Up to 279 passengers could fly between London and San Francisco, USA direct or Auckland, New Zealand with just one stop with the same speed and comfort as today’s aircraft, revolutionising the future of air travel.
Liquid hydrogen fuel is what they are proposing, thats it.
If you consider how much energy LH2 takes to produce and store, its not zero-carbon.
And now you have a passenger jet that is as complicated and expensive to operate as the space shuttle. I don't think anyone is seriously considering LH2 as the " future of air travel".
Liquid hydrogen can be produced entirely with renewables. Nothing about the process inherently requires fossil fuels, but its so energy intensive the vast majority of hydrogen production is made with fossil fuels.
It is possible to fly planes at the speed and range they currently do with renewable hydrogen. However it will likely never be feasible to replace the entire current aviation industry with it.
The future of air travel will be worse. There need to be less planes and they will fly slower and shorter route. This isn't a problem that can be solved by just putting a different fuel in the planes.
The alternative is SAF, which in the long run will be made by combining H₂ with CO₂ to form long-chain hydrocarbons. This effectively is the same thing as using kerosene. But it will require vast amounts of green hydrogen too.
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