December 12, 2024
Drones gotta land
By Ned Barnett
For a drone to fly, it needs some kind of energy source.
It is possible that for these drones flying over New Jersey, this could be electrical. But that’s unlikely. Elon Musk’s Tesla brand’s claim to fame is the best proprietary battery in the world, but it weighs far more than the drones could carry into the sky. Which leaves some kind of liquid fuel.
Here’s how that works.
To illustrate this, in World War II, America had a world-exclusive monopoly on high-octane aviation gas. We helped the British with the Battle of Britain by supplying them with what was then high octane fuel, in the high 90s. Germany, by comparison, had 87 octane fuel. “Octane” is a measure of the fuel’s efficient use of energy. The higher the octane number, the more powerful the fuel. But by 1944, America was producing 145 octane fuel.
So when the P-51C and D Mustang fighters went to war – in 1944 – they had this incredibly high octane fuel, while the German Luftwaffe fighters still had 87 octane fuel.
Here’s what that meant in practical terms. The Mustang had huge range, because it got much more energy out of a gallon of av-gas. So it could cruise all the way to Berlin, then outfight the best of the Luftwaffe, then fly all the way home. When the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, saw his first Mustang over Berlin, he said he knew the war was lost. He was not wrong.
That’s what high energy fuel means.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/12/drones_gotta_land.html
