this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
347 points (93.5% liked)
Technology
58303 readers
14 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why?
I'm guessing that they are (falsely) equating it to the hindenburg, when IMO it wouldn't be much different safety-wise than current fossil fuel powered planes.
It's not like they would be filling the wings and luggage compartment with free-floating hydrogen, it stays in it's tank
Hydrogen is very hard to make stay in it's tank. And flying around with a tank of pretty much the most flammable element with a few hundred people sitting on top of it seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Yes, but notably you can design to reduce the risk of leaking hydrogen. If the areas around the tanks are designed to allow any leakage to vent before it reaches dangerous levels, you can reduce the risk. Yes hydrogen is flammable, so tanks of it are dangerous. Jet fuel is also quite flammable, and we've used that for a long time.
This is all in contrast to the design of the Hindenburg, which was specifically trying to hold onto a bunch of hydrogen in the flammable regime
Not to mention that material science has improved a hell of a lot since Hindenburg.
Because hydrogen is highly explosive.
Hindenburg
Or, you know, the fact that hydrogen is extremely explosive and incredibly difficult to contain.