NASA offers $1.5 million for 200MPG aircraft

31.07.2009
today opened up the completion for its Green Flight Challenge which offers up to $1.5 million for an aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a t while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles per gallon.

Co-sponsored by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation the competition is scheduled for July 2011 at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif. A variety of innovative experimental aircraft using electrical, solar, bio-fuel or hybrid propulsion are expected to enter. Several major universities and aircraft builders have expressed their intention to enter teams in the challenge, stated.

The Challenge is intended to bring about the development and convergence of new technologies and innovations that can improve the community acceptance, efficiency, door-to-door speed, utility, environmental-friendliness, affordability and safety of future air vehicles, CAFÉ stated. Such technologies and innovations include, but are not limited to, bio-fueled propulsion, breakthroughs in batteries, motors, fuel-cells and ultra-capacitors that enable electric-powered flight, advanced high lift technologies for very short takeoff and landing distances, ultra-quiet propellers, enhanced structural efficiency by advances in material science and nano-technology and safety features such as vehicle parachutes and air-bags.

Such technologies will support advances in aviation and may have broader applications in transportation and energy storage, NASA stated.

To ensure that air vehicles are useful, safe and practical, the Challenge is comprised of a series of separate but inter-related flight attempts that measure key performance capabilities, CAFÉ stated.