolls off. We're trying to use that principle in combination with chemistry to prevent bugs from sticking." There's more work to be done before Boeing can figure out a coating that can make a real difference on their jets. But one day the planes we fly -- and hey, maybe even the cars we drive -- could have way fewer bugs stuck to the windshield.

Spacecraft don’t need fuel to keep moving

The Jan. 3 news article “New fuel may push space trips farther,” about plutonium-238’s potential as a fuel for space travel, included a fundamental, if widespread, misunderstanding of the natural world. The assertion that spacecraft “require fuel to keep themselves moving” accords with intuition but is flat wrong. In the vacuum of space, with no atmosphere to apply drag , a vehicle will continue in motion indefinitely unless acted upon by outside forces. Fuel is needed to power sensors, radios and steering rockets but not for simple movement. And we’ve known this since Isaac Newton; The Post is a mere 330 years behind the times. ****Paul Tanenbaum** , Bel Air**

Everything you need to know about Facebook’s drones, lasers and satellites

Facebook's sci-fi take on connecting the rest of the world to broadband may sound magical. But it's all dependent on real-world, physical constraints. And now, Mark Zuckerberg has revealed more — a lot more — about how this system is going to work.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As he hinted earlier in the week, the drones we've heard so much about are just one piece of Zuckerberg's vision. Here's what we now know, thanks to the Facebook exec's white paper, released Friday. Zuckerberg has settled on 65,000 feet as the optimal altitude for the drones — at that height, they'll be beyond the range of U.S. commercial airspace (though getting the drones up there will still likely involve a detailed regulatory dance).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Weather and wind are also a little calmer at that layer of the atmosphere, reducing the burden associated with designing the crafts. It'll still take a careful balance of priorities, though. The drone has to be large enough to fit the right amount of solar panels, so that it can gather enough power to operate on batteries at night. It has to be small enough so it doesn't need a ton of energy to remain in the air for months or years. It has to be cheap, so you can build a lot of them. And it has to be controllable — "unlike balloons," wrote Zuckerberg, in a jab at Google.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But the drones are just a platform. What's more interesting are the communications technologies Zuckerberg is considering loading onto them. Among them? Lasers. Transmitting data by light is hardly a new idea; in fact, it's how terrestrial fiber optic networks carry information over incredibly long distances very quickly. NASA is experimenting with its own laser that's been mounted on a probe bound for the moon; last year, scientists successfully tested the data link by downloading information from the probe at a rate of over 600 Mbps — 60 times faster than the current national average. Today, even newer lasers are being developed that could quadruple that figure.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University These lasers provide an advantage over more traditional communications methods that rely on propagating radio waves. The farther a radio signal gets from its source, the weaker it becomes — and the more power it takes to boost the range. So long as they have a clear shot at their target, lasers are limited only by the speed of light. And they require much less power. There are downsides to lasers. Because of how narrow their beams are, they always have to hit the receiver spot-on — or poof, no Internet. "The level of accuracy required is the equivalent of needing to hit a dime from 10 miles away," wrote Zuckerberg, "or hit the Statue of Liberty from California." It'd be much easier just to aim the laser once and then forget about moving it. And that implies a satellite floating in geostationary orbit high above the Earth. Because the satellite would be in a fixed position, obtaining a laser lock would be a lot less complicated than maintaining a cheaper fleet of satellites at a lower altitude — which would amount to a bunch of constantly moving targets. At the same time, beaming a laser from 20,000 miles up makes you vulnerable to obstructions — clouds, weather — in a way that beaming a laser from 300 miles up doesn't. If and when the laser gets blocked, you'll need a backup way of transmitting the Internet. And from geostationary orbit, wrote Zuckerberg, Internet by radio waves is going to introduce a bit of lag into your call with Grandma. That's why Facebook's drones are going to be so important. If the lasers don't work out, the drones could blanket a moderately dense area with microwave Internet, allowing many devices to pick up the signal — like a kind of drone-based Wi-Fi. The final product will likely involve a combination of these technologies, depending on the density of the area being served. And it'll involve a lot of tradeoffs. But as pie-in-the-sky as it may be, it's clear Zuckerberg has done a lot of thinking about what is and isn't possible. If you were doubting for a second whether he was serious — stop.

Robot cars will not stop

The only remaining question about robot cars had nothing to do with the technology. It had to do with regulations. But it turns out the regulations light is green.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A car that can drive itself is not a flying car, it’s better. People think that science has let them down by not delivering flying cars. But flying cars exist. They come in two styles, Fold-up wing aircraft, and helicopters. The problem isn’t the vehicle, it’s where do you land them? You either need a runway or a sizable, pedestrian-free helipad. Build enough of those, and you have your flying cars. It’s just not practical. A self-driving car, on the other hand, is a genuine miracle of technology. It needs to be able to see, find its way, and not crash. The mission has been accomplished. They not only see, find their way, and avoid crashes, but they do all three better than many humans. But in an odd confluence of special interests, it turns out that there is no interest group seriously opposed to robot cars. Hence, a rare instance of no real regulations, something that in this instance both liberals and conservatives can cheer. Robot cars are important for one big reason. They are going to change the center of gravity for American identity, and the attendant infrastructure of the American landscape. The one-person, one-car, one-parking-space-at-both-ends of every trip will become a thing of the past. When you can summon a vehicle whenever you need one, and send it away to park itself, or better yet, serve another person, it will break the need to own a car. This will in turn facilitate more compact communities, which foster the kind of livable cities that Americans are remembering that they like. Self-driving, self-routing buses will extend the capacities. It’s all upside. The auto-mobile is finally living up to its name.

Amazon drones are a fun gimmick, but ground vehicles are the future of retail

The Internet is currently obsessed with Amazon's plan to deliver packages via unmanned "octocopters." Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes the technology may be ready within five years, and that they could enable packages to be delivered in as little as 30 minutes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Aerial drone technology could revolutionize the retail business, threatening not only other online retailers but some brick-and-mortar ones as well. But flying robots probably won't be the only automated delivery technology entering the market in the coming decade. They'll have to compete against self-driving vehicles that drive around on the ground. And ground-based delivery robots may be the winners in the long run. "The ones on the ground should be the long-term winner because they're going to be more efficient," says Brad Templeton, chair of networks and computing at Singularity University who has been writing about the potential of self- driving vehicles, including delivery robots, for more than five years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And surprisingly, Templeton argues, ground-based delivery robots will be "able to go to more places." Templeton argues that if you look at satellite pictures, "you'll find that even as a human being, you're not sure how to land on peoples' yards." Obstructions like trees, power lines, tall buildings, and the like can make it tricky to land in some parts of town. High winds or other adverse weather conditions can make drone deliveries even more challenging. The problem of piloting a self-driving vehicle is comparative simple. And once ground-based vehicles don't need human drivers, they can be made extremely small, simple, and cheap. Templeton envisions "robots the size of a dog" driving around urban streets at modest speeds. The small size, low speed, and lack of human passengers means that safety wouldn't be a big issue. That might allow the technology to be introduced earlier than full-scale self-driving cars. Flying and driving robots have different strengths and weaknesses. Bezos says you won't be able to have table saws or kayaks delivered by Amazon's drones. But these items could easily be delivered by a self-driving ground vehicle. On the other hand, a ground-based vehicle is never going to get to its destination quite as quickly as a flying one can. So if consumers want their products in a hurry, Amazon Prime Air may be the best option. The Amazon.com of the future might offer customers a choice between getting 60-minute ground delivery for free or 20-minute air delivery for an extra fee. One challenge for both delivery types is what to do with the packages upon arrival. Here, Templeton argues that the flying machines might have an advantage: they can drop packages in peoples' back yards, where they're less likely to be stolen. They could drop them on the roofs of apartment buildings, which would only be accessible to building residents. Ground vehicles, on the other hand, might be given a code to open customers' garage doors, though that could raise security issues of its own. But in the long run, Templeton predicts, this problem will go away entirely as delivery companies increasingly deliver packages directly into the hands of recipients. With delivery times measured in minutes rather than days, vehicles could go directly to the customer's physical location. That might mean delivering packages to users while they're at home. It could also mean using the GPS on the customer's phone to visit the customer wherever he happens to be when a package is ordered: at work, the dentist's office, or a child's school. Drones, Templeton says could "get rid of this idea that we deliver on the delivery company's schedule and deliver on your schedule instead." Most likely, the future of retail will use a mix of ground- and air-based delivery vehicles. Air-based vehicles make for better television. But the lower cost, higher capacity, and greater reliability of ground-based vehicles means they're likely to be the workhorse of 21st Century retail. _Disclosure: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Why it’s wrong to assume air travel is greener than car travel

I take some exception to Sam Denby’s “Five Myths: Air travel” [Outlook, June 25]. It claimed that Lufthansa’s flight from Frankfurt to Washington gets 89 miles per gallon per passenger. Fair enough; but it also claimed that FiveThirtyEight’s assumption of cars getting 44 mpg is “absurd.” If we assume my car is at full capacity — as the airline numbers assume — and that it seats only four people, then it would have to get only 11 mpg to get 44 mpg per passenger. My Prius — on the example of a trip from Washington to Denver — would get about 55 mpg (I drive gently), which is 220 mpg per passenger! Furthermore, airplanes release most of their carbon dioxide at higher altitudes, where their emissions do more damage with respect to global warming. Estimates are that it will take about 100 years for that carbon dioxide to be removed by trees, other plants and oceans. ****Ed Heaton** , Rockville**

Why tiny electric planes and $25 tickets could be the future of regional air travel

Imagine taking your next trip of a couple hundred miles. New York City to Boston, for example. Or Houston to Dallas. Tampa to Miami. The obvious choice now might be to drive. But what if you could show up at an airport at one of those cities, bypass security checkpoints, board a small hybrid-electric plane with luggage in hand, and be on the ground at your destination in about an hour — all for $25 each way? A company called Zunum Aero hopes to make that a reality, so that future travelers who normally take a car, bus or train for regional trips won’t think twice about flying. The Washington state-based start-up says that since 2013, it has been developing a fleet of hybrid-electric planes that would make those kinds of inexpensive, short-haul flights possible.  “Think of it as Tesla of the air,” said Bonny Simi, president of JetBlue Technology Ventures. “[Or] think of it as an electric bus in the air.” Zunum Aero emerged from “stealth mode” on Wednesday to announce its ambitious goals: to be flying routes of up to 700 miles (think Atlanta to Washington, D.C.) by the mid-2020s and then routes of up to 1,000 miles (think Los Angeles to Seattle) by 2030. The start-up also laid out an array of promises: Door-to-door travel times cut in half. Lower operating costs. Airfares that would be 40 to 80 percent lower. All on quiet hybrid aircraft that would produce 80 percent less emissions. Indeed, part of the company name was inspired by “tzunuum,” the Mayan word for the hummingbird, for the bird’s speed and efficiency. “To be perfectly honest, we’ve been wanting to tell the story for four years,” Zunum Aero chief executive Ashish Kumar told The Washington Post. “What we’ve been building towards is really exciting and we believe fundamentally is going to change the shape of regional aviation.” Kumar thinks operating costs for the company’s hybrid-electric planes could be 40 to 80 percent lower than for conventional aircraft. A small range-extending generator would be integrated into early planes, kicking in on longer flights where battery power isn’t enough. The eventual goal would be for battery technology to become advanced enough to have planes relying entirely on electricity, eliminating fuel costs altogether, Kumar said. There are several reasons that people rarely choose to fly for short regional trips. Flying often means allotting extra time for getting to the airport, going through security and then boarding. Also, the airline industry’s shift to larger planes and big-city hubs created what Kumar calls a “regional transport gap.”  About 95 percent of trips under 500 miles are taken by car, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Household Travel Survey. For trips between 500 and 750 miles, about 61 percent of travelers drive and 34 percent fly. For trips between 750 and 1,000 miles, a little more than half of travelers fly and 42 percent drive.   “The battery technology is not there yet,” Graham Warwick, technology editor of Aviation Weekly, told the BBC. “It’s projected to come but it needs a significant improvement. Nobody thinks that is going to happen anytime soon.” It remains too early to tell what the commercial aviation industry will look like by the mid-2020s and whether one-way fares in the $25 range would be feasible then. Even now, it is not unheard of for low-cost carriers such as Frontier or Spirit to offer double-digit airfares on domestic routes.   “Because nothing says ‘I’m very rich and I hate traffic’ like a flying car project,” Hawkins wrote for the technology site. In a statement, Boeing HorizonX said it was confident in investing in Zunum Aero “because we feel its technology development is leading this emerging and exciting hybrid-electric market space.” Simi compared the push for hybrid-electric planes to the airline industry’s advancement from strictly propeller planes to jet aircraft. “It’s that type of transformation,” Simi said. “We’re very excited about where this is going. It’s still very early, of course. We now have a seat at the table at what we believe is going to be an amazing change.”

Why are some airlines better at saving fuel than others?

Airlines are always obsessing over fuel costs. It's a crucial aspect of their business, after all, and accounts for one-third of their operating expenses. So you might think that all the major airlines do roughly the same things to minimize their fuel use. But that doesn't seem to be true — there's actually a surprising amount of variation in how airlines burn fuel. That's one takeaway from an interesting recent report (pdf) by the International Council on Clean Transport, which ranked the 15 biggest U.S. airlines by fuel efficiency and found very large disparities:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University *[WSU]: Wayne State University This chart essentially looks at how much fuel each airline uses for a given level of "transport service." In other words, the researchers tried to adjust for things like the fact that different airlines travel different routes and carry different number of passengers in order to get a more apples-to-apples comparison. And what they found was surprising. The _least_ efficient airline, Allegiant Air — a low-cost carrier that targets smaller airports — used 26 percent more fuel than the most efficient, Alaska Airlines, to achieve a similar level of transport. This surprised the researchers, who write: "This gap is larger than what might be expected in a mature aviation market during a period of high fuel prices."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So why is there such a huge disparity? The report examines a few possibilities: **\-- Differences in technology:** About one-third of the variation likely comes from the fact that different airlines use different technology — they don't all deploy the most advanced, efficient aircraft. Allegiant, for instance, has a fleet of McDonnell Douglas aircraft that dates back to the 1970s. Alaska Airlines, by contrast, uses newer Boeing planes that have technologies like "winglets" to reduce fuel burn.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **\-- Differences in operations:** But technology can't explain _all_ the disparity in fuel efficiency. The report found that some airlines, like Southwest, manage to operate older aircraft quite efficiently. Other airlines, like Virgin, have newer aircraft but are relatively inefficient.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There seems to be a big variation in how airlines operate. Some of this is is just an unavoidable function of the fact that different airlines fly different types of routes. But there's also a big variation in behaviors that should, in theory, be easier to control. Some airplanes might carry too much fuel on flights, weighing them down. Different airlines may have different practices when they taxi their planes on the runway. And so on. **\-- High oil prices don't necessarily drive fuel savings.** There's another curious angle here: The report points out that the most efficient airlines aren't necessarily the most profitable. Allegiant was the least-efficient airline in 2010 but also the most profitable. That's because it tends to serve airports that other airlines neglect, giving it more leverage to raise prices on routes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Indeed, the report argued that other factors often play a much bigger role in determining an airlines' profitability — from labor contracts to maintenance costs to fuel-hedging strategies. For that reason, high oil prices don't always push airlines to become more fuel-efficient. "Fuel prices alone," the report concludes, "may not be a sufficient driver of in-service efficiency across all airlines." **So why does any of this matter?** The authors of the ICCT report argue that these disparities are more than just an idle curiosity. Investors may care, for one. But airlines are also starting to come under pressure from policymakers for their effect on global warming — air travel accounts for an estimated 5 percent of humanity's climate impact, and it's a fast-growing source.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Recently, the European Union floated a proposal to require airlines to pay for their carbon emissions. Opponents of the carbon fee argued that the airlines are _already_ operating as efficiently as possible and there's not much more room for improvement. This new ICCT report is essentially saying, "Actually, no one really has any idea if airlines are operating as efficiently as possible."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The report's authors argue that there's "surprisingly little information" about airline fuel efficiency or why there's so much unexplained variation between different airlines. The ICCT report is an attempt to fill in some of those gaps, although because much of the airline data is private, they couldn't fully explain the variation — this was more a "first step" in answering the question. (Thanks to Climate Central's Bobby Magill for a pointer to the report.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Airbus wants to patent the most uncomfortable plane seats ever

As if it weren't already a complete joy, air travel is now poised to become even more comfortable — with a new kind of seat that'll encourage you to get, um, _real friendly_ with your neighbors.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Airbus has filed a seat patent that appears to pack people in without all the clunky cushions and awkward folding tables, in an apparent bid to save valuable space on its aircraft.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Its cushions are shaped liked bicycle saddles, and when the seats aren't being used, they fold vertically to save space. Cutting down all that "bulk," as the patent application puts it, lets you do a lot more with the limited real estate on board. This could potentially make air travel even more economical than it already is. If you're willing to put up with it — and most people would be, Airbus predicts, so long as the flights are short — it'd be far more efficient than the way we currently fly, loading huge metal-and-plastic contraptions onto planes just so they can cradle our fleshy rear ends.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday But if you squint, the thing looks more like a medieval torture device than lounging equipment. Not to mention all the features you'd lose: Do people eat from their laps? Plug headphones into that pipe-shaped thing? Do the cushions float? And even with all the leg room it looks like you'd open up, reclining looks practically impossible. Airbus openly acknowledges that packing more passengers on board is going to result in reduced comfort, and that the goal is basically to figure out how far they can go without inciting an airborne revolt. "Reduced comfort remains tolerable for the passengers in as much as the flight lasts only one or a few hours," Airbus sagely calculates, before going on to explain why reducing leg room provides diminishing returns: "This second solution has also been pursued hitherto," the patent application reads, "and it is difficult to continue to further reduce this distance between the seats because of the increase in the average size of the passengers."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Yes, defending your God-given right to leg room has come down to using your waistline as a weapon. Zooming out for a wider view only enhances the likeness to an ancient Greek galley. Windows might soon be replaced by oars, or a handlebar-bike pedal combination. On the bright side, perhaps manual labor might lead to modest airfare refunds. Who am I kidding? Your complimentary in-flight beatings will continue until morale improves. Hat tip: L.A. Times    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

What you, and airlines, can do to protect against bacteria when you fly

_My post Monday on the length of timepowerful bacteria can survive on surfaces in airline passenger cabins drew strong reaction from flyers, many with suggestions on ways to protect yourself from pathogens. Here is a comprehensive approach, from someone in the business of curbing the spread of microbes that can make you sick._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday A new study conducted by researchers at Auburn University found that two harmful and potentially deadly bacteria – MRSA and E. coli – can live for several days on various surfaces in the confines of an airplane cabin. Researchers used actual arm rests, toilet flush handles, tray tables, window shades, seats and seat pockets to test the bacteria, in airplane-like conditions, and found that the bacteria can linger for several days, depending on the surface. These bacteria come from just about anyone and anywhere, and can be dangerous if contracted by airline passengers. So what can be done? Airlines should be taking certain precautions, implementing strict and detailed cleaning practices to ensure the safety of their passengers. There are obvious cleaning methods that should be followed by every airline after every flight, such as taking out trash, wiping down tray tables, cleaning bathrooms, cleaning out and scrubbing airplane kitchens, restocking pillows and blankets and cleaning seats. But there are a number of other, less obvious practices that airlines should employ when cleaning the airplane. • Washing down windows after each flight. Passengers tend to lean their heads on windows when trying to sleep, looking at the landscape or relaxing in flight. Bacteria can linger on window surfaces and should not be overlooked when cleaning  the airplane, • Air vents should be cleaned. Passengers will often reach up and point the vents toward or away from them. Some may move the vent after sneezing or coughing into their hands, a sure-fire way to transfer bacteria. • Use a disinfectant and sanitizer that kills a wide variety of bacteria in one shot and has a long kill window that can prevent the spread of bacteria for hours, if not days. Our cleanser, PURE Hard Surface disinfectant and sanitizer, an antimicrobial solution made from ionic silver, is one such product. It kills MRSA and E.coli in two minutes. But passengers should not rely only on airlines’ cleaning practices. They should take precautions against possible lingering bacteria. • Always wash your hands with soap and water or hand sanitizer before eating anything on an airplane and immediately after  disembarking. This will clean your hands of any bacteria that may have been transferred during your time on the plane. • Carry a travel size bottle of an odorless disinfectant and use it on arm rests and the seat-back tray table in front of you. Your food sits on that tray and you can transfer some bacteria from the tray table to your food. By disinfecting areas around your seat, you can prevent contact with bacteria from those surfaces. _Hank Lambert is the CEO ofPURE Bioscience, Inc. (the company that created Silver Dihydrogen Citrate Antimicrobial). He has over 35 years of food industry experience._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday **Read more:** MRSA can live for a week on airplane seat back pockets.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Guess where researchers found the bacteria that cause Legionnaires' disease?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Eight things you can do today to help stop the spread of killer superbugs    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

NASA envisions jet travel to any city on Earth in six hours or less

Sitting cramped in coach on a long flight can be unbearable. And NASA feels your pain. The agency is funding early efforts to build a plane so fast it could whisk you to any city on the planet in six hours or less. NASA is giving Lockheed Martin about $20 million in a preliminary design contract to demonstrate a “low boom” aircraft. When planes exceed the speed of sound — 767.269 mph — they generate an “annoying boom,” NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said at a news conference Monday. Because of this, supersonic flight is prohibited over the United States. NASA envisions a plane that emits a quieter sonic boom, more like a subtle thump. If supersonic flights were quiet enough to be allowed widely, the appeal of shorter flight times would probably draw travelers and make these planes a viable technology. “We will be able to achieve the full potential of revolutionary technology and designs that lift aviation to the next level of flying higher, safer and faster,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics research. There have been other efforts at supersonic flight since the sound barrier was first broken in 1947, but none have taken hold. Most notable was the Concorde, a passenger jet that made its final flight in October 2003 after being a commercial flop. The plane — which traveled at about 1,500 mph — could cross the Atlantic Ocean in 3  1/ 2  hours. Yet a round-trip ticket between the United States and Europe cost more than $9,000, and the jet was alarmingly loud.

Lasers, satellites and drones: How Facebook plans to deliver Internet to the developing world

Facebook is working with NASA scientists and aerospace engineers to develop lasers that can beam Internet down to underserved populations, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday. Facebook has **** already given 3 million people in Paraguay and the Philippines access to the Internet through their mobile devices, Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post, citing mobile operator agreements. Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook's connectivity lab had hired several people from Ascenta, the British-based company that built a solar-powered airplane capable of long periods of flight.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "Connecting the whole world will require inventing new technology too," Zuckerberg wrote. "That's what our Connectivity Lab focuses on, and there's a lot more exciting work to do here." The announcement confirms what many have long suspected: That Facebook is interested in using drones and possibly satellites to bring broadband to developing countries. But the company is also apparently looking to more traditional hubs of innovation — such as NASA's Ames Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory — for inspiration.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This is a significant move, in part because NASA already has considerable experience with Internet-by-laser technologies. Last year, the space agency successfully tested a 622 Mbps broadband connection over a distance of 239,000 miles — the distance between Earth and a satellite hurtling toward the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Correction:** This post has been updated to reflect Facebook's agreements with mobile network operators.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Why pilotless planes aren’t the answer to preventing air disasters

In the aftermath of the tragic crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 in the Alps, there has been seemingly endless debate about what can be done to prevent such a tragic event from ever occurring again. The problem, however, is that some innovations proposed in response to this crash – such as pilotless planes – may end up causing more problems than they solve.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What’s important is to differentiate between “technological” innovations and “business model” innovations. An example of a “technological” innovation would be pilotless planes or cockpit cameras while an example of a “business model” innovation would be requiring two people in the cockpit at all times, requiring greater psychological testing of pilots before they fly or changing the process for entering and exiting the cockpit. As a response to airline disasters, technological innovations could open up a Pandora’s box of problems for an industry that is remarkably safe already. Take, for example, the proposed technological solution of “pilotless planes,” which has received airtime on CNN during its wall-to-wall coverage of the Germanwings tragedy. The logic is simple: What better way to prevent a troubled pilot from ramming a plane into the Alps than to introduce new “pilotless planes” that are capable of being flown from the ground? Given the early success of unmanned drones and the public’s growing familiarity with self-driving cars, this might seem like an interesting technological route to pursue.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico However, it’s not just that the technology is potentially open to a lot of technological glitches. _What happens when the GPS tracking system goes out over the Alps? What happens if an airplane gets hacked?_ It’s also that people – pilots and passengers – don’t necessarily want this technology. As MIT aerospace expert John Hansman pointed out in a CNN segment on pilotless planes, “It’s not a technical issue, it’s an issue of societal trust.” Come to think of it, letting robots fly at 500 mph at an altitude of 30,000 feet over oceans and mountains — or in crowded international airspace — might not be the best idea.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Which is not to say that a technology such as pilotless planes is not feasible at some point in the future, perhaps for ferrying cargo rather than ferrying passengers or for unmanned military strikes against the enemy. There have been a growing number of experiments showing the capability of using pilotless technology on airplanes as large as a Boeing 737. Recently, Boeing has taken an F-16 fighter and transformed it into the pilotless QF-16 capable of dodging missiles in the sky and flying at 40,000 feet. And there’s a new U.S Navy drone fighter (the X-47B) capable of landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier without the need for human support. But there were no passengers aboard.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It’s not just way out-of-the-box technological innovations such as pilotless planes that face high “societal trust” hurdles. Even innovations such as cockpit cameras — which theoretically could alert airport officials if something strange is happening in the cockpit of a plane – are burdened with all sorts of problems. The process of retrofitting an entire fleet of planes with cockpit cameras involves more than just technological or cost considerations — it also involves the input of government officials, union officials, insurance companies and regulators. As with any technological innovation, there’s the human factor to consider. Pilots may not want this additional level of intrusion, and that means getting pilot unions to accept this innovation could be tough. Pilots and co-pilots already have microphones on their headsets — they may not want to feel that they are being watched the whole time as well. Airline owners, already under pressure to cut costs, surely wouldn’t relish the idea of retrofitting planes with expensive new technology (unless, of course, they can pass along the costs to consumers in the form of higher airline tickets).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So why do we keep proposing these technological innovations, even when we know the technology is not quite there yet and that people who would use it don’t really want it? One answer might be the enormous guilt that we have as a society any time a disaster strikes. It’s the “never again” syndrome — the gut feeling inside that we never want this type of disaster to ever occur again in our lifetimes. But another answer might be the belief, whether stated or unstated, that technology always has all the answers. In short, the problem comes down to society’s embrace of “technological solutionism,” which can be defined as the inherent belief that most problems can be solved by technology alone. Or, more colloquially, technology to the rescue! In his 2013 book “To Save Everything, Click Here,” Evgeny Morozov highlights the sometimes shallow and simplistic ways that Silicon Valley technologists and Washington policymakers propose using technology to solve complex problems. You can lump airline safety into the mix of these problems.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What’s needed in the case of Germanwings Flight 9525 is some perspective. A young, lone wolf pilot deciding to crash an airplane full of passengers is an outlier event — a once-in-a-lifetime type of event that is statistically unlikely to happen again. As a result, turning to technology to solve such a problem doesn’t make as much sense as making business model innovations that improve the entire airline flight process from beginning to end. Instead of taking away pilots in the cabin, maybe it makes sense to require an additional pilot in the cabin. Instead of adding cameras in the cockpit to monitor pilots, maybe it makes sense to change the screening process for pilots, to prevent psychologically unfit pilots from ever getting into the cabin in the first place. This might disappoint supporters of technological solutionism, who surely see some expanded role for technology in the wake of Germanwings Flight 9525. Maybe once driverless cars prove their worth on America’s streets and overhead drones work out their air safety issues, we can start talking about the future of pilotless planes. Who knows? Maybe by that time, the Hyperloop will be ready for business and we won’t be talking about planes anymore.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Just how hackable is your plane?

Chris Roberts knows a lot about hacking planes. But not because he's trying to make them fall out of the sky. In fact, his job as a security researcher is to figure out how bad guys could hack computer systems so that companies can fix them. But a tweet joking about "playing" with a plane's on-board communications systems made while Roberts was on a United Airlines flight last week landed him in hot water: The FBI questioned him for several hours after he landed and confiscated his laptop and hard drives. And then, over the weekend, he was blocked from boarding another United flight while on the way to speak at a security conference.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Roberts was able to book a last-minute flight on another airline. But his research raises bigger questions: Just how hackable are the planes millions of travelers rely on to get around the world? The answer, it turns out, is up for debate. Planes are increasingly designed to give passengers more access to digital systems, mostly for entertainment purposes via in-flight WiFi. But this connectivity may have a dark side: Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a report saying that security researchers have warned that this trend leaves planes less secure by providing a "direct link" between an aircraft and the outside world that could be leveraged by hackers.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Keeping flight-related and entertainment systems separate can be one way to limit an attacker's access, but not all planes seem to be designed with that in mind. In 2008, the FAA expressed concern that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner combined some of that digital infrastructure — saying that the design "may result in security vulnerabilities."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Modern planes use digital defenses called firewalls to protect cockpit systems against intrusions from someone connecting through other parts of the aircraft, like in-flight entertainment systems, the report said. Some cybersecurity experts worry that isn't enough, arguing that "because firewalls are software components, they could be hacked like any other software and circumvented," according to the report. But some critics of the report say it may have overstated the risks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "Security researchers are allies, not opponents, and their work makes us all more safe, not less," said EFF staff attorney Nate Cardozo. "We fear that United's actions here will cause a real chilling effect, and that researchers will be less likely to help United improve their security in the future based on its over reaction to Mr. Roberts's statements." Roberts, Cardozo said, was still willing to work with United and the rest of the airline industry to improve their security. Haines, at least, said he is feeling that chill — but expects to continue his research. After all, he has a vested interest in making planes safer: He frequently flies to present at conferences.

Drone users’ duty in the sky

Regarding the Aug. 11 front-page article “Problems with rogue drones hit new heights”: We support unmanned aircraft technology and its safe integration. Helicopter operators fly at the same low altitudes as recreational drones. And they are keenly aware that recreational users need to understand that every time they launch — not just near airports — they become part of a system that has “rules of the road,” so to speak, that they need to obey. Commercial operators already understand the need for professionalism. As the article noted, even a two-pound drone can cause injury if it hits someone. A midair collision with a manned aircraft could be catastrophic. Understanding the rules and maintaining separation from manned aircraft are vital to protecting lives. Pilots of manned aircraft, whether recreational or professional, bear the ultimate responsibility for their and their passengers’ safety. Recreational drone users need to understand they share that responsibility when they fly. ****Matthew S. Zuccaro** , Alexandria** The writer is president and chief executive of the Helicopter Association International.

Low-income countries might get drone deliveries before the U.S. Here’s why.

_While Amazon makes plans to begin drone-based package delivery in the developed world, a start-up called Matternet is plotting to build a drone- based package delivery service in low-income countries. Many rural roads in developing countries become inaccessible for months during the rainy season, cutting villages off from nearby cities. In those cases, lightweight, autonomous aircraft could be the fastest and most cost-effective way to move high-value cargo across the countryside._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _I talked to Matternet CEO Andreas Raptopoulos on Monday. He explained how his company's technology works and how it could revolutionize the future of package delivery. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Timothy B. Lee: Can you describe the vision behind Matternet?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Andreas Raptopoulos: The thing we've been seeing as the big potential of this technology is to create a physical Internet: a network that would allow us to transport packages between locations in an autonomous way. It would be a new type of transportation infrastructure. Imagine if this type of network could be as big as mobile telephony. Imagine if you had transportation networks able to solve the last-mile delivery problem. It could be frictionless, cost-efficient, energy-efficient, and very scalable, with very little infrastructure investment. In the future, this is something that belongs to cities and megacities in the rest of the world. [The technology can work in] places of high need like places in the developing world without infrastructure, [but also] places in the developed world where we have congested urban centers, where roads to exist but they're very inefficient because of traffic. The economics are compelling. A lightweight vehicle can deliver a lightweight payload. When you have a small vehicle like a small unmanned aerial vehicle that is only 3 kg in its weight and it's transporting a 2 kg payload, it solves the most inefficient part of delivery today. If you commission a van, a car, a motorcycle, or even a bicycle, much more energy will be expended. **Consumers in the developing world don't have very much money. What do you expect to ship that will justify the costs of your system?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University I'll give you an example where it makes sense to pay for a system like ours. There is a small country in South Africa called Lesotho that is suffering from an AIDS epidemic. They don't have a way to transport diagnostics from remote clinics to hospital labs. Transportation is one of the issues they're facing. We're working with them. It wouldn't be the final user, [i.e. the patient] it would be that organization whose mission it is to solve that problem [that would use Matternet]. In the Dominican Republic, we're working with the Ministry of Health and if you think about infrastructure investment, this is like orders of magnitude less than normal infrastructure investment. Our vehicles cost $3,000 to $5,000. Our stations cost from $100 up to $500. For a network of 10 nodes with 20 vehicles, we're not talking millions of dollars, we're talking hundreds of thousands. And there are lots of other savings. You don't need people on the streets driving the vehicles. You have a level of reliability that countries with bad roads have never seen before. Eventually we'll have urban delivery with cost savings. It can be automated to a very large degree. **How is the development of the Matternet system coming along?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University We have a solution that comprises three parts, the first is the drones. They have similar characteristics to what Amazon talked about yesterday. Second, there are ground stations where the vehicles land to swap vehicles or pick up a load. That's similar to what Amazon has demonstrated. Third is [software to manage the drones.] These are the elements we need to have in place, we're working all three of those. We're developing technology, now getting ready for our next big pilot. We've done a trial in DR last summer. We want to do a larger pilot where we'll be on location for a few weeks. **What's the most important obstacle to putting this system into practice?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University We have to get those vehicles reliable enough and safe enough to be able to make a claim that it doesn't pose a threat to public safety. And we have to operate them at a level where we can show enough data for the regulatory authorities to be convinced that that is the case. We've come to expect a very high level of reliability. The technology will surely catch up with that, but it's going to take a few years. We, as an industry, will want to get the technology working reliably in more low-risk environments before we take it into a complicated high-risk environment. Our strategy is to operate those networks first in places in the developing world or in rural areas where the risk of failure is diminished. **Are authorities in developing countries more open to experimentation than those in the United States?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The general answer is yes. The reason is because if you target an application that is a big problem, people are willing to take a higher risk. When people have no alternatives, they'll try a new technology and see how that works. So far, we've been greeted with a positive reception from governments. There's a difference between operating in a trial mode versus operating in commercial operations. I think FAA is taking a very comprehensive look at this. We'll see where they land. They have already made a few assumptions about how the issue will be regulated. We have a framework of regulations that we can present and say this is the way we think it's going to work, that's why we think it's going to be that way, this is the type of operation we'd like to run, scale it up and so forth.

How could the missing Malaysia plane have flown faster but covered less ground?

Authorities investigating the missing Malaysian airliner are now focusing their attention on a search area north of where they thought the plane may have crashed. The logic, according to Australian officials, is that the plane flew faster than first suspected, causing it to run out of fuel and plunge into the ocean miles before we previously thought.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Wait, you say. If a plane is flying at a _faster_ speed, shouldn't it cover _more_ ground? How does this make any sense? We're going to unpack some of the science behind flight to try to understand what may have happened.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There are two operative factors here: One is fuel consumption, and the other is altitude. (There's also a tricky third matter called weight, but we won't get too deep into that now.) How far a plane can go is determined by what the Federal Aviation Administration calls endurance. Endurance is a way of describing how planes convert fuel into energy. It's a bit like how we calculate gas mileage for cars — only in the air, environmental conditions play a much bigger role. Maximizing an aircraft's range means having it sip fuel, not gulp it. "If maximum endurance is desired, the flight condition must provide a minimum fuel ﬂow," according to a pilot's manual published by the FAA.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Those conditions are most easily achieved when you're in stable, level flight. Climbing or descending are energy-inefficient activities that increase the fuel flow, which is bad if you're trying to fly as far as you can. That said, just like a car, going faster requires more power — and more fuel. But fuel consumption is also affected by altitude. The higher up you are, the less drag produced by the air -- making your engines more efficient. Simon Weselby, an engineer for Airbus, explained in a 2012 presentation that flying just below the right cruise altitude can waste an enormous amount of fuel. This also makes sense: It would take you longer to cross a given stretch of ground if you have to traverse it rather than fly over it. We don't know what MH370's altitude was at the time that Malaysian authorities believe it crashed. But given that investigators now think the plane was both moving faster _and_ crashed sooner, it's reasonable to think that the aircraft was flying inefficiently.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

The future of air travel: Dinner in Sydney, London in time for ‘The X-Factor’?

When in 1873 Jules Verne published his novel of planet-trotting high adventure, the world was on the verge of an explosion in global travel. New transcontinental railways and the Suez canal promised an increase in the speed with which one might circumnavigate the world. Yet the denizens of the Reform Club in old-world London remained stolid in their opinion that protagonist Phileas Fogg’s proposed 80-day circumnavigation would simply be impossible.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Could we today be on the verge of another revolution in the speed at which we traverse the globe, this time a leap from 80 days to just 80 minutes? To any world-weary traveler standing in the queue at any of a thousand featureless airports, facing hours squeezed into an airborne aluminium tube, it must certainly seem a remote prospect. Indeed we are predicted to face a crisis in the air. The air-lanes are becoming ever more congested, and demand is growing into a systemic problem. We have not seen any fundamental advances in air technology over the last century. Orville Wright might turn to Wilbur with a raised eyebrow at the sight of a modern-day Flyer. But even as speed, height and passenger capacity have improved, the engineering principles have remained very much the same. It is a long time that bright-eyed futurologists have been talking about two-hour journeys from London to Sydney without much sign of progress.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Yet the very reasons for the current situation may provide the best justification for a revolution in our travels. In air travel, long-distance carriers generally have to be treated with the highest priority, simply because they might otherwise run out of fuel. The simplest remedy is to pass on this effect and disrupt the schedules of lower-priority flights. This is why your commuter airline trip can be subject to uncertain departure times or umpteen queasy circuits of the holding pattern before coming in to land. If you introduced new long-haul designs capable of very high speeds, you could make the whole network operate much more efficiently – a solution that will become increasingly attractive as congestion gets worse. But these new aircraft will only be part of the solution. We’ll also need to think about rationalizing the transport infrastructure so that fewer people travel individually and those that do select the right mode of travel for the length of their route. Given the realistic limitations of transferring commuters from cars to high-speed trains, aviation presents an answer. After all, a connection route can be created with some imagination and the stroke of the legislative pen. The low-cost airlines realize this, but are forced by the state of current aviation technology to shoehorn unsuitable aircraft into inappropriate routes. Aircraft concepts such as the tiltrotor are ideal for short point-to-point services (indeed the technology was operating from Battersea pier in the early 1960s). If adopted en masse, they will liberate planners to design more appropriate and flexible air routes. Since the tiltrotor works by vertical take-off, these would potentially eliminate the need for runway extensions, or even for runways at all.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico There are also environmental issues to overcome. Long-range air transport can follow one of two paths – “low and slow” or “high and fast.” The former is favored almost exclusively by the manufacturers as a low-risk and logical extension of their current and very conservative product range. To my mind it is only green in comparison to current aviation practice, and is untenable. The energy density of chemical fuels remains unsurpassed, but that doesn’t negate its likely long-term environmental effects.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The “high and fast” approach favored by operators and passengers offers a brighter environmental future because they are best suited to using liquid hydrogen and oxygen as propellants. These might perhaps be produced by electrolysis of sea water using offshore wind energy. Even then, though, we would need to properly address the fact that the water produced by burning these greener fuels is an atmospheric pollutant that has important ecological consequences if concentrated at the wrong altitude. On top of that, there are also some remaining technical challenges for “high and fast” long haul. Mitigating the effects of sonic boom on those unlucky enough to be flown over at high speed is an unsolved problem, for instance. So is the issue of preventing possible damage to the ozone layer as countless hypersonic aircraft punch through it. These environmental issues are just a taster of the huge technological hurdles that still need to be overcome before high-speed passenger flight can become a reality. We need new high-temperature materials and structural designs that can withstand temperatures that would cremate, let alone fry, an egg. We need new engines that can propel the vehicle from a standstill at the departure gate all the way to the edge of space (and possibly beyond) and still be able to source part of their propellant from the oxygen-depleted upper reaches of the atmosphere. And a major challenge will be to take solutions and concepts from the theoreticians (such as Nonweiler’s “waverider”) and turn these into craft with doors that can be slammed shut, operated by sleepy pilots, and maintained in third-world airports far from their technological comfort zones.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Recent hype has suggested that the current moves towards space tourism might present a solution to many of these problems, but I doubt it. The technology required for climbing rapidly to high altitude and coming straight back down again is conceptually and practically unrelated to that required for sustained atmospheric flight.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Other problems with future high-speed air transport will need political rather than technical solutions. There is a lot of money to be lost and gained at the high-stakes negotiating table where cross-border flights are concerned, and there will be many vested interests dragging the system back towards the status quo. We can’t afford a repeat of what happened with Concorde, where entrenched industrial interests reduced it to a single route for over-moneyed businessmen and joyriders.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico When will this progress happen? How much will it cost? Frustratingly, “not soon” and “a lot” are about as exact as the answers can be at this stage. The most enthusiastic proponents of hypersonic passenger transport would say the first prototypes might be 20 years away, but I would say that is not being realistic about all the remaining hurdles – particularly the political and industrial climate. If history teaches us anything, it will be the military that gets there first – as ever, technologies that can make death more swift and unexpected also hold the promise of such global connectivity that can fundamentally change the way we work, live and play. The military is already very interested, needless to say. In November 2004 the American X-43, funded by NASA, managed sustained flight at 10,617 km/hr for at least 10 seconds before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. We will probably see the first serious military applications of such technologies in the next five years, which will of course be an important milestone toward a consumer version. The reasons for designing and flying vehicles that are capable of global reach in the time taken to read the morning newspaper are technically attractive and militarily obvious. The economic and social justifications are perhaps less easily pinned down, but are nonetheless compelling. What will be the impact of treating Sydney as a commuter suburb for Beijing, or of being able to visit Antipodean gran for Sunday roast – with a serious prospect of being home in time for dinner and telly? Or will we inexorably descend into a sub-species of our former selves that is characterized by never-ending jet-lag and chronic Melatonin abuse? The idea of high-speed air travel is certainly not new. But well motivated technological breakthroughs, spurred on by the social imperative to change fundamentally the way we conduct our affairs on this planet, may just be capable of turning fiction into reality. _This article was originally published onThe Conversation. Read the original article._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Bolt of lightning strikes plane during thunderstorms at Atlanta airport (Video)

Afternoon thunderstorms were bubbling across the Atlanta metro area on Wednesday afternoon — enough to cause a ground stop at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. Passenger jets were holding in line on the tarmac when Jack Perkins caught this lightning bolt on video from inside the terminal. The powerful bolt hits the back of a Delta plane, dissipating into beads of lightning, and igniting something on or around at least one of the plane’s tires. The passengers — who might not have even known they were struck by lightning — were safe because the plane’s metal exterior acts as a Faraday cage, which distributes the electrical charge around the outside of the plane without affecting the inside. [ _Why is an airplane safe from lightning strikes?_]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “The greatest potential danger to people of lightning hitting an airplane is probably on the ground,” wrote Jack Williams in 2014. “For example, in 1989, lightning killed an airline employee who was talking to the crew using a headset connected to the airplane by a wire when lightning hit the airplane. The plane was being pushed back from a gate at Orlando International Airport.”

Rising temperatures could bump you from your flight. Thanks, climate change.

In the aviation business, really hot days are called “weight restriction days,” because when it’s hot, fully loaded planes can’t get off the ground. There’s only three ways for a plane to lose weight: fuel, cargo, or passengers.  To take off, a plane has to reach a certain minimum speed. On hot days and at high elevations, that minimum speed increases. “High elevation and high temperature mean less molecules of air for the plane to push off of,” explained Radley Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia who was involved in the study. Longer runways can help, allowing pilots to attain a faster speed. But when it’s too hot for a plane to take off, airlines must choose between canceling the flight, waiting until it’s cooler, or cutting back on weight. That’s why long flights out of the Middle East and parts of Central and South America are routinely scheduled for late in the evening or overnight. The Columbia researchers found the number of weight restriction days has already increased since 1980. Some airports in the U.S. have adopted measures to deal with extreme heat.  In Washington, D.C., those protocols are routine. Most summer days already have weight restrictions — because of temperatures, and also because the airport has a relatively short runway. Those challenges rarely result in cancellations, explained Billy Nolen of Airlines for America, the airline trade association. “You can normally accommodate weight issues by adjusting fuel levels,” he said. Larger planes are better equipped to deal with weight restrictions. A standard 737 jet carries over 20 tons of fuel — and most flights do not require a full tank, Nolen said. “These calculations happen every day, they’re computerized,” he said. Smaller, older aircraft used for regional flights have an added challenge. Those models don’t stand up to extreme heat as well — and so, like the flights out of Phoenix last month — are much more likely to be cancelled. Smaller planes like those in use on most regional flights are typically only certified to about 120 degrees — while more powerful aircraft can function up until 130 degrees,  according to American Airlines spokeswoman Michelle Mohr. And that, researchers say, means a higher likelihood of cancellations on short hops. “In the future, we’ll see more planes unable to take off,” said Paul Williams, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading.  “We can say with high confidence,” said Horton, “that the type of heat events that lead to weight limits are going to increase in the future.” The researchers predicted the number of 10,000-pound restriction days — days when a standard 737 must be 10,000 pounds lighter than its maximum weight to take off — would increase from near zero to about 20 days per year in Phoenix. The number of 15,000-pound restriction days is also expected to increase — and that tighter weight limit could lead to more bumping, Williams said. “If there’s no more cargo to take off, then [airlines] start to bump off passengers,” said Williams. In theory, that could mean offloading dozens of passengers when undertaking a cross-country journey on an extremely hot day. In cases where a full tank of fuel is necessary, 79 passengers plus their luggage would have to be removed to take off on a 15,000-pound restriction day. Nolen insists that those kinds of weight restrictions are very unlikely — and that cancellations will also remain rare. However, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations agency that oversees aviation, last year acknowledged rising temperatures as one of their biggest climate-related concerns. Last month’s cancellations highlighted a poorly understood aspect of air travel and climate change. Many people understand air travel is bad for the climate, in terms of producing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet climate change is also having an impact on air travel, in the form of shifting wind patterns, stronger jet streams, and increased instances of extreme weather and turbulence. Rising sea levels also affect siting airports.   “Climate change is causing jet streams to be less stable,” Williams, who helped prepare the ICAO report, explained. That could radically shake up flight schedules. The jet stream that moves west to east over the Atlantic is getting stronger.  Between the United States and Europe, “we’re going to see a lot more record-breaking fast eastbound flights and a lot more severely delayed westbound flights,” said Williams. Changing wind patterns might also force airlines to reroute to avoid head winds causing more delays and using more fuel, both of which translate to higher costs, explained Stephen Munroe, a Bloomberg analyst who focuses on energy.  But while there are hundreds of studies on how air travel contributes to climate change, there are only half a dozen or so investigating the “reverse impact” of climate change on air travel. “This is a new frontier,” said Columbia’s Horton. “To date we are not seeing much engagement from the aviation industry on this issue.”

New York firm successfully tests solar-powered aircraft

A test pilot successfully flew a solar-powered prototype aircraft on Friday for a company that envisions manufacturing a fleet of drones to provide aerial Internet service for an estimated 4 billion people worldwide. The test flight by Luminati Aerospace took place at a former Northrop Grumman defense plant on eastern Long Island. “This is a dream come true,” Luminati founder and chief executive Daniel Preston said. Pilot Robert Lutz flew the VO-Substrata aircraft for about 20 minutes in the first test flight opened to the public. The white aircraft features wing-mounted solar cells and has a wingspan of about 43 feet. The prototype allows for a pilot to control it, but Luminati, based in Calverton, N.Y., plans to build unmanned planes that can fly higher than 60,000 feet. It hopes to start manufacturing by the end of the year. Lutz said after his flight that the aircraft is “very birdlike.” “You know you go up there and you feel like you’re in the environment up there with the creatures,” he said. “Hawks will be circling around, and they kind of flock to you. It’s the only aircraft I’ve ever flown where I can hear a helicopter next to me. It’s a little spooky but pretty cool.” **— Associated Press** Six airlines won permission Friday to provide scheduled commercial air service between the United States and Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years. The airlines — American, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country — were approved by the Department of Transportation for a total of 155 round trips per week. They will fly from five U.S. cities to nine cities in Cuba other than Havana. The airlines must begin service within 90 days of the dates proposed in their applications; each can request an extension if it needs more time. Most service is expected to begin this fall and early winter, the department said. Approval is still required by the Cuban government, but the carriers say they plan to start selling tickets in the next few weeks while they wait for go-aheads from Cuba. U.S. law still prohibits tourist travel to Cuba, but a dozen other categories of travel are permitted, including for family visits, business, journalism, professional meetings and educational and religious activities. **— Associated Press** **— From news services**

The high cost of climate change

Such reasoning, however, ignored the most important fact about the scientific experiment that humanity is conducting: Within human time scales, it is essentially irreversible. If the scientists are right, more warming will occur even if the world stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow. Roughly half of the carbon dioxide from these fuels would remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Every day of inaction makes the trend stronger, the certainty greater and the impacts worse. Metaphorically, the world is canoeing down a turbulent river that is rapidly gaining speed, and the thunder of a waterfall is growing in the distance. We can pretend that the noise is coming from jumbo jets flying too close to the ground, or we can paddle as hard as we can to get to shore before we are swept over the edge. May we choose wisely — and fast.  The writer is the U.N. Foundation’s vice president for energy and climate.

Model plane hobbyists know the risks of lithium-ion batteries

A scale model of a Reaper drone rumbled down the runway and lifted into the gray Canadian sky, powered by a plastic propeller and a lithium-ion battery. When the tiny plane crashed back to earth a few seconds later, white smoke began rising from the wreckage. “Why is it on fire?” one of the hobbyists asked the other, moments before bright orange flames began shooting from the crash site. The weary reply, captured on video, was: “Battery.” Small, potent lithium-ion power packs have transformed the world of radio- controlled model aircraft, much as they have allowed smartphones to get thinner, power tools to work longer and electric cars to go farther. But a pair of serious incidents this month involving rechargeable batteries in Boeing 787 Dreamliners have highlighted what model-airplane hobbyists long have known — lithium-ion technology comes with inherent dangers. Considering the sheer numbers of lithium-ion batteries — more than 4 billion rechargeable cells were made last year, according to industry figures — fires are not common. After a battery-powered Chevy Volt ignited after a test crash in 2011, federal investigators said electric cars were no more vulnerable than gas-powered vehicles, more than 20 of which catch fire each hour in the United States. Yet some risk persists, and the results can be startling. When a cellphone battery overheats — a rare event — it can eject itself with a loud “pop,” leaving singe marks behind. Lithium-ion battery packs can have prolonged fires as each cell, typically the size of a man’s finger, gradually ignites. “It could be a smoke bomb. It could be a flamethrower,” said Gerard Back, a senior engineer with Hughes Associates, a fire-protection company in Baltimore that investigated the Volt incident. “I’ve seen them look like every type of firework you can imagine.” Boeing and other manufacturers are keenly aware of this peril and have built in safety features designed to keep voltages within safe limits, prevent short circuits and confine damage when problems do occur. Lithium-ion batteries in laptop computers and other consumer devices are supposed to shut down rather than allow overheating that might cause a fire. In such ways danger is minimized, though not eliminated. The technological trade-offs play out in especially stark relief within the sprawling world of radio-controlled airplane enthusiasts, who regard lithium-ion batteries with a mixture of fear and devotion even as they subject them to unusual stresses. The result is widespread acceptance that the same portable power source that allows for fast, long, graceful flights also occasionally causes these fragile toys to burst into flames — often, but not always, after crashes. “They make life a lot better, a lot easier, but you have to manage the risk,” said Dave Brewster, 43, a professional pilot from Toronto who flies radio-controlled model airplanes as a hobby. “Everything in flight is mitigating risk.” It was Brewster’s Reaper drone that crashed and caught fire on its maiden flight in August 2011, destroying a model that cost him several hundred dollars and hours of work. Like many who have suffered such mishaps, he uploaded video of it to YouTube for what amounts to an emerging genre of lithium-battery-related disaster films starring radio-controlled models — not just planes but cars and boats, too. (The flaming wreckage of a twin-engine model plane, posted in October 2009 and viewed more than 479,000 times, is accompanied by a soundtrack of bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace.”) There is a strain of gallows humor in such videos, with audible cheering and laughter at the fiery destruction. Yet the underlying danger is treated seriously. Tales abound of burned hands and severe property damage, including battery-related fires that destroyed cars, garages and homes. Hobbyist Web sites carry stern warnings and feature long chat threads discussing the risks. At radio-controlled airplane shows, charging batteries indoors typically is prohibited unless they are kept in flame-resistant bags. “I’ve had buddies blow the ends of their fingers off with them,” said hobbyist Craig Pitcock, 41, who posted to YouTube a video of the fiery crash of his F-4 Phantom model in an Arizona field. “It’s incredible, the voltage.” Before the arrival of lithium-ion technology, hobbyists relied on a messy liquid fuel, or occasionally on an older generation of batteries that could barely get models off the ground. “Twenty years ago, somebody would laugh at you if you said ‘electric plane,’ ” Pitcock said. Lithium-ion battery packs may revolutionize aviation as well, allowing for planes that are lighter and use less fuel. The cause of the incidents with the Dreamliner battery packs remains under investigation by safety officials. The jets were ordered grounded in the United States and several other nations this week. The batteries carried in the holds of cargo planes are suspected as possible factors in two fatal crashes in recent years, according to the Air Line Pilots Association International, which is lobbying to have cells classified as dangerous goods requiring special handling, adequate fire suppression and notification to pilots who carry them. Cargo planes sometimes carry tens of thousands of cells stacked together on pallets, increasing the danger, said Mark Rogers, director of the dangerous goods program for the pilots association. “There’s no way to engineer your way out of the problem,” he said. “No matter what you do, you’re going to have incidents.” Lithium-ion battery packs typically are made of a collection of individual cells. Coiled within each are three layers — one positively charged, one negatively charged and the third a “separator” film that keeps the charged layers apart. There also is an organic fluid that, at high temperatures, is flammable. Fires start when electricity moves in an uncontrolled way between the positively and negatively charged layers. The cause can be manufacturing defects or damage — anything that allows the positive and negative layers to touch, causing a short-circuit and what experts call “thermal runaway.” Manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries say their technology is safe when international standards are followed. Problems occur mainly with lower-quality, counterfeit batteries, or when cells are shipped improperly or mishandled by consumers, said George Kerchner, executive director of the Rechargeable Battery Association. “When you damage these cells and you abuse them, you certainly are inviting problems,” he said. For those who fly radio-controlled model airplanes, fires typically happen when batteries are overcharged, or when wiring mistakes cause short-circuits. And, then, of course, there are the crashes: The resulting damage can causes wires to touch, separator film to tear, or the positive and negative layers to come into direct contact with each other. Damage can be subtle enough that an apparently undamaged battery can burst into flames long after an accident. Hobbyists say they sense danger when their battery packs get “puffy,” typically the result of gases that can be the first sign of thermal runaway. The Rechargeable Battery Association’s Kerchner said he and his sons have long flown radio-controlled helicopters powered by lithium-ion batteries without encountering problems. “We love them,” he said, “but we don’t crash them into the ground to see if they explode.” _Sign up today to receive#thecircuit, a daily roundup of the latest tech policy news from Washington and how it is shaping business, entertainment and science._

Here’s how we could hide Earth from aliens if we had to

What would it take to hide an entire planet? It sounds more like a question posed in an episode of “Star Trek” than in academic discourse, but sometimes the bleeding edge of science blurs with themes found in science fiction.   Before we talk about how to hide a planet from distant voyeurs, consider the best way we’ve figured out to find one. Humanity’s most successful technique for detecting other planets is the transit method. A transit occurs when a planet appears to pass in front of its parent sun, blocking out some of its starlight for a few hours. So if we have our telescopes trained at one part of the universe and a star seems to fade out for part of a day, that tells us that a planet has temporarily come between us as it goes about its orbit.  It seems likely that any advanced civilization would be aware of this simple method. Each time a planet transits its star, its existence is essentially being advertised to all points lying along the same plane as the planet and star.  It turns out that hiding planets from the transit method would be surprisingly easy, so easy that we Earthlings could do it right now, if we chose. Since transits appear as a brightness decrease of a distant star, our hypothetical cloak simply produces the opposite brightness increase. Lasers provide an efficient means of countering that dip in brightness. All a laser’s power is contained in a relatively narrow beam, as opposed to spreading out in all directions like starlight does. Due to the way light spreads as it travels — called diffraction — the laser beam would spread to encompass entire solar systems after journeying many light years across space, bathing that distant planetary system within the cloaking beam. No dip in brightness makes it look like there’s no planet there at all. A laser cloak capable of hiding the Earth from an alien version of NASA’s Kepler Mission would require 30 megawatts of power at peak intensity, approximately equivalent to 10 wind turbines worth of power output.  So yes, it sounds like science fiction, but even current technology could do a fine job of cloaking the Earth’s transit signature. Forget the Earth, though; we never really thought of this as something humanity should or should not do. Instead, we posit that if our rudimentary human technology can build such an effective transit cloak at relatively little economic cost, then more advanced civilizations may be able to hide from us with respect to all detection techniques. The universe might not be all that it seems. Why might a civilization choose to wrap itself in invisibility? It could be a sort of insurance policy: find the nearby planets with potential for supporting life and turn on a targeted cloak — just in case a civilization ever emerges. Such a policy effectively buys them time to reveal their presence when they see fit. Given how cheap such a cloak would be, an insurance policy for your home planet is perhaps not as strange as it seems. It’s certainly not implausible that a civilization might want to bide its time — surveilling the neighbors for a while before rolling out the intergalactic welcome mat. But there’s a flip side to this technology that could turn it from an invisibility cloak into more of a we-are-here spotlight. Perhaps not all civilizations are xenophobic — some might want to talk. If you wanted to reveal your presence to other civilizations as cheaply and unambiguously as possible, how might you do it? Imagine looking at some data of a distant planet — which has become a somewhat normal enterprise for astronomers — and noticing something weird. The signature of the planet has a strange shape — in fact, none of your models are able to explain it. It looks like someone has imprinted a series of spikes into the data, following the prime number series. Nothing in nature can do this — you have just detected another civilization’s beacon. Alternative use of the cloaking system’s laser could be to make a planet’s signal look highly artificial, instead of hidden. Now they don’t care about building the perfect cloak; they want to be found! Could such signals be lurking in our existing measurements? Perhaps so. No one has ever looked, and we hope our work sparks efforts on that front. It may be a long shot, since to even get to this point we need to try to imagine how aliens might think — but given the scientific prize on offer, it’s also worth it. If we identify a strange transit, it may well contain information encoded via laser light pulses. Huge volumes of information could be hidden within the transit signatures of other planets. For us, this was an exercise in intellectual curiosity. We simply calculated how much energy it would take to either cloak or broadcast a planet’s existence. Whether we should seriously consider wrapping Earth in a protective cloak of invisibility — or conversely, getting serious about trumpeting our existence — via laser manipulations is something we should all decide together.

How technology is fighting to prevent a climate-change apocalypse

On Monday, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an apocalyptic report about the impact of global climate change — suggesting that a hotter, drier Earth brought about by global climate change could lead to everything from famine and civil war to the acidification of the earth’s oceans, ecological crises and disappearing coastal cities. That begs the question, of course: What can Silicon Valley and other tech innovators do to slow or reverse the climate-change apocalypse?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University For now, Silicon Valley has focused on the search for a relatively cheap, reliable clean energy solution that can slow down the planet’s consumption of fossil fuels – and by extension, slow down the impact of global climate change. Venture capitalists are still investing hundreds of millions of dollars in “cleantech” companies. Some of the leading minds – such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates – are backing innovative projects and companies to make clean energy mainstream. Innovative companies like Google are looking into ways to power themselves with the sun and the wind. The hope, of course, is that one of the most popular clean energy options – solar, wind or nuclear – can ultimately become a cheap, reliable source of carbon-free power that will wean humanity off fossil fuels.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University That’s just the tip of the (melting) iceberg, though, when it comes to what innovators are dreaming up to reduce the impact of global greenhouse gases. One of the most talked-about ideas in the energy sector includes carbon capture and storage — a largely unproven technology that essentially takes some of the carbon being burned from traditional fossil fuels such as coal, and converts it into a harmless gas underground so that it doesn’t enter the atmosphere. And there’s always carbon recycling – an outrageous scheme to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and recycle it for fuel, the same way you might recycle plastic bottles or paper.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Where things get really interesting – and extremely controversial – is when you start talking about geoengineering, which is essentially the ability to change the earth’s climate using man-made means. Up until a few years ago, even mentioning geoengineering could get you branded as an irresponsible scientist. Just consider some of the schemes that have been proposed: arraying giant mirrors in outer space to reflect solar rays, sprinkling the Arctic with a layer of dust, embracing volcanic ash as a cooling mechanism for the planet, and spraying the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide particles.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Yes, there’s a reason why geoengineering is usually referred to as “Planet Hacking” – people are trying to hack the planet in search of better solutions. Unlike a Silicon Valley hackathon, though, an extended planet hackathon could end up wrecking the Earth. Yet, that doesn’t stop the military scientists at DARPA from coming up with big ideas that might just save the planet. At the end of the day, are these “planet hacking” schemes any more fanciful than some of the ideas being espoused by NASA for terraforming alien planets?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University At this point, of course, it’s easy to throw one’s hands up and conclude that nothing much can be done to prevent the apocalypse. Either the plans to save the planet are too gradual and won’t save us in time – or they are too speculative and untested and may end up wrecking the planet in the process. And, given the global nature of the problem, that means that even if Elon Musk’s Teslas are the only cars on American highways and every American house has a few solar panels on the roof, it won’t do much if America’s friends around the world aren’t also doing their fair share.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As long as many people continue to doubt the science behind global warming and as long as most people don’t believe that the planet could suffer a Sixth Extinction, then it’s likely we’ll muddle through with a bunch of expensive technology patches. They can be thought of as “adaptation strategies” – short- term solutions that help humanity win the “survival of the fittest” while the planet steadily warms. Rising sea levels? No problem, just build new types of sea walls. Crops failing and a lack of food? Just bio-engineer new foods in the lab or create them with 3D food printers. Species disappearing? Just bring them back via de-extinction.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But there is hope for a brighter future than just accepting a slow, steady march to extinction. In a best-case scenario, many of the developing countries that are growing rapidly will actually skip fossil fuels altogether and shift immediately into clean energy. That could have a tremendous impact in places like China and India, where billions of new people will need a cheap source of clean power. At the same time, one of the big ideas for dealing with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere might actually pay off. And that might buy us enough time so that we don’t have to resort to the really innovative solution that nobody want to discuss — and that’s leaving the planet forever in search of another Earth-like planet that we can colonize.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Tennis balls dropped from the air? Internet in the bush? Here come the drones.

With FAA regulations on pilotless aircraft going into effect this month, Smithsonian.com writer Randy Rieland previews the “age of drones” by featuring 10 innovative plans to use the fast-developing technology. There’s a drone to help tennis coaches by dropping balls from odd angles and filming the student’s swing; there’s one to clear farmland by starting controlled fires; one that Airbus uses to zip around its jets and inspect the exterior of the fuselages. Two more: ●Once Facebook has taken over most of Planet Earth, how does it get to the few off-the-grid holdouts in super-remote areas? Two months ago, Facebook successfully tested Aquila, an 880-pound prototype for a proposed fleet of aircraft that could provide Internet access to places that have never had it. Each solar-powered craft would fly at altitudes of 60,000 to 90,000 feet for months at a time, delivering broadband connections to receivers on the ground. ●Military conflicts have left more than 110 million unexploded land mines in more than 70 countries. Clearing them is dangerous and expensive work. (One person is said to be killed and two injured for every 5,000 mines disabled.) At the rate it’s proceeding now, getting rid of all 110 million would take a millennium, and the mines apparently leak chemicals thataffect plant life. Now, Rieland writes, British scientists have equipped drones with sensors that can detect those plants, making clearing that much safer.

These revolutionary technologies promised to help save us from climate change. So what happened?

Meanwhile, the University of Illinois researchers overseeing the development of the ultra-powerful lithium-ion battery admit the technology overall has a long way to go, even though it’s being used in the development of a start-up company in a way similar to FastCAP. Claiming a perpetual battery revolution in the face of routine testing and normal trial-and-error does a disservice to the particulars not only of the story, but of the technology itself. We need to rethink how we discuss potentially innovative energy storage technology, because those conversations can effect decisions about policy, research and how we fund our energy future.

California could power itself three to five times over with solar

Deserts and remote fields are popular spots for building vast arrays of solar panels, which generate dramatically more energy than individual homeowner rooftop installations. These areas are rich in sunlight while offering plenty of clear, flat land to work with. But what if we didn’t always have to go all the way out to these remote and potentially ecologically fragile areas? What if we could simply drive down the street and make use of the buildings and lands in areas we’ve already developed? A new study suggests that such a strategy could work in a state like California, which is working aggressively to boost its renewable energy use. And it could provide a lot of power. There’s enough space suitable for solar power on or near land that humans occupy in the state to power three to five of today’s Californias, researchers report in Nature Climate Change today.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico California is a clean energy trailblazer on a number of fronts. It’s a part of a carbon emissions trading program with other Pacific states, and has also set a goal of supplying one-third of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2020, and cutting its carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2050. Of course, no energy source is perfect, and solar is no exception. Not only does it work only at certain times of the day, but it also requires a lot of open, flat land to generate solar power at the scale of power plants. As a result, a lot of solar power projects are undertaken in deserts and other remote areas where open land is plentiful. But some of these lands could host delicate ecosystems that might become more difficult for creatures to live in if they’re covered with solar panels. Also, these sites can be far from where power is actually needed; in these cases, miles of transmission lines have to be built to deliver that electricity to consumers. So to reduce these problems, it might behoove us to take as much advantage of open spaces in developed areas as we can, whether on roofs or on the ground. Rebecca Hernandez and Christopher Field at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science decided to see how feasible that would be in California, given the state’s aggressive push for clean energy. _[The best idea in a long time: Covering parking lots with solar panels]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico They focused their attention on the two main forms of solar power generation: photovoltaic cells, which generate electricity by absorbing sunlight directly, and concentrating solar power (CSP), which involves using arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight into one area where it can be converted into electricity (though these projects require more area to operate than the smallest photovoltaic projects do).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The researchers assessed California’s land to see how suitable it would be for solar power projects of either type, whether on scales suitable for powering individual homes and businesses or for powering entire communities. The most “compatible” places, they said, found in just around 8.1 percent of the state’s land, would be in areas that humans have modified or developed in some way, and it would have enough open and mostly-flat space to work with. These places might include not just the rooftops of homes, businesses, warehouses and other buildings, but also parking lots, farmland, grassy fields and golf courses. California has 10,535 square miles (roughly the size of Massachusetts) and 2,422 square miles (roughly the size of Delaware) of this “compatible” land for photovoltaics and CSP systems, respectively, the researchers found. On these compatible lands, photovoltaics could provide about 14,600 terawatt-hours (or 1 billion kilowatt-hours) a year in power, and CSP systems could provide about 6,000 terawatt-hours a year. Compare that with California’s total energy use across all sectors, from residential to commercial to transportation and industrial, in 2011: 2,231 terawatt-hours. All in all, depending on what combination of photovoltaics and CSP systems you choose to use on these lands, the resulting amount of energy would fall somewhere roughly between three and five times what California used in 2011. And that’s all before we’ve even discussed other places that aren’t ideally compatible but could still potentially host solar projects, such as federally protected lands. That’s not to say that we can go all-in on solar power or abandon desert projects outright. People won’t want to cover every last parking lot or rooftop with a CSP system or solar panel, and other factors such as the availability of transmission lines serve as another limiting factor. But the findings do drive home one point that’s often lost in the discussion over solar power: To get it, you don’t have to go to the desert or to that far-away, fragile ecosystem. You may just have to drive down the street.

How the World Bank could slash its carbon emissions: Start flying in coach

As if the nice meal and the on-demand movies and the fully reclining seats weren’t enough to infuriate the rest of us, first-class air travel is also ruining the environment. Or at least so says the World Bank in a new study estimating that the carbon footprint of a first-class airplane seat may be as much as nine times larger than an economy-class berth. A business-class ticket has three times the carbon footprint as economy. (The analysis is not adjusted, the report helpfully notes, to try to account for the varying weights of passengers).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The seats are bigger, so there are fewer of them on the plane, and a plane with fewer passengers is using more fuel per person who is delivered to their destination. Moreover, the number of business-class seats occupied on a given flight – the load factor – tends to be lower as well, so a smaller percentage of the seats are occupied. And first-class passengers take more luggage, adding more weight to the plane and consuming more fuel. Add it all up, and “the carbon footprint is much higher for business-class travel than for economy-class travel and even higher for first class-travel.” And World Bank staff, who travel across the planet in their duties, are major users of business and first-class airplane seats. Staff at World Bank headquarters in Washington took more than 189,000 trips in 2009, totaling 447 million miles. Some 73.6 percent of those miles were in business class and another 6.9 percent in first class. (Most first-class travel has since been eliminated.) The authors note that for an organization that has made climate change a top priority, it might want to assess its travel policies to offset the higher carbon footprint of its pricier air travel. They stopped short of making a recommendation about how to achieve that offset. But herewith two very easy solutions: Travel less. And when they do travel, sit in the back of the bus with the rest of us.

Solar power gets attention in the oil kingdom

As Jeffrey Ball puts it in the July-August issue of the Atlantic magazine, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has long been “a poster child for fossil-fuel waste.” Gasoline is sold at 50 cents a gallon, electricity is made in colossally inefficient oil-burning plants, people run their air conditioning while they’re out of town for weeks at a time. As a result, the country — with 30 million people, it is the 44th-most-populous in the world — is the sixth- largest consumer of oil. But times are changing, Ball reports in “Why the Saudis Are Going Solar.” The petro-kingdom is preparing to build a solar-panel factory, another factory is about to produce polysilicon for solar cells, and 10 big solar projects are getting underway. The country has set a goal of building 41 gigawatts of solar capacity — more than any nation has today — in the first half of this century. Why? Because its domestic oil consumption has gotten so out of control and is increasing so fast that the kingdom could be a net oil _importer_ in just over 20 years. That would wreak havoc in a country where political stability rests on the royal family’s ability to keep its subjects happy without making them pay taxes. “Solar, they have decided, is an obvious alternative,” Ball continues. “In addition to having some of the world’s richest oil fields, Saudi Arabia also has some of the world’s most intense sunlight.” (Some people have all the luck.) There’s a certain disconnect between aspiration and reality, with dust storms clouding the solar panels and problems with imported manufacturing parts. But Ball concludes that the surprising truth remains: Saudi Arabia may become a model for other countries trying to shift away from oil. And if that doesn’t happen, the desert kingdom could end up exporting its solar riches to us they way they traditionally have exported oil.

Cellphones on planes deserve a chance

THE FEDERAL Communications Commission may permit airlines to experiment with allowing passengers to use cellphones in flight, officials said last week. The agency should do so, and airlines should get on with experimenting. Permission is not requirement; a change in federal rules would not necessarily mean the ruination of air travel for all time. We sympathize with anyone whose immediate reaction is to recoil at the prospect of having to listen for hours to a loudmouth with unlimited mobile minutes. Air travel is uncomfortable enough. But the FCC’s move wouldn’t guarantee such an outcome. Rather, it would leave matters to airlines and their passengers, which is as it should be. The proposal before the FCC would simply admit that there are no dangers or technical complications to transferring voice and data to and from mobile phones in the air, as long as the right technology is on board. Until now, the FCC worried that airborne mobile phone use would interfere with ground-based cell networks. Now that carriers in Europe and Asia have shown it can be done safely, the government’s telecommunications regulator has no sound reason to keep its restrictions. Its rules are outdated, and they should go. Once gone, airlines and travelers would decide what to do. Carriers would have all sorts of possibilities to suit a range of passenger preferences. They could allow a limited number of simultaneous phone conversations. They could let passengers retrieve data or send text messages but not talk. They could create quiet cabins or designate entire flights as no-phone zones, if that’s what customers want. Airline staff would have all the leverage in enforcing the rules, because they would control the equipment that would connect passengers to cellphone networks. Beyond the rules, costs would also constrain cellphone users; they would be charged roaming rates for their conversations. There’s a distinct possibility that some carriers would not allow any mobile phone use. It is already legal for air passengers to make calls over onboard WiFi connections, but airlines don’t permit it. Some travelers are waging a campaign against anything that might lead to more noise in cramped airplanes. Major airlines did not rush to celebrate the FCC’s announcement. The immediate impact of the FCC ridding the country of its unnecessary rule, then, may well be small. Yet we hope that carriers explore their options to bring air travel into the 21st century, with all its pluses and minuses. While some passengers mourn the disappearance of their last disconnected refuge, others will embrace the convenience of connection. Either way, there’s no reason for the government to play referee. **Read more:** Jonathan Capehart: Cellphones on planes = hell on Earth Alexandra Petri: FAA to allow phones on airplanes?

This is SpaceX’s new Dragon V2 spacecraft. And it is gorgeous.

Elon Musk has a somewhat understated approach to his product reveals. There's no trace of the "amazing!" or "revolutionary!" gobbledygook that accompanies other tech presentations. That's because the, er, gravity of what Musk and SpaceX are doing mostly speaks for itself.  On Thursday, Musk announced the Dragon V2, the next-generation space capsule designed to bring humans to the International Space Station. It carries seven people, can land on the ground with the accuracy of a helicopter — or so Musk claims — and can dock with the ISS directly. Dragon V2 comes with new SuperDraco thrusters, which are made by a 3D printer. Each one produces 16,000 pounds of thrust — up from the 100 pounds of thrust SpaceX could squeeze out of its last-generation Draco engines. They're built to be redundant: Even when two of them fail, the spacecraft can still land on the ground with its remaining thrusters. And if all else fails, there's still the reserve parachute for a water-based splashdown. The actual spacecraft looks even more gorgeous when it's not an artist's animation. Musk even decided to hop inside to offer a guided tour. Getting in there was a little tricky, but he could stand up inside perfectly fine. You control this thing using a Bloomberg terminal, evidently. No, seriously. Can I check my stocks on that thing? From the heatshield to the engines, the whole design is meant to enhance the spacecraft's reusability. Once it lands back on earth, you can just fill 'er up with more fuel and she'll be ready to go again. And SpaceX is betting that that will bring down the cost of space travel dramatically. "As long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space," said Musk. "If aircraft were thrown away with each flight, nobody would be able to fly — or very few. The same is true of rockets and spacecraft." Of course, even with the savings, it's likely that spaceflight will only be available to a few, select civilians for the foreseeable future. Which raises the question: Who is SpaceX going to find to fill all those seats? There aren't nearly enough billionaires on the planet to keep them full every time. Related: Why do U.S. spy satellites rely on Russian rocket engines?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

At last! The FAA has seen the light on in-flight electronics

At long last, airline passengers fed up with having to switch off their electronic devices during takeoff and landing will be able to use them freely at all times on a flight,  not just at cruising altitudes. The FAA has announced that airlines will soon be receiving guidance on how to implement the new rules, which still require devices to be in airplane mode at all times. "I will be the biggest proponent of following flight attendant instructions," said FAA administrator Michael Huerta in a Washington news conference. "But I did feel like any regulation that has been around for a long time — a lot has changed in 50 years. Let's take another look." The change won't take place overnight; each company will ease the restrictions according to their own timelines. Still, it's a welcome relief for passengers after a years-long battle to overturn the prohibition. Surprisingly, once an independent panel (whose members included Amazon) signed off on the idea, it didn't take long for the FAA to follow suit. A decision was expected "within months," according to my colleague Lydia DePillis, but the government's announcement today came just five weeks after the panel finished its safety study.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In a statement, the FAA said customers will "eventually be able to read e-books, play games and watch videos on their devices during all phases of flight, with very limited exceptions."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Requiring that passengers use airplane mode might make life more difficult for flight attendants, who might not be able to check as quickly whether a customer has the feature turned on. But there's little point in keeping your cell radios enabled anyway, said Huerta. "They're going to ping for a signal, and they won't get one," he said. "You're going to arrive at your destination with a dead phone, and I don't think anyone wants that."

Palestinian students in Gaza develop solar-powered car

The technology that powers the vehicle is not altogether innovative. Other researchers around the globe have also crafted solar-powered vehicles, though none are sold commercially. Indeed, the electric-vehicle market itself is still fairly nascent. Nevertheless, the students’ creation is significant due in part to the environment in which it was built. Because of years of war and trade restrictions, people living in the Gaza Strip lack consistent access to fuel, electricity and industrial materials. Gaza’s sole power station was bombed in a conflict with Israel in 2006. “We decided to depend on a power that God gave us, which is renewable, alternative and clean energy. So we decided to make a solar-power vehicle,” one of the students, Khalid al-Bardawil, told Voice of America. Bardawil built the solar-powered car alongside fellow student, Jamal al-Miqaty, under the supervision of lecturer Mazen Abu Amro. In an Arabic interview with the news outlet al-Arabiya, Bardawil said businesses often close down for several hours per day because of outages and many people plan their social lives around the availability of electricity. Creating a mode of transportation that does not depend on electricity or fuel, which is also in short supply, could alleviate at least one limitation. “As we all know, the transportation is important in our daily life, we have decided to create a car to solve a crisis — the shortage of fuel and electricity,” Bardawil told al-Arabiya.

Airplanes’ space wars are shifting to the human rights front

Do you have the right to room on a plane? If you answered “no,” you’re probably with the majority of American travelers. After all, airlines are private companies, and you always have the option of paying more for an upgraded seat, don’t you? But recent efforts by consumer advocates are turning the conventional wisdom about space on its head. Taken together, their initiatives have started an important debate about whether air travelers have a basic right to room on a plane, no matter where they sit. If these consumer groups win, it could trigger a tectonic shift that might improve air travel for everyone. Why are we having this discussion now, more than six decades after the start of the jet age? Because seat space is shrinking at a troubling rate. The average economy-class seat pitch, a rough measure of legroom, has plummeted from 35 inches before airline deregulation in the 1970s to about 31 inches today. And the average width of a coach class seat has contracted from 18 inches to about 16½ inches. The changes have benefited airlines, which are now enjoying record profits. But passengers are feeling the pinch — literally — and now consumer advocates are launching a coordinated effort to defend your right to room. Two consumer organizations, Travelers United (disclosure: I am the group’s co-founder) and FlyersRights, have staged a coordinated effort to change government policy on airline seats. FlyersRights has petitioned the federal government to create a regulation mandating minimum seat width and seat pitch for commercial airlines. And Travelers United, representing consumers on a government advisory committee, has lobbied to address the amount of space allotted to air travelers. Paul Hudson, FlyersRights’ president, said decreases in seat size have raised not only comfort concerns, but also safety and health issues. Emergency evacuation plans aren’t adequately tested on aircraft with shrunken seat configurations, and travelers face other health risks, such as deep vein thrombosis, also called “economy-class syndrome,” he says. Reducing seat size further, he notes, “would only expand the issue and cause greater health, safety and comfort concerns.” The Department of Transportation (DOT) hasn’t formally responded to the petition. Meanwhile, the consumer representative on the DOT’s Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protection has pushed the government to take action on the issue. Charles Leocha, chairman of Travelers United, says he successfully persuaded the committee to recommend testing smaller seats for safety. But efforts to persuade the panel to take a stand on seat size were blocked by the committee’s airline representative. “I was very disappointed that we didn’t come up with a committee recommendation on personal space on aircraft,” Leocha says. “We’ll work with FlyersRights.org on the rulemaking petition.” Airlines view the committee’s failure to recommend seat standards as a vindication of their position — that government should not regulate, but instead allow market forces to set seat size. “Competition should determine what is offered,” says Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, an airline trade group. “Those offerings are one component of what drives competition and product differentiation among airlines. And as with any commercial product or service, customers vote every day with their wallets.” Just a few days after this argument erupted, I had the opportunity to visit the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. As I viewed a rare copy of the Magna Carta, and toured the exhibits that chronicled centuries of struggles for human rights, I wondered: Could we also have a basic right to space on an aircraft? It sounds almost laughable next to other basic human rights, until you consider the fact that the federal government already regulates the amount of space animals get in the cargo hold. So it has already said, in effect, that some passengers have the right to space — even if they aren’t human. “There should be some protection against overcrowding,” Joanie Connell, a social psychologist, tells me. “Especially for legroom and for body space. I have long legs and they get cramped, especially when someone reclines their seat in front of me.” Other observers agree. “There is indeed an interesting argument to be made for a basic human right to physical space on an airplane,” says Laine Strutton, a Winter Park, Fla.-based human rights expert. “It is part of a larger discussion about the fundamental need for movement.” On commercial airliners, you could argue that passenger space is needed to fulfill other legal rights that we already agree on, such as those of members of the disabled community who are entitled to sufficient room under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or a new mother who needs room to nurse her child, she says. Some will certainly see that as government interference in a free market. But that argument doesn’t hold up when you take a closer look, Strutton says. The state has intervened countless times to regulate practices within the private sector, including safety regulations within the auto industry. “I foresee a time when the idea of minimum space standards on airplanes is as readily accepted as the idea that all cars should have seat belts,” she predicts. Hudson, of FlyersRights, sees parallels between today’s discussion and one that happened a century ago. When there were no effective regulations on transatlantic transportation, he says, steerage passengers were packed in egregious conditions, “and their fares actually subsidized first-class passengers as well as fattening shipping company profits,” he says. But it’s the safety argument that will win this debate. Hudson hopes government regulators will act before a disaster forces them to. He’s worried specifically that seats on some of the discount carriers are wedged so closely together that it would be impossible to evacuate the aircraft safely during an emergency. When the Titanic embarked on her maiden voyage without enough lifeboats, the dynamic was much the same as it is today, he says. It took more than 1,500 deaths to persuade regulators to improve safety practices, including better ship design and adding enough lifeboats. “Even today,” he adds, “laissez-faire fanatics and most airlines are against all regulation.” But the tide is slowly turning, as it has for so many other human rights issues over time, in favor of sensible and compassionate regulation that protects the lives of passengers. There’s evidence that even airlines understand that regulation is inevitable. Advocates say they’ve signaled an openness to address some of the health and safety concerns they’ve raised. Of course, critics will warn that the cost of a plane ticket will rise and that government interference will stifle competition. But in the end, do you really want to be flying in an ever-shrinking, unsafe and unhealthy space that doesn’t respect your human dignity? Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United.   E-mail him at chris@elliott.org. **** **More fromTravel:** Looking for a geographic thrill? Go where states meet Frigid travelers have no easy fixes when suffering temperature extremes en route 6 car accessories to make your road trip, and driving record, smoother **Read more fromTravel:** Read past Navigator columns here

Virgin Atlantic just used behavioral science to ‘nudge’ its pilots into using less fuel. It worked

In an unusual experiment that could have major implications for the role of corporations in fighting climate change, Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways recently teamed up with economists to try to “nudge” the company’s pilots to use less fuel, using a variety of behavioral interventions. And it apparently worked. The intervention was so cost effective, the researchers say, that it “outperforms every other reported carbon abatement technology of which we are aware.” The study suggests that Virgin — which has long had a sustainability program, and whose founder is a major champion of climate change action — could prove a model for others in the airline industry, and beyond, when it comes to shaping how employee behavior (including very high-level, skilled employees) affects the environment.   “These small-cost interventions can really have large ramifications for savings, not only for the airline, but for society,” added Robert Metcalfe, one of the study’s authors and an economist at the University of Chicago. The cost was so low, he said, because the study consisted of simply sending Virgin’s pilots various types of communications about their fuel use by mail to their home addresses. It was by providing this information about fuel use, combined with a variety of additional messages or incentives, that led pilots to change how they operated in a way that led to substantial fuel savings.  Still, all expectations are that most airlines, for some time, will run on petroleum-based fuels — leading not only to continuing carbon dioxide emissions, but also subjecting airlines to considerable price volatility from the global oil market. All of which makes changing how pilots operate the aircraft and shape its fuel consumption very important. Virgin’s pilots are highly skilled and well-compensated professionals, whose salaries average $ 175,000 to $ 225,000 per year, according to the study. And they have a great deal of control over precisely how much fuel they use in flight. Before takeoff, captains can decide how much fuel to put on the plane; during flight, they can make a number of decisions involving speed, altitude, route, and other factors that conserve fuel; and while taxiing, they can shut off one or more engines. All of these choices affect the amount of fuel burned. And while circumstances sometimes force pilots into routes or choices that burn additional fuel, their decisions still matter substantially. All 335 of Virgin Atlantic’s pilots were part of the experiment, and they were randomly assigned to four separate research groups. At minimum, in what is dubbed the “control” group, the pilots were informed that a study of their fuel use was happening. Then, they received no further information about it. Nonetheless, this simple alert about being part of a study had a dramatic effect, leading to substantially lower fuel use. “We were open with the captains, saying, ‘We’re going to randomize you,’” said the University of Chicago’s Metcalfe. “So what we find is, especially for how efficiently they flew the plane, and the engines being used in taxi in, the control group significantly increased their [fuel efficient] behavior.”  In one of the experimental cases, pilots were given monthly assessments of their fuel conservation performance during an eight-month period in 2014. In another, they received these assessments and also were given an explicit goal for cutting down fuel use, and received either praise when they succeeded or more encouragement to do better if they didn’t. And finally, in the last case, the company also made a charitable donation on their behalf if they met their goals — 10 pounds per month for hitting targets in each of the three fuel conservation areas. This the researchers dubbed the “prosocial group,” based on the idea that making pilots feel altruistic would influence their fuel saving behavior. All three experimental groups saved fuel even beyond how well the control group had done. And the groups that received targeted goals, or that received these goals and also saw charitable donations made if they met them, performed the best of all. As it turned out, however, the “prosocial” group didn’t perform any better overall than the group that was given clear improvement targets. However, pilots in this group did report the highest level of job satisfaction after the study period had ended. Overall, the experiment saved 6,828 metric tons of fuel for Virgin Atlantic, worth 3.3 million pounds (at a time when fuel costs were higher than now), according to the airline. That also prevented the emission of 21,507 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The vast majority of this impact came simply from the captains in the control group knowing that Virgin Atlantic was studying their behavior, but the actual experimental interventions pushed the savings up still further. The research is only the beginning, said Metcalfe — there could be big gains in other transportation related industries, too. In particular, he singled out the global shipping industry, which is also a major polluter and which has drawn increased attention for that reason in recent years. “I think this is our first foray into this environment, but I hope it’s going to spur much more research,” he said.

Stephen Hawking wants to use lasers to propel a tiny spaceship to Alpha Centauri

"There's one underlying big theme, which is looking for other life in the universe," Milner told The Post. "But this initiative also has a theme of pure exploration behind it."      The new project relies on a couple other Moore's-Law-adjacent moonshots as well. The team hopes that the rapid advancement of nanotechnology will allow engineers to create incredibly light solar sails to carry the craft, for example. And there's one more thing: Even if Milner's funding can create a spaceship tiny enough to hurtle through space with unprecedented efficiency, there's no way the power of sunlight will push it to the speeds he wants to obtain. "The sun is definitely not going to work for us here," Milner told The Post. "What you need is a much more focused beam."  In theory, this is all possible. In practice, it's a long shot in the extreme. Even Milner, who insists that this "is not a crazy idea" admits there are "about a dozen problems that need to be solved." They're big problems, too. But at least now, scientists and engineers who are interested in developing this technology will have a clear (and potentially lucrative) goal. "The message that Stephen Hawking and I want to send is that for the first time ever, this is an achievable goal," Milner said. "We can stand up and talk about it. Fifteen years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to make this investment. Now we've looked at the numbers, and it does." At Tuesday's announcement, Hawking spoke of humanity's need for exploration as a driving force behind the project. "I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits," he said. "Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America." "Today we commit to this next great leap into the cosmos because we are human and our nature is to fly," he said.  "I just think it would be cool to make it happen," he said.

GPS beacons needed to track planes

Regarding the Oct. 8 news article “As Flight 370 search resumes, experts ponder new ways to track airliners”: If we can track a migratory bird from Alaska to New Zealand, why can we not track airplanes crossing oceans? The technology exists but apparently not the willingness of the industry and the regulators. Such tracking systems should be out of any control of the cockpit crew: When the engines go on, so does the satellite beacon. Sending identification, GPS coordinates, heading and altitude via satellite or land systems should be easy and routine in this day and age. Orville and Wilbur Wright did not need it 110 years ago, but we do now. The cost of equipping planes with GPS beacons can’t be more than what it has cost so far to search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. ****Jay M. Sheppard** , Laurel**

The coming era of unlimited — and free — clean energy

The experts are saying the same about solar energy now.  They note that after decades of development, solar power hardly supplies 1 percent of the world’s energy needs.  They say that solar is inefficient, too expensive to install, and unreliable, and will fail without government subsidies.  They too are wrong.  Solar will be as ubiquitous as cellular phones are.    Despite the skepticism of experts and criticism by naysayers, there is little doubt that we are heading into an era of unlimited and almost free clean energy.  This has profound implications.  The environment will surely benefit from the elimination of fossil fuels, which will also boost most sectors of the economy.  Electric cars will become cheaper to operate than fossil-fuel-burning ones, for example.  We will be able to create unlimited clean water — by boiling ocean water and condensing it.  With inexpensive energy, our farmers can also grow hydroponic fruits and vegetables in vertical farms located near consumers.  Imagine skyscrapers located in cities that grow food in glass buildings without the need for pesticides, and that recycle nutrients and materials to ensure there is no ecological impact.  We will have the energy needed to 3D-print our everyday goods and to heat our homes. We are surely heading into the era of abundance that Peter Diamandis has written about — the era when the basic needs of humanity are met through advancing technologies. The challenge for mankind will be to share this abundance, ensuring that these technologies make the world a better place.

Solar power is part of the energy solution

As a homeowner with solar panels who has used zero kilowatts off the grid during the last two months, I found the June 10 news article “When the sun doesn’t shine, who pays?” very interesting. If I understand correctly, the power industry says I should pay an additional fee because I need the industry less than others do. Such logic raises questions as to how far the industry might go. If I make energy-efficiency decisions that my neighbor does not make, I pay less. If I choose to sit in the dark at night, I pay less. So should my utility then be allowed to charge me additional fees for those decisions, too? Perhaps, instead, the industry should invest in renewable energy and smart-grid technologies, reward energy efficiencies and promote rate decoupling. That would provide a long-term equitable solution for all their customers. ****Robert Keller** , Arlington** ● A lot of ordinary Americans are convinced that the climate crisis is coming faster than predicted. We’re doing what we can, since government action is blocked by regressive business interests. When my old slate roof finally goes, I want solar panels. But I’ll have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to install them. I wouldn’t be cadging off regular rate-payers; I’d be subsidizing their electric bills. I’d also be lightening the load on a utility company that wants to regulate my air-conditioner usage in the summer on those hot, sunny days. Utility companies around the country are worried they cannot meet demand. Solar homes are part of the solution, not part of the problem. ****Kristine Montamat** , Arlington**

Five myths about air travel

Airlines don’t just defy gravity; they also defy business norms. From the way they treat customers to the way ticket prices are determined to the blistering pace of change (the way we fly today is vastly different than even 10 years ago), the industry is shrouded in misunderstandings. As the summer travel season begins, here are five of the most notable. It stands to reason that a greater supply of seats would help meet demand and lower prices. A 500-seat plane requires just as many pilots, gates, landings, air traffic controllers and dispatchers as a 50-seat plane, so the per- passenger cost should be lower. A 2009 Telegraph story about the first Airbus A380 to hold 850 people said that “low-cost mass transit” of this sort would be “reducing fare prices to passengers.” The New York Times has explained that tickets on smaller planes are more costly because “the higher cost of fuel and other expenses gets split among fewer passengers.” The difficulty is that economies of scale don’t always work for airlines, because planes generally don’t increase in per-passenger efficiency as they grow larger. In fact, many of the most efficient planes of today are the smallest ones. At a transatlantic distance, a 525-seat Airbus A380 has an efficiency of 74 miles per gallon (mpg) per passenger, while the brand-new 168-seat Boeing 737 MAX 8 reaches 110 mpg per passenger. Smaller, more efficient planes allow airlines to operate less expensive nonstop routes. Airport fees can account for hundreds of dollars of a long-haul fare, because these flights often operate between the busiest, highest-demand airports. Most travelers living outside the largest cities are forced to connect through bigger, more expensive airports despite having originated at the least expensive airports. This routing drives up their fares. With newer, long-range small planes, however, airlines can operate nonstop long-haul flights from smaller markets. The new Boeing 737 MAX 8, which began flying in May, allows a company such as Norwegian Airlines to fly profitably from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Hartford, Conn., or between Cork, Ireland, and Providence, R.I. Flying is certainly costly in absolute terms. A round-trip ticket to Europe during midsummer can easily be priced at more than $1,500, nearly 3 percent of the salary of someone considered middle class. Citing pressure from consumer advocacy groups, the Justice Department even began a probe in 2015 into whether U.S. airlines colluded to keep airfares high, an investigation it has since dropped. But while flying might still be reserved for the middle and upper classes, it’s never been less expensive. In 1979, the average round-trip airfare in the United States was $617 (in 2016 dollars); today it’s down to $367. In 1974, the minimum legal price an airline could charge for a one-way ticket between New York and Los Angeles was $1,442 (in 2017 dollars), while today tickets between the two cities go for as little as $149. Meanwhile, according to AAA, the average cost to drive per mile in 2016 was 60 cents, while flying typically sets us back between 10 and 15 cents per mile. In a 25 mpg car, driving from Washington to Chicago would cost $66 in gas alone, while airfares are available on the route for as little as $47. Flying might seem expensive when you’re paying $50 to $100 an hour to sit in a 17-inch-wide seat, but for what you’re actually buying — transportation from Point A to Point B — flying is competitive with the car, bus and train, especially on longer routes. Airplanes are undoubtedly gas guzzlers. An A380 burns a gallon of fuel for every 1.5 seconds in the air. Flying this plane from Dubai to Sydney requires more than 65,000 gallons of fuel — more than the average American uses in his or her lifetime. Jet fuel emits more carbon dioxide per gallon than car fuel, and contrails are believed to have a short-term negative impact on the environment. FiveThirtyEight argued that “every time you fly, you trash the planet,” but its analysis relied on statistics from a company that sells carbon offsets for flights — numbers that assume cars can reach 44 mpg, which is absurd. ThinkProgress went further: A piece that assumed two or three people are riding in every car on long journeys concluded that “flying is not greener than driving.” What many statistics don’t account for, however, is just how many people airlines can pack into their planes. Lufthansa’s 747-8 seats 364 passengers. On a per-passenger basis, its flight from Frankfurt to Washington requires 65 gallons of fuel — not enough to get an SUV from D.C. to Denver. That plane averages 89 mpg per passenger, far higher than even the most efficient hybrid cars. If you have to choose between driving and flying, the plane is almost always the greener option. And to save money on gas, planes are becoming more energy efficient with each iteration, while carriers work to implement the use of biofuels to further reduce emissions. Before the turn of the century, the big three U.S. airlines — United, Delta and American — were eight separate carriers. In the past few decades, we’ve seen an intense consolidation of the industry, most recently with the merger of US Airways and American Airlines. The result is an oligopoly. Time magazine has argued that mergers are unquestionably bad for consumers, while the Daily Beast even blamed the recent United Airlines “dragging” incident on this consolidation. Yet this unfortunate situation is also a result of something positive: aggressive competition. After Southwest, the first low-cost carrier, found success, copycats took note. Virgin America, Allegiant Air, JetBlue and Frontier Airlines were all founded as low-cost carriers since 1990, and others, such as Spirit Airlines, have restructured into a low-cost model. Abroad, Norwegian Airlines, Wow Air and Eurowings have launched cheap trans- Atlantic operations , and AirAsia X will start crossing the Pacific to Honolulu late this month. The traditional U.S. airlines had trouble competing against these price-conscious companies. The competitive advantage today of the big three U.S. airlines is their route networks, which allow them to serve smaller cities. Delta, for instance, flies to more than 200 airports in the United States — in places like Billings, Mont. The mergers let a traveler in Key West, Fla., fly to Anchorage, Alaska, with just one connection. With prices as low as ever, this ability to traverse the country, from places big and small, surely is not bad for consumers. If you’ve flown overseas, you’ve seen the maps that show your plane’s route arcing dramatically north or south of the destination. This is actually a direct route in disguise. When a curved image such as a globe is fitted onto a flat plane such as a map, it creates a distortion; the shortest route between two points far north of the equator visually curves north. People explaining this phenomenon often say the plane’s route follows the shortest distance. “Flight-paths such as Berlin-Reykjavik-Boston are reasonably direct,” argued the Economist. As the Independent put it, “The shortest path between two points on the surface of the planet” is what steers a Copenhagen-to-Los Angeles flight “west-north-west, not west-south-west.” That’s not quite right. What truly determines a flight path is cost: Every minute of additional flight time on a large jet costs an airline hundreds of dollars, so routes generally correspond with the shortest overall flight time, which is not always the shortest distance. Air India’s flight from Delhi to San Francisco used to fly a direct route, taking it north over Russia, above Norway, across Greenland, then down over Canada to its destination. This route clocked in at roughly 8,600 miles. However, wind on Earth flows from west to east, so westbound flights take longer. Last fall, Air India started using a new route for this flight. While adding 900 miles of distance by traveling eastbound across China and the Pacific Ocean rather than westbound, Air India now saves more than $10,000 in fuel and two hours of flight time. Most examples of wind affecting flight paths aren’t nearly as drastic, but every route deviates at least slightly from direct to minimize costs because of wind. **_Twitter: @wendoverpro_ ** Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

This Texas fight shows just how conflicted we still are about ‘clean coal’

On the path to a low-carbon economy, most experts agree that a variety of strategies will be needed, from the dramatic expansion of wind and solar power to electrification or better biofuels for cars and planes. Some technologies remain more controversial than others, however. Carbon capture and storage — the idea of trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and other industrial sources before they are released into the atmosphere and then storing them, usually underground — is one such widely debated approach.

Cell phones on planes shouldn’t be the government’s call

Various government officials are crafting new policies on in-flight cell-phone use, the combined effect of which would be to allow Web surfing and text messaging from airplanes, but not voice phone calls. In other words, two steps forward, one step back.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There’s no scientific reason to limit any sort of cell-phone use on board, so the Federal Communications Commission can’t pretend that it has the grounds to limit it. The Transportation Department, though, might pick up the policy from there, banning voice calls under its “Aviation Consumer Protection Authority.” And if DOT doesn’t act, Congress might. Lawmakers have already proposed new restrictions on in-flight calling. Instead, they should all butt out. People fret that, absent government restrictions, the tweens in the next row over will freely dial up their BFFs all flight long. That’s unlikely, and not just because no one under 25 calls anyone anymore. Airlines will have total control over the cellular connection, if they choose to have one at all, so they could enforce all sorts of rules to adjust for customers’ tastes. Judging by public polls and the intensely negative reaction to the potential of in-flight cell-phone calling, many airlines probably won’t even consider allowing voice conversations. If some do, they will most likely move with high sensitivity to those worried about the noise. They might experiment with separate cabins or limit the number of calling-enabled planes. Even then, callers’ roaming charges will be high, discouraging long conversations. These are decisions airlines and their customers should be making, which is the best way to satisfy the most people — including, I hope, those of us who want to be able to make brief calls, perhaps to let our relatives know that the flight we’re on is late, without annoying people around us.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University People’s discomfort with the government removing its restrictions on in-flight phone use is beyond exaggerated, and it’s hardly a rational basis on which to base any federal policy. Instead of enforcing politeness, a job best left to airlines, flight attendants and individual passengers, it should simply loosen up. And so should the critics.

Will driverless cars solve our energy problems — or just create new ones?

Self-driving cars are all the rage these days. Companies like Google are building vehicles that can drive themselves with sensors and algorithms. Futurists are raving about how this will revolutionize transportation: fewer accidents, easier parking... It's reached the point where even Newt Gingrich is offering a "short course" on driverless cars.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And that got us wondering. If self-driving cars ever do become the future of transportation, what would that mean for energy, oil use and climate change in the decades ahead? Some backdrop: Last week, the National Academy of Sciences released a big report on how the United States could cut gasoline use and transport emissions 80 percent by 2050 — a key step toward addressing global warming and U.S. oil dependency. It would be difficult, the report said, but a big push on electric vehicles, advanced biofuels and efficiency could get us there.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In a follow-up post, David Roberts criticized the NAS for thinking too prosaically. The report assumed our transportation system would look basically the same in 2050, only with somewhat cleaner vehicles. And that might well be wrong. What if self-driving cars become ubiquitous and utterly transform the way we get around? The task of getting off oil and curbing emissions could be much easier — or much harder — than anyone thinks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Now, a future filled with driverless cars might be far-fetched, but it's interesting to ponder. So here are a few _very_ speculative thoughts on how self-driving cars could conceivably affect energy use in the decades ahead — assuming they ever catch on:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **How driverless cars could curb energy use and be great for the environment:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Driverless cars will be far more fuel-efficient._ That's the idea, anyway, laid out in this report from KPMG. Once we no longer need clumsy human drivers, then self-driving cars and trucks will be able to bunch close together at steadier speeds. Traffic jams and accidents will become a thing of the past. The robots will be driving as efficiently as possible.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The hope is that this could save thousands of lives. It could also have massive effects on energy use. The Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that the reduction in wind drag alone from vehicles traveling closely together could reduce fuel use 20 percent to 30 percent:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University *[WSU]: Wayne State University Driverless vehicles could also, in theory be much, much lighter — since collisions will no longer be a big concern. Cars that currently weigh 4,000 pounds could one day weigh just 750 pounds. That development  alone there would nearly double energy efficiency. _Driverless cars will waste less fuel on things like looking for parking._ One MIT study found that in congested urban areas, about 40 percent of total gasoline use in cars is spent as drivers look for parking. Presumably, intelligent self-driving cars wouldn't have this problem.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Driverless cars will make car-sharing more popular, which will mean fewer vehicles on the road._ Lots of self-driving-car enthusiasts have argued that car-sharing will be a popular model — after all, most privately owned cars are currently parked and idle 90 percent of the time. Wouldn't it make more sense for the self-driving car to make itself useful during that period? Car-sharing _could_ mean fewer cars overall.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Driverless cars will make the transition to electric vehicles easier._ Lighter, more efficient cars will be able to go much farther on a single battery charge, which means that "range anxiety" will be less of an issue for plug-ins.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Driverless cars will increase the appeal of walking and biking._ Since self- driving cars will (in theory) be much, much safer than human drivers, it'll be less dangerous to bike on the road. At the margins, that could be a boon to pedestrians.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Cities will become more appealing._ If traffic gets less crazy, if walking and biking become more attractive, and if parking is no longer a huge hassle, denser urban living might become more attractive. Since cities tend to be more energy-efficient than the suburbs, that could reduce energy use. (Although see below for a counterpoint.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **The flip side: How driverless cars could lead to a huge surge in energy demand.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _More and more people will drive._ Think about all the people who are not allowed to drive right now. Everyone under 16. The elderly. The disabled. People who are intoxicated or on medication. People who are sleeping. That's a huge portion of the population. And all of those people will be able to ride in driverless cars. And that means we could see many more car trips.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University That's a huge plus for mobility. But it also has big energy implications. At the moment, vehicle miles-traveled in the United States appears to have peaked back in 2005 — in part because fewer and fewer young people are getting their licenses and driving. Could self-driving cars reverse that trend? *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Public transportation could lose its appeal._ If driverless cars or driverless taxis catch on, then trains and buses could find themselves displaced. You can read or zone out in a driverless car just as easily as you can on the subway. Depending on how this all shakes out, it could mean more driving and higher energy demands.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Urban sprawl could greatly expand._ Arielle Duhaime-Ross has a good post on this. Right now, there's a serious limit to how sprawled-out a city can get — people tend to prefer to keep their commutes under an hour. But if driverless cars can offer quick, efficient transportation, then we could see more people spread out to the suburbs. It's possible this could mean bigger environmental effects. (That said, it would be a big gain for public health if commuting became less stressful and arduous.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Cars might need to be replaced more frequently._ If car-sharing became widespread, then driverless cars would be on the road and in motion far more often. This might mean cars would have a lifespan similar to that of police vehicles, about three to five years, rather than their current 11 years. It's hard to say what this would mean for energy use — cars could be upgraded more quickly as new technology became available — but it's another angle here.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University No doubt there are a million other possibilities I haven't thought of or missed, so feel free to add more in comments. **Further reading:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University ****\-- Some interesting thoughts on driverless cars fromDavid Roberts, Issi Romem, the Rocky Mountain Institute, Felix Salmon, Arielle Duhaime-Ross and Timothy Taylor.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University \-- Also note that the biggest hurdles currently facing driverless cars are legal impediments. That could well change in the years ahead, but safety concerns and other regulations could very well thwart a driverless-car boom.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University \-- Also, if this all sounds absurdly unrealistic, then check out the National Academy of Science's report on how to cut gasoline use in half by 2030 with more incremental technologies like hybrids and biofuels. Not as fun to think about, but perhaps more feasible.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

The strongest weapon to shift geopolitical balances isn’t nukes or missiles, it’s technology

Governments, businesses, and economists have all been caught off guard by the geopolitical shifts that happened with the crash of oil prices and the slowdown of China’s economy. Most believe that the price of oil will recover and that China will continue its rise. They are mistaken. Instead of worrying about the rise of China, we need to fear its fall; and while oil prices may oscillate over the next four or five years, the fossil-fuel industry is headed the way of the dinosaur. The global balance of power will shift as a result.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico LED light bulbs, improved heating and cooling systems, and software systems in automobiles have gradually been increasing fuel efficiency over the past decades. But the big shock to the energy industry came with fracking, a new set of techniques and technologies for extracting more hydrocarbons from the ground. Though there are concerns about environmental damage, these increased the outputs of oil and gas, caused the usurpation of old-line coal-fired power plants, and dramatically reduced America’s dependence on foreign oil.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The next shock will come from clean energy. Solar and wind are now advancing on exponential curves. Every two years, for example, solar installation rates are doubling, and photovoltaic-module costs are falling by about 20 percent. Even without the subsidies that governments are phasing out, present costs of solar installations will, by 2022, halve, reducing returns on investments in homes, nationwide, to less than four years. By 2030, solar power will be able to provide 100 percent of today’s energy needs; by 2035, it will seem almost free — just as cell-phone calls are today.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This seems hard to believe, given that solar production provides less than one percent of the Earth’s energy needs today. But this is how exponential technologies advance. They double in performance every year or two and their prices fall. Given that California already generates more than 5 percent of its electricity from utility-scale solar, it is not hard to fathom what the impact of another few doublings would be: the imminent extinction of the fossil-fuel industry. Exponential technologies are deceptive because they move very slowly at first, but one percent becomes two percent, which becomes four, eight, and sixteen; you get the idea. As futurist Ray Kurzweil says, when an exponential technology is at one percent, you are halfway to 100 percent, and that is where solar and wind energies are now.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Anyone tracking the exponential growth of fracking and the gradual advances that were being made in conservation and fuel efficiency should have been able to predict, years ago, that by 2015, the price of oil would drop dramatically. It wasn’t surprising that relatively small changes in supply and demand caused massive disruptions to global oil prices; that is how markets work. They cause commodities futures and stock prices to fall dramatically when slowdowns occur. This is what is happening to China’s markets also. The growth of China’s largest industry, manufacturing, has stalled, causing ripple effects throughout China’s economy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For decades, manufacturing was flooding into China from the U.S. and Europe and fueling its growth. And then a combination of rising labor and shipping costs and automation began to change the economics of China manufacturing. Now, robots are about to tip the balance further.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Foxconn had announced in August 2011 that it would replace one million workers with robots. This didn’t occur, because the robots then couldn’t work alongside human workers to do sophisticated circuit board assembly. But a newer generation of robots such as ABB’s Yumi and Rethink Robotics’ Sawyer can do that. They are dextrous enough to thread a needle and cost as much as a car does.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico China is aware of the advances in robotics and plans to take the lead in replacing humans with robots. Guangdong province is constructing the world’s first “zero-labor factor,” with 1,000 robots which do the jobs of 2,000 humans. It sees this as a solution to increasing labor costs.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The problem for China is that its robots are no more productive than their counterparts in the West are. They all work 24×7 without complaining or joining labor unions. They cost the same and consume the same amount of energy. Given the long shipping times and high transportation costs it no longer makes sense to send raw materials across the oceans to China to have them assembled into finished goods and shipped to the West. Manufacturing can once again become a local industry.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It will take many years for Western companies to learn the intricacies of robotic manufacturing, build automated factories, train workers, and deal with the logistical challenges of supply chains being in China. But these are surmountable problems. What is now a trickle of manufacturing returning to the West will, within five to seven years, become a flood.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico After this, another technology revolution will begin: digital manufacturing.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material to obtain the shape desired. In digital manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on 3D models — adding materials rather than subtracting them. The “3D printers” that produce these use powdered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials — much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. 3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. But these are slow, messy, and cumbersome — much like the first generations of inkjet printers were. This will change.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In the early 2020s we will have elegant low-priced printers for our homes that can print toys and household goods. Businesses will use 3D printers to do small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. Late in the next decade, we will be 3D-printing buildings and electronics. These will eventually be as fast as today’s laser printers are. And don’t be surprised if by 2030, the industrial robots go on strike, waving placards saying “stop the 3D printers: they are taking our jobs away.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The geopolitical implications of these changes are exciting and worrisome. America will reinvent itself just as does every 30-40 years; it is, after all, leading the technology boom. And as we are already witnessing, Russia and China will stir up regional unrest to distract their restive populations; oil producers such as Venezuela will go bankrupt; the Middle East will become a cauldron of instability. Countries that have invested in educating their populations, built strong consumer economies, and have democratic institutions that can deal with social change will benefit — because their people will have had their basic needs met and can figure out how to take advantage of the advances in technology.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Oh, no! Bill Nye’s solar sail spacecraft has lost contact with Earth

In a tragic twist of events, Bill Nye's solar-particle-propelled spacecraft has lost communications with Earth. The error, which stems from a simple software glitch, potentially threatens the entire mission: The only thing researchers think will salvage the experiment is a reboot of the computer — and efforts to reset the orbiting craft, called LightSail, aren't working. "There have been 37 Cal Poly and Georgia Tech ground station passes," wrote Jason Davis, Planetary Society's digital editor, in a blog post. "During half of those, reboot commands were sent to the spacecraft. Nothing has happened yet. Therefore, we have to assume that LightSail is only going to respond to the power button method."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico LightSail is humanity's most ambitious attempt yet at harnessing solar propulsion. The small satellite comes with a 344-square-foot solar sail designed to accelerate the craft using only the tiny particles that are constantly being ejected from the sun. But the early malfunction has largely taken the wind out of LightSail's, er, sail. Researchers traced the problem to an onboard data file that was constantly being updated with new information. Eventually the file size got too big, and it crashed the craft's avionics system, rendering it unresponsive. "There’s nobody in outer space to push that reset button," Nye told Davis. The only alternative now is to wait for a stray charged particle to hit the craft and cause a reboot — basically, the space-borne equivalent of giving your computer a whack, and hoping it works.

China installed record amounts of solar power in 2013. But coal is still winning.

There have been quite a few headlines lately about the record amounts of solar power getting built in China. In 2013, the country added at least 12 gigawatts of solar capacity — 50 percent more than any country has _ever_ __ built in a single year. Impressive.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But let's also put this in context. China is a massive country and is building lots of everything. And last year it added far more fossil-fuel output capability than it did solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power combined. The chart below comes from Armond Cohen of the Clean Air Task Force:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **New Electric Production Capability Added in China During 2013 (Terawatt Hours)**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Now, a few caveats: Many of those newly built coal and gas plants were replacing older, less-efficient plants that are getting shuttered. The solar numbers are also likely a bit low, since we're still awaiting final data. And this is only an estimate of generation _capability_ , not how much electricity each source will actually generate in practice. Still, the basic picture is clear enough: Clean energy is making dramatic strides in China, but fossil fuels continued to dominate in 2013.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University What about the future? Seeing as how China is now the world's largest emitter of carbon-dioxide emissions, the country's energy use matters a whole lot in discussions about climate change — especially its coal-burning habits. And, right now, there are two views on how those habits will evolve. **The optimistic green view:** Some analysts say that China can't keep burning dirty coal forever. Air pollution is choking its cities and taking years off people's lifespans. Meanwhile, clean energy sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric dams are making impressive gains. The country is also growing more slowly, getting more efficient and shifting away from heavy industry.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Citigroup analysts, for example, recently argued that China's coal use could well peak by 2015, far earlier than most other forecasts assume:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **The "coal is here to stay" view:** But not everyone agrees that coal's days in China are numbered. Even if China does __ slow down its pace of coal-plant construction, those power plants are going to stick around for many decades, continuing to pump carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. (The majority of China's plants have been built since 2000, and they can operate for 30 to 50 years.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Armond Cohen ran some numbers. He's not convinced by Citigroup's forecasts on Chinese fracking and nuclear construction. But set that aside. Even in Citigroup's most aggressive low-coal forecasts, coal would still provide 60 percent of China's power in 2020 — seven times as much as wind and solar combined.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As such, Cohen argues that a "peak coal" in China is far less likely than a "long, high plateau" for coal. That's why, he notes, tackling climate change will require "directly address[ing] the multi-decade carbon emissions from China’s coal fleet as it exists today and as it will exist in 2020 and 2030." And that would seem to require some sort of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for coal plants. (See here for more on that.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The energy analysts at BP seem to agree with the "plateau" view: In their latest Energy Outlook, they predicted that China won't keep building plants at the same frenetic pace it did in the 2000s. The rate of growth will slow significantly. But China's overall coal consumption will stay high for the next two decades, making up half of the world's coal use, and then decline only mildly after 2030:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Global coal consumption, by region**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And here's the global forecast: **Global energy consumption, by fuel:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As a result, BP predicts that global greenhouse-gas emissions will continue to increase for the next two decades — at a time when climate-policy experts think emissions need to start declining if we want a shot at avoiding 2°C or more of global warming.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University China's frenzy of solar and wind construction is definitely worth watching. But keep those broader trends in mind when you see those renewable records getting smashed. **Further reading:**Is China the last hope for carbon capture technology?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

How Europe is totally owning our in-flight electronics policy, again

Americans are feeling pretty smug after winning the right to use portable electronics on airplanes during takeoff and landing. In fact, we even beat Europe to the new rules by several weeks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But Europe is already leapfrogging ahead, thanks to a decision today from the European Commission that lets passengers use high-speed mobile data straight from their devices while in the air. The guidelines will make it possible for consumers to send e-mail and browse the Web at 3G and 4G LTE speeds, once airlines install the right equipment.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Here's how the system works. Signals get passed from a passenger's phone or tablet to a base station on the aircraft, which then relays the data to one of the dozens of communications satellites orbiting the Earth. The satellites pass the data to ground networks owned and operated by the wireless carriers, who then route it like normal. The low-power approach is a technical way of ensuring that in-flight devices don't interfere with aircraft electronics or terrestrial devices on Earth.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University All that service comes at a cost, though. European fliers will be charged by their wireless providers at "rest of world" roaming rates, which could easily add up. And, of course, whether they can take advantage of the speeds at all depends on whether the airlines decide it's cost-effective to install the base stations. Still, it's not a totally untested system. Back in 2008, European carriers got approval to start offering voice services using the same technology — and not long after that, support was added for data services over 2G. Today's rule expands on those, adding 3G and 4G spectrum to the mix. Meanwhile, here in the United States, we're still stuck with plain-old in-flight Wi-Fi, in part because even our newest portable electronics guidelines come with a catch: Passengers have to keep their devices on airplane mode the whole time they're on board, unless they're connecting to the Web with paid services such as Gogo or Row 44. One byproduct of this is that the U.S. market for in-flight Internet will probably remain limited to a few providers for the foreseeable future. Why don't more businesses, particularly wireless carriers, enter the market? Part of it has to do with cost — Gogo's system involves a pricey combination of cell towers that only talk to airplanes, as well as deals with satellite companies — but as Europe seems to show, there's clear demand for an in-flight Internet solution that doesn't require customers to pay a third party.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Can science solve climate change?

WHAT HAPPENS if humans fail to cut carbon dioxide emissions enough to prevent worsening climate change? A new report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences contemplates some very unattractive — but potentially necessary — backup plans. Ending deforestation seems like an obvious answer. But, the report found, planting more trees won’t do enough to suck CO2 out of the air. Instead, humans might have to use decidedly less natural methods to counteract global warming. The report discusses two options. Scientists could try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Or they could reflect more sunlight back into space. This is called climate intervention or geoengineering, and it’s very controversial in scientific and environmental circles. Geoengineering poses all kinds of problems. Directly removing carbon dioxide from the air is a very slow process, and the removed gas would need to be stored somewhere. Fertilizing the ocean with tiny bits of iron would encourage phytoplankton to grow and consume CO2, but it could alter the ocean environment in unknown ways. Spraying sulfur dioxide particles — which spew out of erupting volcanoes naturally — would reflect sunlight, but doing so would also thin the ozone layer, change rain patterns and potentially encourage international conflict. Other ideas, such as painting rooftops and streets white, might help. But no strategy to increase reflection would solve problems such as ocean acidification, which would continue so long as carbon dioxide levels are high. The financial cost of researching, building and operating climate intervention projects would be formidable. Facilities to remove carbon dioxide from the air, the report notes, might well cost more than simply replacing polluting power plants with renewables. Cheaper techniques such as blasting sulfur dioxide into the sky would require perpetual effort absent serious cuts in carbon dioxide output. The longer the world hesitates to put global emissions on a downward slope, the harder the cleanup task will be. Given the risks associated with climate intervention, it makes no sense to bet the climate on the ingenuity of future generations. But the planet should have a backup plan — or, at least, the beginnings of a backup plan. The National Academy report points out that policymakers and scientists have hardly embarked on the basic research, analysis and planning. Further research could encourage people to put more faith in the potential of geoengineering, even though cutting carbon dioxide emissions remains the better option. That could help those who resist greenhouse emissions reductions. But there’s also a risk that those same people will win out anyway, leaving the world with little recourse absent a backup plan. Congress has not been wise in its handling of the domestic discretionary budget over the past several years, shortsightedly declining to invest in important research and infrastructure. With the resources available, low-carbon energy technologies should remain the funding priority. But the National Academy report should at least put climate intervention on the table as worthy of some support. **Read more about this topic:** Andy Parker and David Keith: What’s the right temperature for the Earth? Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway: 14 concepts that will be obsolete after catastrophic climate change Catherine Rampell: Dangerously in denial on climate change David Ignatius: The moral issue of climate change

Flying cars: Are they coming? Yes. Do we need them? No.

Outside Boston, a team boasting nine MIT degrees wants to end your terrible commute. There’s no sitting in traffic when you can hit a button, take off vertically and fly straight to your destination. Ahh yes, the dream of the Jetsons realized. Eager investors have poured $10 million into Terrafugia, which thinks it will improve human freedom thanks to flying cars. The team’s intentions appear very good. They want to do something grand, as we are reminded:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday There are actually quite a few people trying to get to Mars right now, and some attempting to cure cancer. Others are even trying to cure diseases while _in_ space. But I digress.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Flying cars — which might generate drone-like excitement from the masses — appear a misguided solution to humanity’s hard problems of today. If flying cars pass regulatory hurdles, sell at an affordable price and end the era of congested roads, we will have made long commutes tolerable. Long commutes are indeed a pain, but climate change is worse. Encouraging more commuters to burn fuel in their flying cars isn’t going to help. If long commutes lose their drawbacks, we’ll encourage more sprawl. Our best hope against climate change is denser living, public transportation and walkable or bikeable commutes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Let’s check out the flying cars Terrafugia is building, shall we? Here’s the Transition, rumbling down a street with an awkwardness we haven’t seen since the stair car in Arrested Development.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The wings fold up for driving, or if you want to store the Transition in a garage. The expected base price for it is $279,000, and it’ll reportedly be available in mid-2016. It cruises at 100 mph while aloft and burns five gallons per hour while cruising. For flying car enthusiasts, one drawback is you need a runway to take off.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The really exciting and appealing offering from Terrafugia is the TF-X, which will have a top speed of 200 mph. It will take off like a helicopter, meaning you won’t need a runway in your backyard. It’s expected to take eight to 12 years to develop. With all that time, perhaps we will all be able to realize that buying a flying car is the last thing we need.

TSA permits small knives, bats and golf clubs but holds firm on shampoo

Initially, the announcement that the TSA was permitting airline passengers to carry small bats onto the plane made me very excited. “Bats on a plane!” I shrieked. “Get Samuel L. Jackson some leathery wings.” But then I discovered that they meant the other kind of bats — under a certain weight and up to a certain length, of course. Wiffle bats are mildly exciting, but they’re no winged bloodsuckers. On Wednesday, the list of things that are considered threats grew even more oddly specific. You can carry a knife on board, so long as it isn’t a dangerous, stabby knife. CNN reports: “Knives with blades that are 2.36 inches (6 centimeters) or shorter and less than a 1/2 inch wide will be permitted on U.S. airline flights as long as the blade is not fixed or does not lock into place. Razor blades and box cutters are still not permitted.” And no large bottles of shampoo! Nope. We can all agree that 2.36 inches of blade pose no significant threat, but if anyone makes it to her destination with enough Pantene to last more than two days — well, that would be letting the terrorists win.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Flight attendants are ticked about the move. They may well have a point — especially during the sequester, when lines are promised to mushroom into terrifying sprawls of wretched, red-eyed, unkempt travelers, expanding people’s access to sharp objects may not be the best plan. Tiffany Hawk, the author of “Love Me Anyway,” a forthcoming novel “about two young flight attendants coming of age at 35,000 feet,” and a former flight attendant herself, notes that, “We need faster and easier checkpoints, but instead of coming up with a novel approach, the TSA wants to go backward. Allowing such weapons just doesn’t make sense. Unless, of course, you believe the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a billiards cue is a good guy with a Wiffle ball bat.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University I cannot argue with the idea that what we need is faster and easier checkpoints. But that’s exactly what we ain’t going to get. We are still permitted to bring onboard with us many more threatening things. Crying babies, for instance. And airplane food! And hack comics making jokes about babies and airplane food!  I would much rather sit next to someone with more than two pool cues. But honestly, contemplate this ban a moment. “Damn and blast!” some terrorist is saying right now. “How did they know that we were using 2.37-inch blades? We have to abort.” “I needed at least three golf clubs,” his colleague adds. “Two just won’t cut it.” “My bat exceeds the weight guidelines,” one of his colleagues murmurs. “How do they know? They’re always so many steps ahead of us!” “We could try something with comically oversized, inflatable bats,” someone says, hopelessly. “Or Wiffle bats!” “Don’t be ridiculous,” everyone hushes him. “Hey, they considered those threats for years,” he points out. “Maybe they saw something we didn’t.” “Or the hip plates of the elderly?” someone else pipes up. “Those seemed risky to them, too. Or, heck, 4-year-olds. In general. They even frisked one. Clearly, we need to dig deeper.” The minor ridiculousness of this change pales in comparison to the absurdity of the system as a whole. This is the sort of oddly specific parsing that ensues when you take the least nuanced approach possible. Talk to people? No. Just have them take off their shoes. Currently, our airport security system does a wonderful job protecting us against whatever has just happened. And forcing us to buy travel-size shampoos. Actually, as a scheme to encourage the travel-size shampoo industry, it is an unmitigated success. If nothing else, it’s been a great way to experience exactly what 3 ounces of liquid is!    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Just loosening the bans on items that everyone agrees are absurdly innocuous doesn’t necessarily mean we’re moving toward a more sensible policy, though. That seems unlikely. The emphasis is still on the things you carry, not how you carry them.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University CNN reported: “TSA spokesman David Castelveter said the changes announced Tuesday will not slow down the screening process by requiring screeners to measure knife blades and weigh plastic bats. Screeners will use ‘common sense’ when applying the rule, he said.” Given that the last time screeners were asked to use common sense when applying a rule, they were frisking old men with plates in their hips and 4-year-olds, I cannot say that I am overly optimistic. But you never know. Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic, and this is the beginning of an evolution towards a wiser, more nuanced approach! At this rate, we’ll actually have sensible limits on carry-ons by, oh, 2035 or so.

NASA might put a drone on Mars

Drones, and autonomous helicopters in particular, seem to be quite the buzzing technology these days. But could they be headed to Mars, too?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Engineers have gotten pretty good at putting rovers on Mars -- and making them so they last a long, long time. As of this weekend, the Opportunity rover has outlived its primary mission length by _44 times. _ But one of the reasons that longevity is so critical? Mars has rocky, uneven terrain. It takes a long time for a wheeled rover to traverse a gritty canyon. Even Curiosity, the most recent NASA rover on Mars, is having some difficulties; its wheels have been damaged by all the poking and pitching the planet's terrain throws at it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So how do you maximize the scientific findings you get from a robot if you can't even move it from point A to point B without years of effort and the risk of irreparable damage? Put a drone on it. Engineers at NASA JPL (seen in the above video) are working on a proposed add- on to future rovers, such as Mars 2020. In theory, Mars drones would be great: They could soar over the rough surface of the red planet, quickly imaging large areas and selecting the best touch-down spots to optimize scientific analyses. Even if the helicopter was separate from the science-doing rover (as the current prototypes are) they would still be able to pick a perfect route and destination for their partnered robot, maximizing the rover's success.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Unfortunately it's not as simple as popping a commercial drone into space. Mars has less gravity, but it also has a much thinner atmosphere. Since copters get their lift by cutting through dense air, a copter on Mars needs to be designed to compensate. Researchers also need to make sure that the rover can _always_ land perfectly when it touches down. A rover doesn't need to crash and burn in order to be dead on arrival: A poor landing can mean the robot is just slightly askew, leaving it unable to right itself or expose its solar panels to enough light.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Every day, scientists watching on earth would have seven seconds of terror as they waited for their drone to touch down safely. But with the potential to triple the daily distances currently surveyed by traditional rovers, the risk could well be worth it.

Carbon and more carbon

[A quick note before I dash off for marathon interviews.] Flew in Friday night late to Los Angeles, and as always I found the view from the plane to be awesome and vaguely terrifying. It’s such a sprawling metropolis. A marine layer had enfogged much of the basin, and that layer of moisture glowed, lit from below, looking organic, like something cultured in a Petri dish. Then when you hit the ground, and explore a bit, and walk around amid the vegetation off the beaten path, you discover the whole place is pretty close to being a desert. How can millions of people survive here? One thinks of the plumbing, the heroic aqueducts, and the movie “Chinatown.” Water from distant mountains somehow finds its way to the lawns of Pasadena. But the place on its face does not radiate sustainability. Steve Mufson has an ominous piece today about a new report saying that the steady rise in CO2 emissions, much of it driven by China, is putting us on a trajectory for a 9 degree C. increase in global surface temperatures. That’s the outcome we don’t want! We can handle 2 degrees or so. You get up to numbers like 9 and all bets are off. The U.S. is seeing a drop in emissions, as is Europe, but China’s economic growth and its reliance on coal-powered electricity more than makes up for the modest improvements in the West. (Obviously per capita we still emit far more CO2.) This is a tough nut to crack because energy, and specifically hydrocarbon-based energy, is so basic to our lives. Fossilized sunshine packs a powerful punch. The big news out here is that the San Onofre nuclear plant is shutting down. It’s old, and needed expensive repairs. It was time for it to go. But that single plant produced close to 10 percent of California’s electricity, if I’m not mistaken (someone correct me if I’m wrong). When you drive past San Onofre, as I did this weekend, you see multiple high-voltage transmission lines crossing I-5 and disappearing in the hills. That’s a huge source of energy being removed from the grid here. California is making big strides, however, with renewable energy. There’s a massive solar array going up in the Mojave, and it’ll be utility-scale solar energy. In the meantime, this summer could see blackouts, potentially, and a lot of enforced energy conservation. Start charging your batteries now, is my advice.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University I spend a lot of time wondering how it will play out — the whole grand human experiment, the efflorescence of the technological species, the mastery of fire and all that followed. The planet is now occupied by 7 billion human beings, and that number is going to 9 billion in the next few decades, ensuring convergent challenges of food, energy and water, on a warming world with residual medieval tensions, pockets of fanaticism, broad inequality, loss of biodiversity, and so on. There are times when it seems hopeless. In general, though, I think civilization has a knack for figuring things out, and adapting. Maybe that’s naive. Maybe that’s too trusting. At heart I’m an old-fashioned believer in Progress, still, despite contradictory data-points and all the challenges of the modern world. When people tell me about some concern they have about their kids, I say, “Believe in them.” And I try to believe in civilization, too. I try.

Carbon and more carbon

Gadgets on planes: The electrified debate goes on

When Kenneth Kirchoff notices that an airline passenger has failed to power off his gadget as instructed, he’ll politely point out the oversight. He might use a nonconfrontational line such as this: “Excuse me — did you realize that you didn’t turn off your device?” What he doesn’t mention during this brief interaction is who he is, what he knows and why you should listen to him. If he won’t share, I will. Kirchoff is a research and development engineer with Boeing. Since 2003, he has been testing aircraft to ensure the safe usage of portable electronic devices (PEDs) onboard, focusing on how signals emitted from passengers’ gadgets can muddle pilots’ communications, navigation or surveillance systems. His conclusion: “Interference is possible.” The debate over PED use on planes has turned into a seething nest of Angry Birds. On one side are passengers, legislators such as Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and electronics manufacturers and suppliers. These folks question the science, and sense unfairness in the rule requiring travelers to unplug all devices during takeoff and landing. This contingent wants its e-readers, its tablets, its DVD players, its video games, its Words With Friends (that one’s for you, Alec Baldwin) and other techy diversions for the entire span of the journey — not just the middle portion. Our customers “not only want to use PEDs in all phases of flight, they observe that many passengers already do, unintentionally or not,” Paul Misener, vice president of global public policy at Amazon, told the Federal Aviation Administration during a comment period on the topic. “They also know that pilots use PEDs in the cockpit; they see many other in-flight distractions besides PEDs; and they logically ask why PEDs are permitted on board aircraft if they actually are unsafe.” In the other corner are airline industry experts, including aviation engineers, professors and flight crew members, who support the regulation based on a variety of findings and rationales. This group, however, is receptive to the possibility of new evidence and innovations that could spark an overhaul of the current rule, as long as the adjustments don’t jeopardize passenger safety. “The science needs to be looked at again,” said Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. “We want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it does not cause interference.” The FAA sits in the middle of a fray of its own creation. It established the rule and relies on airline personnel to uphold it. But the regulation isn’t inscribed in stone, and the agency could grab a chisel and start chipping away at any time. Listen closely, because you may one day hear the sound of a regulation disassembling. In January, the agency created the Portable Electronic Devices-Aviation Rulemaking Committee (PED-ARC) and invited a broad cross-section of industry experts to participate. Members include Amazon, Boeing, the Consumer Electronics Association, JetBlue and the Association of Flight Attendants, among others. The group will submit its recommendations by the end of July. The FAA will then review the material and decide whether to change the current rule or keep it as it is. Of course, bureaucracy often moves as slowly as a snail stuck in gum, so we’ve got some time to kill. Let’s spend some of it discussing what we know about PEDs on planes. All electronic devices give off electromagnetic radiation and fit squarely into one of two categories: intentional emitters, which are designed to send and receive signals (smartphones, laptops, tablets) and unintentional emitters (DVD players, Nintendo games, calculators). The signal strength varies according to gadget type. Cellphones, for example, send strong signals, especially when they are struggling to stay connected to a tower. Electric razors, by comparison, have the power of a sneezing flea. Even gadgets in sleep mode emit a signal; hence flight attendants’ insistence that passengers completely power off all devices. The government bans a few PED uses on planes outright, such as making calls on a cellphone. (The Federal Communications Commission oversees this segment of the industry but leaves the rest to the FAA.) Walkie-talkies, pagers and radios also appear on the short blacklist. “Hundreds of phones moving at that speed would introduce a lot of signaling within the network,” said Philip Levis, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University, “as they jump from cell tower to cell tower.” Unsanctioned WiFi service is also forbidden. The concern: A device’s dogged quest for a connection could tread on the avionic system’s primary bandwidth. “Emissions into these bands can degrade the accuracy and performance of the systems,” said Kirchoff. The blocks of time that bookend every flight are crucial moments, with heightened risk for accidents and mishaps. For this reason, the flight crew needs to weed out meddlesome distractions. In the cabin, flight attendants require passengers’ undivided attention while they explain the safety procedures and prepare travelers for landing. Up in the cockpit, pilots demand ninja-like focus to perform multi-step maneuvers. A signal from an e-reader probably won’t ice their systems, but it could create a distracting noise. “You can upset certain equipment with high enough power,” said Kirchoff. “This is added workload for the pilot who needs a high level of concentration.” For a loose analogy of PED interference, Levis draws on a casual conversation: “When someone is speaking to you softly in a silent room, you can hear them fine. But if someone else starts talking at the same time, you can’t understand them.” A handful of personal gadgets left on may have limited or unnoticed impact on avionics, a fact probably proven on every flight. Yet multiply that number by 75 or 100 or 800, and you’re talking about a loud cocktail party of chatter. “It can have a cumulative effect,” said Kirchoff, “and can increase the level of noise and electronic signals.” To date, PEDs haven’t caused any crashes, but pilots have noted incidents. In an October 2012 survey by the Association of Flight Attendants, nearly 12 percent of crew members said that they’d received a cockpit request for passengers to turn off their devices because of “suspected electromagnetic interference.” NASA safety reports have also documented several situations involving PEDs. For instance, a few years ago, a Canadair pilot noted a compass system malfunction after takeoff. The issue cleared up after a passenger switched off his iPhone. Kirchoff has heard of similar anecdotes, although the Boeing scientist and his colleagues have never corroborated these reports. But he still supports the FAA rule. Of course, we — a royal pronoun that includes Kirchoff — are only human. People can be forgetful or lazy and neglect to turn off their gadgets. According to the flight attendants’ study, nearly 75 percent of surveyed crew members have witnessed passengers disobeying the PED policy on every flight. Almost 83 percent of respondents said that the violation involved a refusal to turn off a cellphone. In a separate study, the Consumer Electronics Association conducted a survey of in-flight habits in 2003 and again in 2013. A key discovery: “Airline passengers are less concerned about the potential for interference with aircraft systems caused by PEDs than they were a decade ago.” Between takeoff and landing, the rules do loosen up. Some international carriers, such as Qatar Airways, Ryanair and Lufthansa, provide in-flight cellphone service. Passengers use their own phones inside a telecom bubble designed and certified specifically for the aircraft. “Some airlines have installed systems to make this possible without interfering with airline systems or ground-based cellphone systems,” said Perry Flint, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. In addition, a growing number of airlines (United, Southwest, American, JetBlue, etc.) are offering Internet through a special WiFi plan. The low-fare bus model has sprouted wings. And of course, passengers are free to switch on their e-whatevers — in airplane mode only — once the plane reaches a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet. They can noodle around with their gadgets until the final descent. “It’s what, 20 minutes, maybe less than that?” said Caldwell, referring to the no-PED time frame. One of Boeing’s projects is to design and build an aircraft tolerant of PEDs. Kirchoff said that the models are in“testing phase.” But the experts will need to put on their running shoes to keep up with technology. “Wireless and electronic technologies change so quickly,” said Levis, “and planes are intended to last for decades.” Levis is an advocate of the current FAA rule. “I’d be very uncomfortable if people had many kinds of electronic devices communicating wirelessly during flight,” he said, “in part because some might be rare or do strange things that nobody has tested for safety in a plane.” Flight attendants, who already fight for passengers’ attention, are also partial to the regulation. “We are first responders, not the PED Brigade,” said Caldwell. Kirchoff also sits on the turn-them-off side of the fence. “There are a lot of layers of safety,” he said. “If you remove [one] layer, you increase the probability of something happening.” He also brings up a related hazard that you don’t need a PhD to understand: “You don’t want to have laptops flying around.” **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

Should we use geoengineering to cool the Earth? An interview with David Keith.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to slow the pace of global warming. We could stop adding carbon-dioxide to the atmosphere. Or we could try to artificially cool the planet — say, by putting reflective particles in the stratosphere to block (some) sunlight.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The first option is typically the only one that comes up in policy discussions. But climate scientist David Keith has long argued that we should start thinking seriously about _both_ strategies. His new book, "A Case for Climate Engineering _,_ " __ makes the argument at length.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It's a highly controversial view. After all, geoengineering is fraught with risks. Things could go badly awry. And Keith is upfront about those dangers — indeed, he has called for an international moratorium on deployment until we understand the technology better. But geoengineering may be the best way to limit some of the damage from the carbon-dioxide we've already put in the atmosphere. At the very least, he says, scientists need to start researching the idea more thoroughly.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Keith, who left the University of Calgary in 2011 for a position at Harvard's School of Engineering and Sciences, talked with me this week about his new book. **Brad Plumer: So, what is the basic case for geoengineering?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **David Keith:** First — and this is going to sound very pedantic and academic — but it's important to say what you actually mean by "geoengineering."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University I would prefer if we mainly talked about the ideas that are called "solar radiation management," or "solar geoengineering," which involve cooling the earth by reflecting away some sunlight. All of these ideas are scientifically quite similar; they're all risky; they all act very fast; and they're all cheap.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There's another set of ideas around geoengineering the carbon cycle [i.e., figuring out ways to take carbon out of the atmosphere]. I'm not saying this approach is better or worse, but it's completely different and it doesn't have the same acute challenges of governance.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP: Okay. So, reflecting sunlight to cool the planet -- why should we consider this?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** The best case for taking solar geoengineering seriously is that the balance of scientific evidence we have — from the same kind of climate models and other science that we use to understand climate change — suggests that these technologies could, if used carefully, significantly reduce climate risk. Full stop.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University These technologies appear to provide a pathway by which we could substantially reduce climate risks over the next half-century. That means reducing the risks of sea-level rise, reducing the risks of stress for the crops of people in the poorest and hottest parts of the world. This would be complementary to emissions reductions. Nothing changes the fact that in the long run, the only way to manage carbon risk is to stop emitting carbon-dioxide. But, similarly, nothing we know about cutting carbon-dioxide emissions says that's going to help us deal with the risk of CO2 that's already in the atmosphere, or deal with climate risks in the very short term. So you can look at cutting emissions as a long-term solution and geoengineering as more of a short-term solution. **BP: There are all sorts of ways we could reflect sunlight to cool the planet. Volcanoes do this by putting sulfate particles in the atmosphere. What are the most realistic options here?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** There are a very broad range of things you could put in stratosphere. There are sulfates, which mimic nature, so we have lot of confidence about how they would act, though we also know a lot of the disadvantages there. And then there are other types of engineered particles that might work better, but we also know less about them.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The other idea that's probably most prominent is that we could add fine sea salt spray to certain kinds of marine clouds and make them a little whiter. Often people get caught up in scientific reporting about all the different methods here. But they're all kind of similar. The hard questions aren't technical but rather about how to manage the risk, about who makes the decisions to use these technologies. **BP: Let's talk about those risks. What are the biggest ones?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** We can say what the technical risks are. Putting sulfates in the stratosphere can accelerate the depletion of ozone that comes from the chlorine that we've already put there from CFCs. It could change atmospheric circulation in ways that are hard to predict exactly. The sulfates could also make their way down to the lower atmosphere, where they'll contribute to air pollution. It's a small contribution proportionally, but that doesn’t make someone who's sick because of it feel better.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The bigger risks have to do with misuse. People often talk about using these technologies to return temperatures to pre-industrial levels. If you did that, that would be a dramatic climate cooling, with bad consequences, like reducing precipitation a lot. And the most fundamental risk is that the technology has enormously high leverage, by which I mean it's cheap and a single small nation could use it by itself. We lack even the basics of how to create a norm of behaviors around this technology, let alone a treaty to make decisions about how to set the thermostat. **BP: Isn't there a concern that focusing on geoengineering will distract people from the task of cutting carbon emissions? What do you say to those critics?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** First, I think that's a completely valid concern. I think I was the first person to introduce the term "moral hazard" into this debate some 15 years ago. If we get to the point where these technologies are used and seem to be working, I think it is likely that it will distract somewhat from cutting emissions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But while it’s a concern, I don't think it's a reason to say no. When you introduce seat belts, people tend to drive a little bit faster. When you introduce AIDS drugs, people may have riskier sex, at least some of them. But I think it would be perverse to say that because there are these risk-compensation behaviors that you shouldn't introduce some sort of risk-reducing technology. It's important to be clear about the moral imperative here. Nothing plausible we do to reduce emissions in the next, say, quarter-century is going to materially reduce the risks for real people, especially some of the poorest and most vulnerable on our planet from climate change. So, yes, the potential moral hazard is a major problem. But the fact that it’s a major problem is hardly an argument for foregoing a technology that might substantially reduce risk for those living now. **BP: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report made a similar point. Itsaid that even if we cut emissions drastically today, the benefits will take awhile to materialize. Sea levels will keep rising for the next 50 years no matter what. Our only choice is between a big rise or an even bigger rise:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** And will continue for half a millennium. Even if we stopped all emissions today, you're looking at a change that goes on for centuries.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP:** **Right. So is the basic idea that geoengineering would help us deal with some of the short-term climate problems, while curtailing carbon emissions is necessary to deal with the broader set of long-term problems?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** Yes. But "dealing with it" doesn't mean dealing with it perfectly. For example, solar radiation management technology does nothing to manage the carbon that's changing the acidity of ocean waters, or so-called ocean acidification.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It's also possible that over a centuries-long timescale we could find safe technological means to remove carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere at scale. (And full disclosure: I work on a company related to that.) That does deal with what you might call the root problem. But solar geoengineering technologies don't do that. They only reduce near-term risks, or at least they seem to.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP: So your argument is that we should at least start researching geoengineering more seriously?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** There are some very thoughtful reasons to be cautious here. But I think ignorance is dangerous. If you choose not to research, that means we may later make decisions in ignorance and in a rush, and that’s typically how you make bad decisions. My view is that we would be better off to know more.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP: At the same time, you've also called for a moratorium on large-scale deployment of stratospheric spraying. Why?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** I think there are very legitimate concerns that there's going to be this inevitable slide from research to deployment. That there will be an institutional lock-in. And we need to think about ways to stop that, and one of those ways is an international moratorium against deployment.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP: So what does geoengineering research actually look like?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** A lot of the research program would look like an application of normal science, in the sense that there's a huge amount of scientific knowledge about climate and about aerosols and fine particles from air pollution research and other research. So part of it is taking that body of knowledge and applying it to this problem.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Currently there aren't any organized federal research programs here, although there are some programs in Europe, which is surprising given our expectation that America is more likely to embrace technological fixes than Europe. I also think there's a danger of group-think, especially with a highly uncertain technology like this. It would be very unwise to have a single coordinated research program. Right now, there's a small group of people who work on this topic, the "geonerds," and we've convinced ourselves of a broad set of facts. But we might be wrong! And if I were organizing a research program, I would work hard to get a red team, blue team effect. Have researchers who are trying to figure out exactly why this wouldn't work.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP: How would we conduct actual experiments into geoengineering?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** There's a host of experiments that could be done at a very small scale. They don’t actually attempt to perturb the climate, but they do attempt to investigate some of the key processes that we need to know about to understand how this would work.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So, Professor James Anderson and I here at Harvard are working on developing experiments — and they're not yet funded, so they're not necessarily going ahead — that would look at ways in which sulfate aerosols interact with ozone chemistry in the stratosphere. But the amount of sulfur would be in the kilograms, and the climate impact would be less than that from a few minutes of an airplane flight. **BP: Can you actually get useful data from a small experiment like that? Or will there be things we'll never know unless we actually try it on a large scale?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** Yes and yes. We think there is very useful data to be drawn about exactly how these chemicals do or don't amplify ozone loss. But no amount of research is going to remove all uncertainties. There will always be uncertainties.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **BP: You mentioned that the biggest questions are around the politics of geoengineering. Who would control the technology? Who gets to set the thermostat? How does this play out?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** We had an essay in Science recently about this question. The answer is that people really don’t know. This is a new technology. It can be used cheaply; anyone can deploy it. It can be used for war. It's a lot like the type of power you get with a nuclear weapon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But there a lot of specific ideas for governance. If we’re ever going to have actual deployment — and we're quite a ways away from that — then we're probably going to need governance that's at level of the U.N. Security Council or something like that. Whether or not the U.N. is the right mechanism, nobody knows. There are obvious questions about who gets to weigh in on decisions to use geoengineering. But that's true of any high-leveraged technologies. New genetic technologies or nuclear weapons raise many of the same issues. But that doesn't mean we necessarily fail. We have had nuclear weapons for more than half a century now. And we have had some very close calls, but we haven't blown it. We have managed smallpox stocks and various other diseases without disasters. So I think there are realistic prospects for getting it right. **BP: At the beginning you mentioned technologies that could, conceivably, suck carbon out of the atmosphere. That sounds much less controversial. Why can't we just focus on that?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **DK:** I think you can more or less say that doing that quickly is impossible. To take carbon out of the atmosphere, you have to materially manage this enormous volume of material. We're talking hundreds of billions of tons of carbon. I think it’s close to impossible to think there will be some magic easy way to do that.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Big box solar and the clean energy revolution

IKEA may have just fired the latest salvo in the clean energy revolution. Within the next 10 months, IKEA will begin selling flat-pack solar panel kits to retail customers in all of its 17 U.K. stores. And if that experiment is successful, IKEA could roll out the experiment to stores in the United States and the rest of the world. That means that, while shopping at IKEA for cheap, affordable furniture, you can now stock up on solar panel kits to transform your home into an energy-saving showcase.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The innovative Swedish company already uses solar panels to power 40 of its U.S. locations, and is making available the same technology to the mainstream public. The same way you might navigate through the aisles of an IKEA picking up well-designed items at low prices – while simultaneously having a bit of fun with the delightfully absurd Swedish names for the products — you will also be able to load a few flat pallets of IKEA solar energy panels into your cart. Almost everyone can imagine checking out of IKEA with a DIY solar panel package (even if it costs almost $10,000) – something that’s not necessarily the case with other forms of renewable energy. (Presumably, it’s much more difficult to create flat-pack mini-nuclear reactors for the home.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University What makes IKEA’s initiative so groundbreaking is not so much that the solar panels are being sold on shelves to the public at the big box retail level (you can already purchase solar panels at Lowe’s, for example). It’s that IKEA is helping to make them attractive to people who might never have thought about solar power. If you shop at IKEA, you probably are already budget- conscious, so subconsciously at least, you will begin to equate solar power with something that’s fun, low-cost and low-risk. IKEA argues that there’s a real cost-savings involved in moving to solar – if you install solar panels on a typical three-bedroom house in Britain, you begin to break even after seven years. After that, your energy is essentially free. And since the solar panels will be sold alongside low-priced home furnishings, a young family with a new starter home might actually be enticed to go solar instead of spending an analogous amount of money upgrading a kitchen or living room with a professional designer.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This is actually something relatively new – convincing the average person on a tight budget to make large-scale investments in clean energy. For many of us, the extent of our buy-in to the clean energy movement is shifting to energy- efficient lightbulbs, or maybe agreeing with the management of the hotel when we’re on vacation that we don’t need all of our sheets and towels washed every day. Or maybe we agree to carpool with our office colleagues to reduce our carbon footprint on the daily commute. But how many of us are willing to invest $10,000 in the clean energy revolution?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It’s one thing to make a huge investment in a status symbol such as a Prius or Tesla. It’s another thing entirely to make a huge investment in something the Joneses in our neighborhood might never even see unless they’re up on their roofs. Of course, there are a number of questions about whether “big box solar” will ever go mainstream. For one, the climate naysayers will still try to convince shoppers that global warming isn’t a problem and that it isn’t worth spending nearly $10,000 on a DIY solar energy kit for the home. No doubt, the China- bashers will work themselves into a frenzy, furious that IKEA is using solar panels manufactured in China rather than panels manufactured in the good old U.S.A.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And, when it comes to figuring out what kind of impact the move to DIY solar might have, even the experts concede that the macro-level impact on the energy grid of shifting to renewable energy is difficult to determine. In the best case, if you add lots of wind and solar power to the grid, there could be significant cutbacks in the number of carbon-dioxide emissions from the grid — maybe even by as much as 44 percent.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University However, the really innovative idea is that solar energy can be exported around the world as part a flat-pack kit to people in developing nations. You don’t need to “ship air” when you’re shipping flat-pack pallets. And what if we get China — the supplier of all those solar panels — to buy into the clean energy revolution? The DIY solar energy model may not be appropriate for some countries (including, yes, the U.K., which seems to get more clouds than sun), but could be an energy bonanza for developing nations in places such as Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa, where sunlight is abundant and where there is substantial need for clean, cheap energy to power the next generation of economic growth.

What is the Opposite of a Flying Car?

Science simply refuses to deliver on the one thing Americans truly want from Science Fiction: The Flying Car. Actually two things. The Flying Car, and rapid Space Travel to Earthlike Planets. Today I will stick to the Flying Car. The Flying Car will never happen, ever. Why not? Not because you can’t build a car-shaped vehicle that will fly. In that sense it’s already been done. The reason you won’t have a flying car in your garage is simple. It’s all the things AROUND a flying car that make it impractical. You either need wings or jets. Wings means you need a runway, at both ends of the trip. Jets mean you will blast pedestrians into oblivion when you fly over them to land. Plus the jets thing requires a preposterous amount of fuel due to our Strong Gravity. Maybe they’ll work for you when you Space Travel to an Earthlike Planet but with less gravity. Send me a postcard. BUT! On the plus side of Science Fiction becomes Science Fact is the other futuristic car that WILL be coming your way. By itself! That’s right! The Robot Car, mentioned here as part of The New Machine Age.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University What else will be coming? Everything. This report cites several factors for the now-in-progress technological revolution, but it could have stopped at #1. Moore’s Law. You don’t have to be as smart as Deep Blue to understand the mushrooming effects of Doubling. Just go find and re-read the story about the guy who asked for wheat grains to double on each successive square on a chessboard. Doubling will get us everything, including New Arcadia. (Everything, that is, except a Flying Car).

TSA’s new rules on knives are safe and reasonable

KNIVES ON planes: Can the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) be serious? That has been thereaction of some members of Congress to the TSA’s announcement that it will loosen restrictions on what passengers can carry aboard airliners. Next month, federal airport screeners will no longer force you to surrender hockey sticks, golf clubs, toy baseball bats or pocketknives — as long as the blades don’t lock in place and aren’t too long. In fact, it makes sense for TSA agents to be looking for bombs that could bring down a plane, not scouring luggage for penknives. The agency is not and cannot be in the business of protecting every passenger and crewmember from every conceivable threat. If it tried, it would have to ban a lot more than knives, and its effort would cost far more money, gobble up more of passengers’ already overbooked airport time or both. Instead, government resources and travelers’ time should be spent with a sense of priority. Airplanes pose unique dangers that justify the frustration that comes with airport screening. Terrorists have committed mass murder by using planes as weapons: forcing them to crash and blowing them up in midair. In the post-Sept. 11 era of reinforced cockpit doors, savvy passengers, a more robust air marshal program and flight attendants trained in self-defense, allowing penknives onto planes would not result in such tragedies. The change would, however, lead to less hassle for the tourist who forgot to take her knife off her key ring and less wasted time for the screener who must do the hassling. Opponents charge that the opposite could be true; instead of just confiscating knives, TSA agents might have to measure blade lengths. Yet if X-ray screeners were allowed simply to let items that are obviously pocketknives pass through, that would surely result in fewer time-consuming secondary bag inspections. The TSA, meanwhile, says that the screening process has gotten more efficient since it started allowing small scissors and knitting needles aboard in 2005 and lighters onto planes in 2007. Some also wonder why passengers should be allowed to carry knives on planes when they still have to take off their shoes for X-ray screening. But terrorists can and have fit improvised explosive devices into shoes. They could combine certain liquids in an airline cabin and cause a disaster. TSA is right to loosen up on pocketknives before such items as shoes and liquids. Instead of pouncing on the TSA for its rules change, lawmakers should enable — indeed, press — the agency to continue adding building a flexible and focused security system capable of blocking big and unexpected threats. **Read more on this issue:** Alexandra Petri: The screening system remains absurd Jonathan Capehart: Get rid of the shoe-removal requirement

In the 1980s, leading consultants were skeptical about cellular phones. McKinsey & Company noted that the handsets were heavy, batteries didn’t last long, coverage was patchy, and the cost per minute was exorbitant. It predicted that in 20 years the total market size would be about 900,000 units, and advised AT&T; to pull out. McKinsey was wrong, of course. There were more than 100 million cellular phones in use in 2000; there are billions now. Costs have fallen so far that even the poor — all over world — can afford a cellular phone.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The experts are saying the same about solar energy now.  They note that after decades of development, solar power hardly supplies 1 percent of the world’s energy needs.  They say that solar is inefficient, too expensive to install, and unreliable, and will fail without government subsidies.  They too are wrong.  Solar will be as ubiquitous as cellular phones are. Futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years — as costs have been dropping. He says solar energy is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But, by Kurzweil’s estimates, inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In places such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia, and the Southwest United States, residential-scale solar production has already reached “grid parity” with average residential electricity prices. In other words, it costs no more in the long term to install solar panels than to buy electricity from utility companies. The prices of solar panels have fallen 75 percent in the past five years alone and will fall much further as the technologies to create them improve and scale of production increases. By 2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with energy generated from fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis in most parts of the world. Within the next decade, it will cost a fraction of what fossil-fuel-based alternatives do.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It isn’t just solar production that is advancing at a rapid rate; there are also technologies to harness the power of wind, biomass, thermal, tidal, and waste-breakdown energy, and research projects all over the world are working on improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Wind power, for example, has also come down sharply in price and is now competitive with the cost of new coal-burning power plants in the United States. It will, without doubt, give solar energy a run for its money. There will be breakthroughs in many different technologies, and these will accelerate overall progress.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Despite the skepticism of experts and criticism by naysayers, there is little doubt that we are heading into an era of unlimited and almost free clean energy.  This has profound implications. First, there will be disruption of the entire fossil-fuel industry, starting with utility companies — which will face declining demand and then bankruptcy. Several of them see the writing on the wall. The smart ones are embracing solar and wind power. Others are lobbying to stop the progress of solar power — at all costs. Witness how groups in Oklahoma persuaded lawmakers to approve a surcharge on solar installations; the limited victory that groups backed by the Koch brothers won in Arizona to impose a $5 per month surcharge; and the battles being waged in other states. They are fighting a losing battle, however, because the advances aren’t confined to the United States. Countries such as Germany, China, and Japan are leading the charge in the adoption of clean energies. Solar installations still depend on other power sources to supply energy when the sun isn’t shining, but battery-storage technologies will improve so much over the next two decades that homes won’t be dependent on the utility companies. We will go from debating incentives for installing clean energies to debating subsidies for utility companies to keep their operations going.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The environment will surely benefit from the elimination of fossil fuels, which will also boost most sectors of the economy.  Electric cars will become cheaper to operate than fossil-fuel-burning ones, for example.  We will be able to create unlimited clean water — by boiling ocean water and condensing it.  With inexpensive energy, our farmers can also grow hydroponic fruits and vegetables in vertical farms located near consumers.  Imagine skyscrapers located in cities that grow food in glass buildings without the need for pesticides, and that recycle nutrients and materials to ensure there is no ecological impact.  We will have the energy needed to 3D-print our everyday goods and to heat our homes. We are surely heading into the era of abundance that Peter Diamandis has written about — the era when the basic needs of humanity are met through advancing technologies. The challenge for mankind will be to share this abundance, ensuring that these technologies make the world a better place.

The FAA should ban bumping passengers

Regarding the April 13 news article “United CEO apologizes to man dragged off plane”: It is time for the Federal Aviation Administration to ban involuntarily bumping paying passengers so that airlines can give seats to their own employees. Having been forced to give up the only flight that would get me to a court hearing, I know firsthand that this kind of last-minute bumping can mean more than a minor inconvenience. And having these decisions made after boarding makes the delays longer and harder for passengers to remedy. Airlines need to plan for their personnel better or offer better incentives to get passengers to give up their seats, but they won’t do so until the option to force passengers off the plane is taken away. ****David Reiser** , Takoma Park**

Congress needs to give flight attendants a break

The U.S. government could perhaps make the nation’s commercial airways healthier, saner and maybe even safer with a relatively simple step: ensure that flight attendants get enough sleep. It might even strike a blow for gender equality, too. The flight attendants union has been pushing for some time now for federal legislation that would require airlines to give them the same minimum 10 hours rest between flights that pilots must receive. Now it’s true that flight attendants are not in the cockpit flying the aircraft, as they are the first to admit. But they are also doing a lot more than serving coffee and tea. “Since Sept. 11, we became the last line of defense in aviation security,” said Sara Nelson, a United Airlines flight attendant who became international president of The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, in June 2014. “Flight attendants handle threats and security threats all the time that many passengers don’t even know about.” Flight attendants make the case that they are aviation’s first responders, who must prepare for everything from a passenger’s heart attack to an emergency evacuation. In addition, they find themselves refereeing so many passenger conflicts on ever-more crowded planes these days that they should probably be wearing black-and-white striped uniforms. That’s why they say they need at least 10 hours of a mandated rest period to avoid fatigue that makes it harder to carry out their duties. As things stand now, airline scheduling means that a good chunk of time when cabin crews should have down time is spent traveling back and forth to the airport or handling other duties. Bills that would grant at least 10-hour rest periods are working their way through Congress. But the airline industry argues that the rules setting a 10-hour rest period for the flight crew makes  sense because pilot fatigue increases the risk of making an error that could trigger a catastrophic accident. That’s not the case with the cabin crew, the airlines say. “That same analogy simply does not apply for flight attendants, nor is there any data analysis demonstrating there is a safety or national security issue that needs to be addressed,” said Melanie Hinton, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, a group that represents the industry. She also said that such a rule could be “potentially unconstitutional” because it would interfere with collective bargaining agreements in place between airlines and the flight attendant unions. “Labor unions already have the ability to collectively bargain for differing work and rest hours with their respective employers. There is no need for Congress to interfere with the employee/employer relationship,” she said via email. “We are in the safest period of aviation history, an achievement reached through a shared commitment by the FAA, the airlines and their employees.” Under current regulations, cabin crews must receive a minimum of nine hours rest between shifts. That period can be reduced to eight hours, and often is. But following such a shortened rest period, flight attendants are supposed to be given an extra hour of rest, making it 10 hours between flights. In reality, however, the nine hours between flights becomes a lot less. Here’s what flight attendants must do during their “rest” periods, between the time the wheels go up and the wheels touch down, union officials say: The Federal Aviation Administration set a minimum off-duty rest period for pilots of 10 hours following the February 2009 crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407. Investigators found that pilot fatigue had been a factor in the crash that killed 50 people, including the crew. Under the 2011 FAA rules, a flight crew’s rest period cannot be shortened.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Flight attendants say they should be given the same amount of rest, as is done in every other industrialized country, especially because their jobs have only gotten harder in recent years. In a worst-case scenario, flight attendants must be able to evacuate an aircraft in less than two minutes in the event of an emergency. Although Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III justly received credit for saving the lives of passengers and crew when he ditched U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009, union officials say three flight attendants helped evacuate the plane’s 150 passengers.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Flight attendants also have been called upon to help identify – and sometimes repel – potential attackers inside an aircraft. It was cabin crew, along with passengers, who intervened when shoe-bomber Richard C. Reid attempted to ignite explosives aboard American Airlines Flight 63 in 2001 and another shoe- bomber on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in 2009.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico More often, they must be able to deal with medical emergencies aboard an aircraft, ranging from airsick or fainting passengers, to heart attacks or even delivering a baby. They also receive training on dealing with unruly passengers at a time when the airlines are packing more and more people into tighter and tighter spaces. Although the numbers have tapered off from a high of 305 in the year 2001, there were still 145 incidents with unruly air passengers in 2014, the most recent year with complete data.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico With planes flying at higher capacities, flight attendants have less ability to move people if they’re sick or having conflicts with surrounding passengers, and they’re less able to sit down or rest themselves. For example, a Boeing 757 used to be staffed with six attendants; now it’s four, Nelson said. Yet, as airlines squeeze in an additional 10 to 12 passengers per plane,  those four attendants have to look after 180 to 200 passengers. Meanwhile, last week’s terrorist attacks in Brussels served as yet another reminder for travelers (as if travelers needed reminding) that public transportation is a target of choice. This time, the attack hit the airport terminal and Metro. But terrorists have also successfully evaded security in the past and managed to pose a threat on board, and cabin crews must remain vigilant  for such threats. “I’m not sure why you would have someone in a safety-sensitive job that they would fight against regulations that would make it safe,” Nelson said. “We’re the only country that doesn’t equalize rest between pilots and flight attendants.” And that brings us to  gender equality. It could be that opposition to a minimum rest period of 10 hours for cabin crews is all about whether you’re at the instrument panel or not. It must be a coincidence that 95 percent of all pilots are male and 83 of all flight attendants are female, the union says. “Would that be happening if flight attendants were a mostly male workforce?” Nelson asked. Good question. Although flight attendants are not at the control stick, they still deserve the same consideration as flight crews when it comes to a minimum period of rest.  It’s not just humane, it’s potentially important for everyone’s safety. _[I’m a member of the Communication Workers of America as co-chair of the Washington Baltimore News Guild’s bargaining unit at The Washington Post.]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _–This posting has been updated to correct the spelling of Sara Nelson’s first name and the number of flight attendants on U.S. Airways Flight 1549._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Solar flare: How a solar storm could affect you

The sun has been quite active lately, and the recent solar storm is expected to intensify Thursday morning, The Washington Post reported.  All that solar activity could have an impact on your gadgets — here’s a quick look at what you can expect. **What’s going on?:** According to The Post’s Brian Vastag and Jason Samenow, the storm is the result of strong flares released Sunday and Tuesday by a particularly “potent sunspot.” The flares set off a major wave of plasma that reached the Earth on Tuesday, assaulting the Earth’s magnetic field. **What does that do?:** Certain things such as GPS satellites, electronic power grids and airline flight patterns are affected by side-effects of solar flares. **How does this affect my GPS?:** According to the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, GPS satellites could be disrupted by the radiation from the flares and increased drag from the additional solar activity could up the chances that your GPS will calculate that you’re in the wrong location. According to Discovery News, this drag happens because the solar flare energizes the outer layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and causes the atmosphere to expand. When it does, the gas movement slows down the momentum of objects in low-Earth orbit. **How does this affect electrical grids?:** The energy put out by the flare could damage electrical equipment and jam some communications. For example, in 1989, a particularly large solar flare blacked out the grid of the entire province of Quebec for 12 hours, according to NASA. The blackout also affected New York Power and the New England Power Pool. **How does this affect flights?:** The solar storms have already caused some disruptions in flights, as airlines decided to reroute certain flights over the Arctic. The changes were said to add about 15 minutes to flights, and were moved because of the way that the solar storm can disrupt communications, Reuters reported. **Is it dangerous?:** Vastag and Samenow report that the Earth’s magnetic field will repel much of the radiation generated by the storms, so people on the ground should be safe. **Will this keep happening?:** NASA officials say that the sun is going through an active phase in its weather cycle, which is expected to peak in 2013. Related stories: Onslaught of solar flares bring space weather storms to Earth Solar storms ramp up, take aim at Earth

Should passenger jets have missile defense systems?

When a plane like Malaysia Airline Flight 17 is suddenly dropped from the sky by a missile attack launched from a vehicle no larger than a tank, the temptation is to look for the technology that will protect airline passengers from such threats. So should we be equipping commercial passenger planes with missile defense systems?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday For about a decade, Israel has been trying to do just this. And the country's experience serves as an interesting test case. In 2002, an Israeli charter flight flying at a height of 500 feet was attacked above Mombasa, Kenya, by a shoulder-launched missile. No one was hurt, but it prompted the Israeli government to begin searching for ways to protect its country's passenger planes and helicopters from the threat of so-called MANPADS, or Man Portable Air Defense Systems. That produced a government project called SkyShield, powered by a program called C-MUSIC, for Commercial Multi-Spectral Infrared Countermeasures. The program uses lasers and radar jamming, explains Adi Dar, the general manager for Elbit Systems, the Haifa-based lead contractor on the project that has worked for nearly a decade developing anti-missile technologies for passenger planes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday With MANPADS long believed to be the greater threat, commercial aviation missile defense systems have not been engineered to protect against longer-range surface-to-air missiles (SAM) like the Buk SAM believed to have been involved in the Ukraine attack. But at any height targeting the head of a missile from a moving passenger plane is technologically complex, says Dar, a former Israel Defense Forces official. "It's like hitting a tennis ball with a laser from an aircraft that is moving 800, 900 kilometers per hour." Israel has focused on fully-automated systems like lasers and radar jamming out of a belief that other, more manual techniques used in military settings, like the distribution of chaff -- small pieces of glass, metal, or plastic used to confuse tracking systems -- place too much of a burden on commercial air pilots. There are other challenges, says Dar. Fuel consumption is a concern, as the anti-missile technology can create drag since it is attached to the aircraft's underbelly. Elbit Systems, says Dar, has been deploying its countermeasure technologies among militaries in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe. And, he says, they've been working to protect heads of state and other "VIPs" around the world. But Elbit has not contracted with commercial airlines outside Israel. But some experts doubt Israel's approach. Professor Theodore Postal, a professor of science, technology, and international security at MIT, thinks missile defense systems are largely futile. Especially given the increased sophistication of missiles designed to evade detection and destruction, argues Postal, protecting passenger planes from attack is "extremely difficult to do." After all, "combat aircraft have pretty sophisticated electronic countermeasures," says Postal, "and they get shot down all the time." Regardless, some U.S. lawmakers have pressed for this country to follow Israel's lead. In the United States, both **** the 2002 Mombasa attack and the attacks of September 11th, 2001, increased interest in the protection of passenger planes. In May 2002, the FBI warned that "given al Qaeda's demonstrated objective to target the U.S. airline industry," the country should consider the possibility that shoulder-fired missiles could be used against U.S commercial aircraft.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Partly in response, **** in 2003, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Congressman Steve Israel (D-New York) introduced the Commercial Airline Missile Defense Act. The bill would have required the Department of Defense to pay an estimated $1 million a piece to equip U.S. commercial passenger planes with anti-missile technologies. With 6,800 planes, the price tag would have been nearly $7 billion--a number that, no surprise, caused many to balk. The Defense Department took instead to nudging aircraft providers to explore adapting military anti-missile techniques for commercial use, which led to, among other things, Northrop Grumman's Guardian Anti-Missile program.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday In Israel, the government picks up the cost of the SkyShield project, estimated by Dar to be at least a few hundreds of millions of dollars on research and implementation thus far. Elbit won't disclose what it costs to attach its anti-missile systems to aircraft, but Dar allows that it is in the neighborhood of "several million dollars" per plane. Israel, reports Elbit, has conducted successful tests of its anti-missile systems on Boeing 737s and Boeing 80os, including recent tests in southern Israel. The cost is lower for Israel than it would be for the United States largely because of the size of its fleet. The three major airlines participating in SkyShield together own and operate about 40 planes. "We're not talking about Lufthansa," admits Elbit's Adi Dar, of the German airline that alone has nearly 300 planes. "We're a small country." Faced with the potential costs of such a program, the trend in recent years in the United States has been a move away from anti-missile systems that place the responsibility for protection on airlines and pilots. The Department of Homeland Security's Project Chloe, named for a character on the television program "24," has begun exploring the use of missile-detecting and missile- defeating drones that would hover over U.S. airports.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday And so, for now at least, wide-scale use of anti-missile technologies on commercial passenger planes remains largely limited to Israel. "In Israel, " Dar goes on, "most of the government decided that the threat is real. And they decided to invest the money required. Other countries, other airlines have to be cost-effective in deciding what they want." _Update: This piece originally grouped Man Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, with the type of surface-to-air missile that is believed to be involved in the Ukraine attack. That has been corrected and a clarifying paragraph has been added._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

Amazon’s latest idea is a flying warehouse that’ll deliver your stuff by drone

Amazon is exploring the use of giant airships to serve as mobile, flying warehouses that could help the online retail giant deliver more of its goods by drone.  Imagine you're at a baseball game and wanted to buy a meal or a jersey without ever leaving your seat. The system Amazon describes would allow you to place an order and receive the item within minutes. From its “airborne fulfillment centers” hovering near the stadium, Amazon would dispatch a drone with your purchase. The drone would float or glide most of the way, then turn on its propellers and navigate itself to you directly. While Amazon's existing goal with drone delivery is to get you your stuff within 30 minutes, airships could potentially reduce that time even further. Unlike Amazon's land-based warehouses, which by definition can't move around, airborne fulfillment centers could respond to surges in demand even before they occur, according to the patent filing. Large gatherings of people for a specific event, such as a concert or a sports game, is one example Amazon highlights as a clear use-case. But Amazon also appears to believe that using airships could reduce the costs of drone delivery in general.  Sending drones out from a ground-based facility requires substantial energy, the filing says, because the drone must have its propellers spinning constantly to stay aloft. What's more, making a return trip to the warehouse with no payload onboard could be a wasteful expense. By contrast, Amazon said it believes that it could be more efficient to deploy drones from airships; the drones could float or glide most of the way down to earth by way of gravity, rather than using their own power. The airships would have to be resupplied periodically, of course. Amazon envisions still more airships — smaller ones — that could shuttle more drones, products and other things needed to keep the airships functioning up to the larger carrier. Here's a diagram from Amazon's patent filing that shows how the whole system could work. There's no word on when such a system might debut; an Amazon spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Some patents never even lead to actual products. But companies such as Facebook and Google have floated the use of airships and drones to beam Internet connectivity down to earth, so it was probably only a matter of time before Amazon began thinking about how to apply the same technology to its business.

We’re much closer than you think to a revolution in drone shipping

Amazon.com's Prime Air service promises to get goodies to your door in less than 30 minutes. But what puts the company in a position to make that offer is a responsive supply chain. Already, under its two-day shipping policy, Amazon has to make sure each of its warehouses has enough of the items everyone wants, or else a sufficiently robust backhaul option that can fulfill requests on short notice. Either way, Amazon is hugely dependent on air cargo. And it's the part of the supply chain that customers don't interact with that stands to be affected most by drone technology.  Unlike the fragile-looking copter drones that are currently available to hobbyists (and that Amazon sees as the key to Prime Air), unmanned blended wings are the object of intense research by massive aerospace companies with real money to spend. Boeing's X-48C is a blended-wing unmanned aircraft that concluded an eight-month flight-test program with NASA earlier this year. That's being followed by research into a larger version of the X-48 that's capable of transonic speeds. Planes like these would have much more room for goods than current aircraft, making air freight more economical. Even today's jetliners mostly run themselves, with human pilots stepping in only to perform takeoff and landing. A shift to unmanned aircraft would still require pilots in the short term to fly planes remotely; but in the long run, this technology could become a way for FedEx to eliminate many of its pilots. Asked about the potential for a fully autonomous fleet, a FedEx spokesperson said the company "support[s] our pilots completely."  "We're always looking for the best technology," said UPS' Kara Ross. The secrecy is hardly a surprise. Cargo companies are waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to finish drafting a set of guidelines for integrating commercial drones into the nation's airspace, a process that isn't expected to wrap for several years. But that isn't keeping companies from making as many preparations as they can.

A thousand of these tiny windmills might power your phone

Last week, the University of Texas at Arlington filed a patent application for a minuscule windmill designed by research associate Smitha Rao and J.C. Chiao, a professor of electrical engineering. The windmill is less than 2 millimeters across — small enough that about a thousand could fit on the surface of a cell phone, creating a sheath that could charge the battery, the researchers hope. They are also optimistic that the windmills could be manufactured cheaply using techniques from the semiconductor industry. The pair’s work presents a new way of thinking about generating electricity from wind. Producing power efficiently on a utility scale requires building windmills that are as large as possible. Yet Chiao and Rao were not interested with putting power on the grid, or even with wind turbines primarily. Their specialty is designing implants and sensors for medical use. The windmill was an amusing experiment that neither of them expected to succeed. “We like to work for fun,” Chiao said. The inspiration came from Rao’s 3-year-old daughter, who ran past her with a pinwheel in hand while she was discussing some designs for surgical devices with Chiao. The researchers expected the blades to be too fragile to withstand any strong wind. Yet when they received the prototype from a Taiwanese foundry, WinMEMS Technologies, they found that the blades — made from a flexible nickel alloy — could withstand the blast from a leaf blower. (MEMS is an abbreviation for a microelectromechanical system. Matt McFarland wrote earlier today about a couple of other remarkable MEMSes.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A conventional wind turbine uses very large blades to maximize the torque applied to the generator, in the same way that a bicyclist can increase her speed by shifting to a larger gear. Makani Power, acquired by Google last year, designed a kite that turns through the air in an even wider circle to take advantage of this physical law.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington might not have created a windmill that will solve any global energy crises, but their design could have other advantages, such as cost and convenience. “If you only have one big mill, and it breaks, then everything stops,” Chiao said. He also said that the tiny windmills could be used where a conventional one isn’t necessary or feasible — to power a lantern in your backyard, for example, or for a sensor in a remote location. (Solar panels are often used for such applications now, but a network of micro-windmills could keep them powered after dark and in cloudy weather.)

Space weather is a hidden risk to Arctic cruises, and it could be a significant one

In August, the 820-foot cruise ship Crystal Serenity will cast off its lines in Seward, Alaska, head for the Bering Sea and steam north. From there it will make a hard right turn, sailing through the Arctic Ocean north of Canada, down through Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea in the North Atlantic. Thirty-two days after leaving port, it will dock in New York City. If the voyage is successful, it will be the first time a cruise ship has made the trek through the Northwest Passage, and 1,000 passengers will be along for the ride. Ice is the obvious hazard on this journey. Over the past decade, the Earth has warmed so much that new lows in Arctic sea ice have been reached, and summertime sailing — especially just north of Canada — is mostly ice-free. This has led shipping and oil companies to become much more willing to pursue endeavors in the Arctic Circle.  The Serenity will also have a partner ship along for the journey that “will carry two helicopters for real-time ice reconnaissance, emergency support and flightseeing activities.”  But there is another, hidden risk to which this cruise — and similar cruises that follow — will be exposed: space weather. “Space weather” refers to huge eruptions of radiation and plasma from the surface of the sun. The eruptions can cause geomagnetic storms here on Earth that spark brilliant auroras near the poles, but they can affect or even bring down the electrical grid, radio communications, GPS and other satellite services. The storms can last days to weeks, depending on its strength. And to make matters even more precarious, space weather forecasting is about as mature in 2016 as weather forecasting was in 1930. So as the Serenity journeys through the Arctic on a route that no other cruise ship has yet succeeded in sailing, a strong geomagnetic storm could bring down its GPS and communication with the rest of the world. High wind, heavy seas and, most menacingly, sea ice could necessitate a rescue, and communications and positioning are necessities in bringing emergency responders. This is but one example of introducing shipping in the Arctic. Studies have shown big economies if a tanker were to go from Europe to Japan via the Arctic, rather than the traditional trip through the Suez Canal or around the Horn of Africa. And already, vessels resupply oil and gas industry operations at Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay by sailing the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Sailing at the right time can be critical, and the challenges can be substantial. The need for better, more useful space weather forecasts has never been greater.