Hacker News Reader

Comment by wronex | Hacker News Reader

I think this is awesome. Anything we can do to get away from burning fossil fuel is a win in my book. I don’t know about this particular effort, but it seems to me that aviation could really need some big wins in this direction. Last I looked we still run smaller planes on leaded fuel. Crazy.

View on HN

This isn’t awesome, it doesn’t work at scale and it only lets idiots ignore what should be done: leave fossil fuels in the ground, and only then do what we can with the energy that’s still available. Aviation is mostly incompatible with a sane global environmental policy.

Very few people are willing to accept a, "sane global environmental policy" if it means changing their lifestyle. Thus, anything that allows people to keep (or better yet, improve) their current lifestyle while making the environment sane, that is the one we need to be searching for.

Your conclusion doesn't make sense. The logical conclusion of your first sentence is that we'll keep accelerating towards the wall.

Leaded is slowly going away, but regulation means these changes take many, many years and dollars to implement and test.

It will be similar (worse?) implementing a new type of fuel for commercial jets, especially when it comes to wide adoption across a majority of countries around the world. Basically you need something which is as least as reliable, clean (I.e., won’t clog/solidify), non corrosive, etc. and remain that way after being mixed with standard jet fuel.

I too want to see alternatives but expect to see more failures than success at this stage.

Replacing fossil fuel with biofuel only works if we starve half the planet and use their food for fuel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com