X Prize Clean Aviation: $10 million

Imagine flying all the way from coast to coast, completely guilt-free, in an airplane that doesn’t emit a single particle of greenhouse gas or air pollutants. That could happen someday, perhaps brought to reality thanks to the incentive of a $10 million prize that has been proposed by a team of MIT students.
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The X-Prize Lab@MIT, a collaboration between the Institute and the X-Prize Foundation aimed at creating concepts for new prizes, led by instructor Erika Wagner of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, just completed its third semester-long class devoted to developing new prize ideas. This time, the subject was energy storage, and the final presentations by the four teams of students in the class were held on Friday, Dec. 11.

Graduate students Daniel Codd (mechanical engineering), Wendelin Michel (AeroAstro), and Paul Tu (MIT Sloan School of Management) proposed the “Clean Aviation” X-Prize. The concept, they explained, would be to hold a race from California to New York, in which all the competing planes would have to be powered entirely by electricity and produce no emissions. The planes would be allowed two stops during the journey, which would have to be completed within 24 hours. The first to cross the finish line would get a $7.5 million prize, while the plane that covered the longest distance on a single leg of the flight would win $2.5 million.
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this is not the first proposal for a green-aviation challenge, it’s the only one requiring an all-electric, emissions-free system. The plan calls for holding the race three years after the contest is announced, and then if no team is able to complete the challenge, holding a second contest two years later for a reduced prize. “It would be open to all possible entrants, from people working in a garage to Boeing.”
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Ultimately, the decision about which, if any, of these proposals will be launched as X-Prize competitions rests with the X-Prize Foundation itself. The foundation was created and is run by Peter Diamandis ’83, SM ’88, who initially set it up to administer the first X-Prize, which led to back-to-back flights into space by the one-person rocket called SpaceShipOne, in 2004. The successor to that craft, the eight-person SpaceShipTwo, was unveiled last week and is expected to begin carrying ordinary citizens (and quite a few celebrities) into space in about two years, ushering in a new era in space transportation.
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This prize seems to ignore the realities of energy storage issues. Everyone under the sun in the UAV world is trying to get high energy electric systems.

I do not see what this prize is supposed to do, it's certainly not going to 'start' people thinking about electric. As for your post above, does a 'superconducting motor replaces turbine' exist outside of the imagination?

Why would you want a loud, vibrating engine on a UAV?

I'm looking at that ppt, and I have to ask: why would you use an electric motor to power a ducted fan, and not just use a more efficient propeller???

Also, where are you going to get adequate energy storage?

Sorry I don't follow. What source of power are you suggesting, if not an electric motor? Edit: Perhaps you are asking: why use an electric motor instead of a traditional gas turbine? Electric motor can be >95% efficient, is quiet, as you mentioned above, and can run on electric charge that may have been generated on the ground and stored in the aircraft.

Post #2, for purposes of this prize. 11 metric tons of battery per 850 mile leg.

Ok you're talking about military applications. Doubt that matters for the higher altitude aircraft.

Spurring on innovation is nice. That is what makes the world go round and improve. However, this, like every other electric application, is doing nothing more than shifting the sources of pollution. Most forms of clean electricity production are pretty much fixed. What's going to happen if this electric dream comes true with millions of cars and now aircraft.

Crank up the coal plants.

We certainly aren't doing much in nuclear and dams are pretty much fixed output. It's short sightedness at its best.

Back on topic....there is no way to make current energy sources viable and thus useful. Like the other X prize, it is nothing more than a stunt.

No, i'm saying why would you power a fan, instead of a prop. Larger rotors are more efficient.

Oh. Prop aircraft are more efficient that turbofan jet aircraft?

At least regarding the cars you must know that the power plants, even the worst of them, are much more efficient that any internal combustion engine going down the road.

Maybe so. First X prize didn't advance the art in any areas?

Are we talking efficiency or polluting/going green?

Nope. Not a bit.