Probable future of civil aviation by 2050

In the overwhelming majority of cases, we take vacations and business trips on airplanes, and often the cost of tickets constitutes a significant share of the trip budget. But progress in aviation does not stand still, and with the development of technology, we will be able to fly further at a comparable price, or to fly cheaper. What is the future of civilian passenger aircraft?

By 2050, a sevenfold increase in air traffic and a fourfold increase in environmental pollution by gas emissions are expected. To avoid this, fundamental changes in aviation must occur. But how “fundamental” should these changes be and what impact will this have on the air transport we use?

Perhaps, one of the main changes should be the transition to "green" aviation - the complete electrification of passenger aircraft. No emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, powered by batteries. The main technological barrier that needs to be overcome is the energy density, which is generated by a battery of a certain weight.
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Teson CEO Elon Musk once said that when batteries are capable of producing 400 watts / kg per hour with a battery to total weight ratio of 0.7-0.8, transcontinental electric aviation will become quite real.

Considering that in 1994 the power of lithium-ion batteries reached 113 W * h / kg, in 2004 - 202 W * h / kg , and now approximately 300 W / kg, we can already say that in the next 10 years power will be reached at 400 watts per kilogram.

Also important is the exponential fall in the cost of solar panels, which have already become the cheapest source of energy in most US states . The expected seventy percent reduction in the cost of lithium-ion batteries and the rapid rise observed in prices of kerosene engines means a large and growing gap in the cost of energy sources for aviation, which will perfectly serve electrification. As often happens, the reasons that slow down the transition to electricity is not in technology, but in political and economic inertia for maintaining the status quo.

Waiting for electricity

Given the average service life of passenger and cargo aircraft at 21 and 33 years, respectively, even if tomorrow the entire fleet becomes electric, the rejection of fossil hydrocarbons will take 20-30 years.

At the same time, the use of biofuels promises to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the range of 36-85% . This is highly dependent on the type of soil on which the particular plant will grow. Although the hybrid biofuel-kerosene mixture was certified for use in aviation back in 2009 , the industry is not in a hurry to introduce a new product. There are certain technical obstacles and difficulties in the way of increasing the production of biofuels to an industrial scale. But the main factor is the price; it will be compared to traditional kerosene only in a few decades .

Adapting any aviation technology — research, prototypes, testing, integration — usually takes about 10 years. So, if we consider that the transition to a new fuel will occur in the middle of the century, then today it already makes sense to focus on other innovations: other aerodynamic profiles and schemes, materials, etc.

Bringing aviation to life

While the ENIAC calculator is equipped with eighteen thousand electronic tubes and weighs 30 tons, the computers of the future will be able to work on just one thousand electronic lamps and, perhaps, will weigh a half tons. - Popular Mechanics, 1949

We live in a world of exponential changes in technology. If we take computational power, now computer technology for each hour is moving further than in the past 90 years. Given this, we can predict that the equivalent of today's computer for $ 1000 by 2023 will be more powerful than the potential performance of the human brain , and by 2045 it will exceed the performance of the brain of all people combined . Of course, in fact, such growth is unlikely, but it is certain that it will be very significant.

The miniaturization of digital electronics in the last half century has followed a similar exponential trend, due to the reduction in the size of transistors from 1000 nanometers in 1970 to 23 nanometers today . And if we recall the promising graphene transistors, the size can fall to about 7 nanometers by 2025 . For comparison, the size of a human blood cell is 6200 - 8200 nanometers.

The combination of power and size reduction, coupled with advances in 3D printing, may at some point in the next decade allow for the creation of embedded computers of sufficient power to monitor aviation in real time.

Using biology-inspired “neural systems” with receptors that determine air temperature, wind force, aircraft position in space, etc., one can significantly improve the energy efficiency of aviation.

Chop tail

When electric aviation is created, the next step will be the integration of the cardan propulsion system, which will radically improve maneuverability. Thus, there will be no need for elevators, rudders and tail stabilizers, without which almost no aircraft in the world can do.

The wings that we are already creating are close to perfection in terms of aerodynamic efficiency, but still cannot match the wings of birds. Our understanding of the basic design of the aircraft remained at the level of the beginning of the 20th century, but technology has already advanced significantly. We no longer need to design the wings as rigid structures with discrete control, we can turn to nature for inspiration. As Richard Feynman said:

I think that the imagination of nature is much better than human, it never allows us to relax.

A look into the future of passenger aviation industry

The industry, of course, is not inactive. Here are some of their projects, or even more correct, concepts, passenger planes of the future:

E-thrust. Eads