Is NASA's X-57 electric plane the future of aviation ?

[UM-Bot]

The new experimental aircraft is set to make its debut flight this year, potentially kickstarting a whole new era of aviation.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/363641/is-nasas-x-57-electric-plane-the-future-of-aviation

[DreadLordAvatar]

All EVs are a dead end until battery tech or rather power source is revolutionized.  That is the reality, but the market will tell you otherwise.

[fred_mc]

I think airships could be the future: https://www.ecowatch.com/air-travel-carbon-emissions-2653215087.html

[Tatetopa]

High speed rail or improved virtual presence might be part of the future too.

[Rolci]

Where's the news here, Lilium Jet has been doing the same for nearly a decade. And the future is teleportation, not "trains" lol. Sure, trains will be around for a few more decades, but what's new about them? They do get faster, but you're comparing a tortoise to a snail. Having to spend many hours sitting in a vehicle will become obsolete and a laughable idea, comparable to riding a donkey today.

Edited February 2 by Rolci

[Cho Jinn]

Yes, but how much lithium? Child miners in war-torn central African regions need to know!

[DarkHunter]

No matter how good of a battery or power source is invented due to physics no electric plane will ever go faster than the speed of sound under it's own power, I'm not sure but it might be possible to get an electric plane to achieve supersonic flight in a dive but that isnt particularly useful.  All electric planes have to be propeller planes and aerodynamics and physics will always be an upper barrier of how fast they can go so any electric plane being the future of aviation is extremely unlikely.

Airships are incredibly unlikely to ever come back largely due to economics and the fact they only really make sense in extremely niche cases.  The infrastructure for a fleet of airships just simply doesnt exist anymore and creating it is essentially prohibitively expensive.  Even then airships run into the problem of they are not and never will be as fast as planes and they will never be able to move the same amount of cargo as trains or cargo ships.  Unfortunately airships are stuck in this weird area between planes and trains/cargo ships where either option is just flat out better in almost every situation.

High speed rail would be nice and has great benefits but the problems are cost.  The reality is the majority of high speed rail lines are not profitable and probably never will be, a few are like in France and Japan with both being highly profitable but those are relatively rare exceptions created by absolutely perfect conditions.  High speed trains can be made profitable but it would require a cultural shift.  Even then creating and more importantly maintaining high speed rail lines is not cheap and uses a massive amount of energy.

Unfortunately in America at least with the way urban planning was done cars are a necessity and any type of other transportation is near impossible to be viable for short to intermediate traveling.  Ultimately high speed rail, airships, electric planes, or anything that can be imagined will almost certainly never work in America unless there is a cultural shift and massive amount of money is spent redoing urban planning which is incredibly unlikely.