Pimentel, Dan. “ZeroAvia Completes Milestone Hydrogen Fuel Cell Flight.” Flying, 29 Sept. 2020, www.flyingmag.com/story/aircraft/zeroavia-completes-hydrogen-fuel-cell-flight/.
Article title:
ZeroAvia Completes Milestone Hydrogen Fuel Cell Flight
Photo: Courtesy ZeroAvia
My summary of the article:
ZeroAvia, supported by the UK Government as part of the HyFlyer Project, has successfully operated their purely hydrogen-fuel powered aircraft's test flight. What is notable about this test flight was that it was the world's first zero-emission fuel flight for a "commerical grade" (six seats) passenger plane.
ZeroAvia optimistically prospects that once the book on hydrogen fuel aircraft standards and regulations is written, they will be able to start scaling up the size of their hydrogen-fuel aircrafts, and by the end of the decade they will achieve zero-emission flights on 100 seat aircrafts over 1,000 miles.
ZeroAvia thanks the UK Government's Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) program for enabling them to work with crucial partners like the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) and Intelligent Energy. ZeroAvia credits Intelligent Energy for optimizing their hydrogen fuel technology and the EMEC for supplying them with green (as in environmental and renewable) hydrogen. ZeroAvia and the EMEC has also developed the world's first Hydrogen Airport Refueling Ecosystem (HARE) at Cranfield Airport. With this, Cranfield Airport has become the world's first fully operating, hydrogen producing and refueling facility for zero-emission fuel aircrafts.
My response to the article:
Reading the optimistic tone of ZeroAvia in ending the era of carbon-emission fuel aircrafts by the end of this the decade, I am feeling both excited and anxious at the same time. Excited because of the idea that traveling via aircrafts would then be an environmental method of traveling, and anxious because of the idea that hydrogen aircrafts would not be accessible for everyone due to its high costs. Also, will they be able to replace other forms of aircrafts that are not necessarily for travel such as military jets is also a question. Indeed, as it did with carbon-emission aircrafts, the cost will one day drop for commercial use and new specialized aircrafts that implement this technology will one day be developed, but it will take a long time for these to happen; in fact, it would be a greater challenge to shorten this time than to actually develop the technology for hydrogen-powered flights.
Regardless, it is undeniably true that replacing current carbon-emission aircrafts with zero-emission aircrafts is an important and necessary step in lowering carbon emission levels. I have profound respect for ZeroAvia for taking humanity one step closer to this future, and I hope they do succeed in their ultimate plan for launching hydrogen-fuel aircrafts into the market.
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