General Aviation decline

Phil Boyer
President AOPA
“This year the pilot population dropped below 600,000 for the first time since 1966--- and it’s still dropping ---decline that threatens the long-term viability of general aviation.”
I’d say so and the viability of the internal combustion engine as well.

Cost is the main problem. On top of increasing manufacturing costs and increasingly sophisticated avionics, there is: product liability and now the price of fuel. The AOPA does not help much with its target population.

"1: The new pilots we want to attract are adults who have the time and the money to learn to fly right now. That means successful people between the ages of 35 and 65. In fact the average GA student pilot is 43." It is young people who looking to the sky who make the best pilots and there are way more of them, but today they are priced out of the opportunity unless they make it a military career.

Rather than viewing this loss of new pilots as a problem, I would look to the thing as an opportunity. We have the opportunity to lead the way in solving simultaneously three critical realities, maybe four: the high cost of fuel, the excessive wealth in the hands of radicals in the ME, critical CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the economy and maybe help the food supply as well.

There is a solution and it is electricity. First we have to face the fact that the hydrocarbon based engine is a DEAD END! The inefficiency, the environmental impact together with dwindling petroleum supplies insures an end to the petroleum era for transportation and heat. New pilots cannot afford to take up the profession of flying because of the cost. The cost is only going to get worse. Secondly, and strategically, we cannot afford to continue pouring the World’s energy revenue into the Middle East; this seems obvious. Three, both electric and hydrogen power or a combination of the two eliminate the carbon problem. As for the economy, since the 20s electric motors have been able to convert energy into work far more efficiently than a fuel burning engine; it is a simple matter of thermodynamics (enthalpy). Increased efficiency equals productivity equals economic growth and an improved standard of living. Clean electric power is presently expensive only because it is largely undeveloped. Technology drives the US economy with employment and innovation. The flight from hydrocarbon fuel leaves little else but electric and the opportunities are endless. Coal is a giant step back to the early 1900s Develop electric generation as a cheap subsidizes and exploitable infrastructure and the economy will explode. Bio fuels are a mistake. For one they belch nearly as much CO2 as petroleum based fuel and they displace the food chain. We probably do not have enough food to feed the World’s population as it is, and high price is hardly an egalitarian way to solve the problem.

Having said all of that, how can general aviation help? During the German and European recovery from WWI gliders became the aviation rage. Recently a glider completed a cross country flight powered by thermals and solar cells on the wings. Peccard, the man who flew a balloon around the world non-stop, contemplates an around-the-world flight in a solar powered glider.

Solar panels are not yet efficient enough to power serious passenger flight or automobiles for that matter, but this is a new technology; again opportunity abounds. There is much more ambient EM than is captured in the solar panel. There is considerable room for us to improve the collection of energy from such ambient sources and we should do so. At altitude, more radiation is available, and the higher the altitude the less the drag and the more the energy. Of course there is night time (not a problem here in Alaska).

Electric motors are once again evolving. One can buy a 7 HP HTS electric motor on the Internet, a high temperature super conductor motor. These may be even more efficient at the low temperatures in the higher altitudes. The electric motors and batteries we see in today’s hybrids are cheap off the shelf items. The high efficiency copper wound or copper salt superconductor motors and the Lithium or Hydrogen batteries will raise the ante soon enough as innovation and production increases and prices fall. Already we have electric drag racers that beat the socks off the fire belching dragsters. Formula 1 is using regenerative braking and other devices to capture the wasted heat energy of racing. The Tesla motor car (body by Lotus) can out perform most of the comparable gasoline sports cars, enough said.

For our new general aviation aircraft, however, we need improved aerodynamics. Long overdue, the elimination of the tube-plane with wings - in favor of a body blended with the wings - will greatly reduce the parasitic drag and improve the lift to drag ratio. The flying wing makes retractable landing gears easier to engineer and safer to operate. An electric motor, with its smaller frontal area, is quieter, more reliable, cooler, longer lasting and dramatically more efficient. Today’s GA planes are lucky to get ten miles to the gallon.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe. If batteries can’t store enough energy Hydrogen can. H2 contains far more energy for its weight than any other element. The problem is with the very cold temperature needed for liquid hydrogen and the rather large volume of gas required to contain enough of it. (One molecular weight of H2 occupies one cubic meter of volume at standard temperature and pressure.) Hydrogen requires either a very cold temperature or a very high pressure to contain the equivalent range of avgas. This volume limitation will soon be overcome. Hydrogen without its electron is a sub atomic particle and hardly occupies any space at all. This ionized hydrogen is how we handle energy in our own bodies.

While on the subject of sub atomic particles, light weight, safe fusion is not out of the question once we quit pretending that it can’t be done for the benefit of the oil cartels, and politicians with special interests.

So, how to start: AOPA with the cooperation of NASA (if it is not too politicized) might promote the mass production of inexpensive glider like aircraft with radically blended aerodynamic shapes solar panels and high tech electric motors. (The HTS motors are very light!) Veteran financing for innovation and production might be desirable, like after WWII. EAA, Experimental Aircraft Association might add to the trend. Remote controlled planes are already there.

I would seriously consider the purchase of an S-10 glider if I could have light weight flexible plastic solar panels on the wings. Then too think of all the 172s tied down on parking ramps baking in the sun for interminable periods of time, all that energy going to waste.