EAS VIII: Bruno Mombrinie and Dr. Brien Seeley – Economies and Practical Considerations for Sky Taxis

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, GFC, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Bruno Mombrinie, a director for the CAFE Foundation, and Dr. Brien Seeley, founder and President of the organization, gave a one-two presentation on pocket airports and Sky Taxis that examined the practical and operational facets of such a program, first described in detail in a joint NASA/CAFE Foundation document.  According to Bruno’s CAFE biography, “As a freshman, he helped build MIT’s Chrysalis human powered airplane. Later that summer he got to fly the plane several times. ‘The feeling of being so, so high (39ft)…to fly under my own power was beyond…I just wanted to burst…actually I was so out of breath from the effort, I could hardly mouth ‘yippee!’”  (The Chrysalis, and other MIT designs led to Daedalus, the HPA that flew from Crete to Sicily on April 23, 1988 – 72.44 miles in less than four hours.) This experience with extreme pedal power probably helped inspire his work on the Negative Mass two-piece crankset, reputedly the world’s lightest and stiffest bicycle crankset.  His …

Swapping Rather Than Recharging

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

With Tesla now promising 90-second battery swaps, a “recharging” tactic first tried by Shai Agassi’s A Better Place, an Israeli company now in bankruptcy, the long recharging period for electric vehicles may be overcome.  Car companies, though, are not the only entities looking for ways to get unplugged. Presented at the 20th Congress of the “Club des Villes et Territoires Cyclables” in Nice, the Alter Bike is a collaboration of three French companies: Cycleurope, a specialist in bicycles;  Pragma Industries, a specialist in hydrogen; and Ventec, a specialist in battery management. They tout the advantages of this different approach to electrifying two-wheelers – an approach that seems to have applications even in electric flight. “No more charging time, no need to plug your bike into an electrical outlet! The Alter Bike uses hydrogen in a fuel cell: an existing technology in some cars, it can create electricity while emitting only H2O, in other words water.” “Refueling” looks like changing an oil filter …