Posted on 05/13/2006 12:50:09 PM PDT by oxcart
WASHINGTON, May 13 — When an F-16 lights up its afterburners, it consumes nearly 28 gallons of fuel per minute. No wonder, then, that of all the fuel the United States government uses each year, the Air Force accounts for more than half. The Air Force may not be in any danger of suffering inconveniences from scarce or expensive fuel, but it has begun looking for a way to power its jets on something besides conventional fuel. (Snip)
The Air Force effort falls under a directive from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to explore alternative fuel sources. Under the plan, the Air Force has been authorized to buy 100,000 gallons of synthetic fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Seize the oil fields of Venezuela. Perfect military solution.
I've been wondering about this very thing recently. How long till the USAF fuels its turbines with liquid H2, separated from water by means of electricity from its own nuclear plants?
Worse. It's gallons per mile, not miles per gallon.
I like the sound of that. Naval ships could generate fuel anywhere in the world.
Well, I just remembered, the problem with LH2 is that it has a much lower energy density per unit volume than does hydrocarbon-based fuel. But I think it's not that hard to make kerosene if you've already got the hydrogen. Maybe someone else here knows the details.
ND=not doable. Liquid hydrogen is fourteen times lighter than water, and with all the space any cryogenic packaging would take one could stuff preciously little of it into any realistic fuel tank. If you want to leapfrog, then think of direct nuclear propulsion.
Heavy armor is only needed when humans are on-board. If we built autonomous robotic tanks, they could get 20 MPG. They could use suicidal tactics on the battlefield with no political cost back home.
I wonder what we would do if the Mid East formed a pact and cut off oil to the U.S.
(((Ping)))
Almost anything is going to be better than hydrogen in practice.
The problem with so many plans, from space propulsion to powering cars, is that they start with hydrogen because it is such an ideal fuel theoretically, and then run right into the nightmare of handling hydrogen.
Take for example, rockets. Hydrogen has twice the specific impulse of many other fuels, but 1) long term storage is a problem, 2) it has such low density that you wind up with very large tanks (look at the shuttle ET) and 3) it is so light that it takes very high chamber pressures to get decent thrust (the space shuttle main engines are such a maintenance nightmare because they have to have insane chamber pressure to get any kind of meaningful thrust out of hydrogen). What it all boils down to is that kerosene makes a better rocket fuel than hydrogen even though it is far less "ideal" theoretically.
If any organisation can develope a non petroleum based fuel its the USAF.I have confidence in that.
The largest and most extraordinary project for using hydrogen as a fuel was carried out by the Air Force in 1956-1958 in supersecrecy. Very few people are aware of it, even now, yet over a hundred million dollars were spent-perhaps as much as a quarter of a billion dollars. Although the project was cancelled before completion, it led directly to the first rocket engine that flew using hydrogen. The project was code-named Suntan, and even this was kept secret.1 It had all the air of cloak and dagger melodrama and indeed, its principal precursor was just that. Suntan was an effort by the Air Force to develop a hydrogen-fueled airplane with performance superior to the secret spy plane, the U-2.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch8-1.htm
Better yet - seize the coal/shale oil fields of UT,CO,MT.....closer and cheaper!
LOL
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