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Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by mannykannot on Friday June 21, 2019 @12:29PM (#20243985)
A fire in an airplane is a lot more scary than a loss of power (proportionally more so in a small airplane, where an off-field landing is feasible, and increasingly they have ballistic parachutes), while there is currently a well-known problem of fires (that can't be extinguished) in high-power-density batteries. Gasoline is dangerous, but we have learned how to handle it safely.
Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by rbanffy on Friday June 21, 2019 @01:32PM (#20244637)
You could mount batteries on pods that could be released if needed. Additional benefit would be that the pods could be replaced on the ground by fully charged ones for faster turnaround.
Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by vosper on Friday June 21, 2019 @01:53PM (#20244822)
You can't really rain burning battery pods down on the landscape, though. What if the plane is over a populated area?
Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by Gracana on Friday June 21, 2019 @03:19PM (#20245545)
You're not supposed to drop burning planes out of the sky either, but sometimes it happens.
Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by zdragnar on Friday June 21, 2019 @02:27PM (#20245113)
Or a dry forest, or grassland. Burning lithium probably can't be all that good for ponds, rivers or lakes either.
Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by frenchyatwork on Friday June 21, 2019 @03:03PM (#20245403)
Burning lithium in a pond sounds awfully spectacular, with an emphasis on the awful.
Re:The age of electric flight is finally upon us by _ph_ on Friday June 21, 2019 @04:31PM (#20246075)
One is actually supposed to use water for large lithium battery fires, Tesla recommends this. The lithium in batteries isn't elemental and thus does not react strongly with the water.