Targets of espionage beware! Planemaker Boeing just unveiled its new hydrogen-powered spy plane yesterday, and the strangely cute and chubby aircraft is capable of flying at an altitude of 65,000 feet for a period of four straight days. Called the Phantom Eye, the plane is one of the greenest out there since its only byproduct is water!
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According to Boeing, the Phantom, which is an unmanned craft, has a 150-foot wingspan and can carry up to 450 lbs. The plane will be able to travel at 150 knots (170 miles per hour) and has two 2.3 liter, four-cylinder engines, each of which provide only about 150 hp (about the same as an average car). PopSci points out that that actually makes sense since Ford provided the Phantom’s engines.
Boeing says that the Phantom heralds a potential new market in data and communications collection, and it’s a big step forward in Boeing‘s efforts to build planes powered by hydrogen. The Phantom will be shipped from Boeing’s Phantom Works facility in St. Louis to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center later this summer for ground and taxi testing and its debut flight will likely take place next year.
+ Boeing
Via PopSci
[...] expect this to be the beginning of a boom in hydrogen-powered plants, however. Hydrogen power still costs five times as much as power produced from coal, and [...]
Green? because I am sure that the US military will source hydrogen which isn\’t produced using fossil fuels, as most is. The US military is the biggest single user of petroleum products in the world. Do the words military-industrial complex mean anything to you?