The first flight of an A380 operating one engine on 100% sustainable aviation fuel follows successful flight test campaigns involving an A350 and an A319neo last year. This latest milestone once again demonstrates Airbus’ commitment to achieving certification of unblended SAF for commercial use by 2030.
Reminder that this is a test but it looks promising.
Sustainable how? Like, if humanity decided to outlaw fossil fuels tomorrow, how many gallons of this stuff could be made in 2024, or even in 2034?
Enough for one thousand billionaires to jet around where they go, or enough for the middle class to get $250 NY-to-Paris fare? If only the former, it’s doubtful that anything like an A380 is even viable as a product, because billionaires don’t fly on those. And we all know it’s not the latter.
A380 is not made for billionaires and unrelated to billionaires at all, it is actually for the average working class like you and me, there is a first class section in the nose but the goal of A380 is to avoid 3 traditional airplanes and only use one big instead which reduces the footprint on paper and shown already in test flights. This is just another test and attempt to reduce it even further which is a good thing.
Cooking oil will not run out in the next lets say 1000+ years.
Cooking oil won’t run out… but it also doesn’t scale. If you need ten times as much cooking oil next year as this year, that’s maybe doable.
If you need x10,000 more cooking oil, it’s totally fucking impossible.
So no, this isn’t sustainable. Especially when you’re talking about using food so you can go on a vacation to Europe to pretend that your tourism makes you educated or enlightened or whatever the fuck is you get out of it.
I know enough to know better than to believe fluff science journalism is equivalent to science proper, or worse… to think of a press release as science. Like, wtf.
Some problems are intractable. They have no solutions. For instance, the problem you pose as “without removing airplanes”.
Relax the constraint. Remove airplanes. There, problem’s no longer intractable. The solution doesn’t even need to be spoken aloud once you do that.
But if you say I’m cheating, I can do better. I can almost solve it without removing them. It looks something like this:
“Only the billionaires and VIP government officials (heads of state, essentially) get air travel.” Because that’s about how far this trick scales. Yes, you still have the problem of the shoeless peasants mucking around in the shit-covered fields while Hillary Clinton rides to her next campaign stop in a biodiesel limosine, but hey, can’t have everything. You’re a sacrifice she’s willing to make.
Yeah instead of removing airplanes altogether you remove the humans from it, well its one way or another the same.
I do not see why billionaires should get any priority, there are other things that are more important like heart transplants, or help for ukraine, military etc.
Point is you and I have no solution without crippling air travel or removing everything. Every school kid knows that but this is not how you approach society problems because those methods are not practical. Little CK wants his flight into the US eating ice cream under the statue of liberty, that is how the world works.
solution
If you want my end solution, that is killing every single human including myself which would be ethical correct solution for our earth but this is not how you address it.
I do not see why billionaires should get any priority,
That’s ok. They get it whether you see why or not. They already have the priority, and you can’t take it from them.
there are other things that are more important like heart transplants,
If I were coldly-calculating, I’d tell you that those things aren’t important at all. Why would they be? It’s someone already half-dead who, even if the surgery is successful, will always be in ill health and needing to take expensive immune suppressant drugs. Sure, maybe one or another of them is a genius of the sort you can’t just let die, but as often as not they’re some utterly replaceable worker who doesn’t warrant the sorts of expense you propose to allocate to them.
Point is you and I have no solution without crippling air travel
If the climate crisis is as big of a deal as you and the rest make it out to be (I remain skeptical), then which of us is the bigger fool here? You’re saying that it’s so important that everyone must give up air travel… BUT HOW DO WE DO THAT WHILE STILL GIVING THEM AIR TRAVEL?!?!?!.
It’s bizarre. Sure, supposing that this is some sort of slow motion disaster, it’s always possible that someone will come up with some miracle technology that solves this. In the “1-in-a-number-so-big-that-there-are-fewer-atoms-in-the-universe” sense of possible. That ain’t going to happen. And the longer you wait to figure that out, the worse things get.
Every school kid knows that but this is not how you approach society problems because those methods are not practical.
Well, here’s a thought. Instead of fellating press releases about sustainable aviation fuel, you could ignore them and if anyone ever asks why you (and the others you convince to ignore them) why you are doing that… you can say that it’s because you can smell bullshit. You can’t, but they won’t know that if you fake it really well.
Giving in to the public lie, pretending you believe it too, just makes it more powerful. Make them own up and be honest, that they’re ruining the planet and that they don’t give a shit if they do.
If you want my end solution, that is killing every single human including myself which would be ethical correct solution for our earth but this is not how you address it.
That’s ok. Most people have arrived at the same solution, they’re just planning on being the exceptions to it. My ethics forbid doing such, or suggesting such, they allow me to acknowledge that I’ve recognized others as having thought of it.
My plans are for my descendants to still be here once all of that nonsense is sorted out, so for those of you who think that it should be “everyone without exception”, you should prepare for disappointment in your final moments.
I get your idea and its not bad but I personally do not see it, maybe on lower scale. I am all for combining several things to get the best of it. I think solving problems start - in this case - with the engine and fuel.
Waste cooking oil available would be a miniscule fraction of the 213 million tons produced, so any further use or production for biofuels either takes food out of peoples’ bowls and/or destroys ecosystems.
That said, it could be done in a sustainable way, as suggested by this world economic forum paper. I don’t know enough to criticise the reasoning in that paper. I suspect there could be major negative implications for some solutions for shifting the worlds’ liquid fuel supply to biofuels.
Sailing ships and global rail networks for the win.
I doubt it is natural vegetable oil, more like a mix of waste so your math does not apply here. Your fuel calculation is also based on traditional fuel, not what the topic is about.
Your papers are useless in this example since this is a test and this is not yet the standard, so no reference can be applied here as because there are no data for such claims.
There is always a trade-off between things, but we are talking about a substance that is considered waste for most countries, it is still a better solution than what your charts are referring too, the traditional methods.
Sustainable how? Like, if humanity decided to outlaw fossil fuels tomorrow, how many gallons of this stuff could be made in 2024, or even in 2034?
Enough for one thousand billionaires to jet around where they go, or enough for the middle class to get $250 NY-to-Paris fare? If only the former, it’s doubtful that anything like an A380 is even viable as a product, because billionaires don’t fly on those. And we all know it’s not the latter.
ICAO information on the various feedstocks used for SAF (“sustainable aviation fuel”):
https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Pages/SAF_RULESOFTHUMB.aspx (archive.ph)
A380 is not made for billionaires and unrelated to billionaires at all, it is actually for the average working class like you and me, there is a first class section in the nose but the goal of A380 is to avoid 3 traditional airplanes and only use one big instead which reduces the footprint on paper and shown already in test flights. This is just another test and attempt to reduce it even further which is a good thing.
Cooking oil will not run out in the next lets say 1000+ years.
Cooking oil won’t run out… but it also doesn’t scale. If you need ten times as much cooking oil next year as this year, that’s maybe doable.
If you need x10,000 more cooking oil, it’s totally fucking impossible.
So no, this isn’t sustainable. Especially when you’re talking about using food so you can go on a vacation to Europe to pretend that your tourism makes you educated or enlightened or whatever the fuck is you get out of it.
Cringe…
I know enough to know better than to believe fluff science journalism is equivalent to science proper, or worse… to think of a press release as science. Like, wtf.
Please tell us your solution without removing airplanes, we all listen buddy.
Some problems are intractable. They have no solutions. For instance, the problem you pose as “without removing airplanes”.
Relax the constraint. Remove airplanes. There, problem’s no longer intractable. The solution doesn’t even need to be spoken aloud once you do that.
But if you say I’m cheating, I can do better. I can almost solve it without removing them. It looks something like this:
“Only the billionaires and VIP government officials (heads of state, essentially) get air travel.” Because that’s about how far this trick scales. Yes, you still have the problem of the shoeless peasants mucking around in the shit-covered fields while Hillary Clinton rides to her next campaign stop in a biodiesel limosine, but hey, can’t have everything. You’re a sacrifice she’s willing to make.
Yeah instead of removing airplanes altogether you remove the humans from it, well its one way or another the same.
I do not see why billionaires should get any priority, there are other things that are more important like heart transplants, or help for ukraine, military etc.
Point is you and I have no solution without crippling air travel or removing everything. Every school kid knows that but this is not how you approach society problems because those methods are not practical. Little CK wants his flight into the US eating ice cream under the statue of liberty, that is how the world works.
solution
If you want my end solution, that is killing every single human including myself which would be ethical correct solution for our earth but this is not how you address it.
That’s ok. They get it whether you see why or not. They already have the priority, and you can’t take it from them.
If I were coldly-calculating, I’d tell you that those things aren’t important at all. Why would they be? It’s someone already half-dead who, even if the surgery is successful, will always be in ill health and needing to take expensive immune suppressant drugs. Sure, maybe one or another of them is a genius of the sort you can’t just let die, but as often as not they’re some utterly replaceable worker who doesn’t warrant the sorts of expense you propose to allocate to them.
If the climate crisis is as big of a deal as you and the rest make it out to be (I remain skeptical), then which of us is the bigger fool here? You’re saying that it’s so important that everyone must give up air travel… BUT HOW DO WE DO THAT WHILE STILL GIVING THEM AIR TRAVEL?!?!?!.
It’s bizarre. Sure, supposing that this is some sort of slow motion disaster, it’s always possible that someone will come up with some miracle technology that solves this. In the “1-in-a-number-so-big-that-there-are-fewer-atoms-in-the-universe” sense of possible. That ain’t going to happen. And the longer you wait to figure that out, the worse things get.
Well, here’s a thought. Instead of fellating press releases about sustainable aviation fuel, you could ignore them and if anyone ever asks why you (and the others you convince to ignore them) why you are doing that… you can say that it’s because you can smell bullshit. You can’t, but they won’t know that if you fake it really well.
Giving in to the public lie, pretending you believe it too, just makes it more powerful. Make them own up and be honest, that they’re ruining the planet and that they don’t give a shit if they do.
That’s ok. Most people have arrived at the same solution, they’re just planning on being the exceptions to it. My ethics forbid doing such, or suggesting such, they allow me to acknowledge that I’ve recognized others as having thought of it.
My plans are for my descendants to still be here once all of that nonsense is sorted out, so for those of you who think that it should be “everyone without exception”, you should prepare for disappointment in your final moments.
deleted by creator
Zeppelins, modern or not are considerable slow.
I get your idea and its not bad but I personally do not see it, maybe on lower scale. I am all for combining several things to get the best of it. I think solving problems start - in this case - with the engine and fuel.
deleted by creator
If SAF is 100% cooking oil, the planet has nowhere near enough cooking oil to exclusively supply aviation.
Waste cooking oil available would be a miniscule fraction of the 213 million tons produced, so any further use or production for biofuels either takes food out of peoples’ bowls and/or destroys ecosystems.
That said, it could be done in a sustainable way, as suggested by this world economic forum paper. I don’t know enough to criticise the reasoning in that paper. I suspect there could be major negative implications for some solutions for shifting the worlds’ liquid fuel supply to biofuels.
Sailing ships and global rail networks for the win.
I doubt it is natural vegetable oil, more like a mix of waste so your math does not apply here. Your fuel calculation is also based on traditional fuel, not what the topic is about.
Your papers are useless in this example since this is a test and this is not yet the standard, so no reference can be applied here as because there are no data for such claims.
There is always a trade-off between things, but we are talking about a substance that is considered waste for most countries, it is still a better solution than what your charts are referring too, the traditional methods.
progress comes in little steps.