A NASA article on the status of the X-57 “Maxwell” says that they’re wrapping up work on it, with no mention of it actually flying:
X-57 Project Creates Paths Toward Electric Aviation
The X-57 is a modification of an existing conventional aircraft to be all-electric. Lots of new technologies were integrated and apparently some useful advances were made, but the real issue remains batteries. Until the energy density of batteries gets a *lot* better, electric-powered aircraft are going to remain pretty niche. Flying the X-57 would be nice, but with the existing batteries it’s kind of dead in the water.
What would be great is if NASA kept working on the X-57 at a low level. The technologies onboard would be occasionally upgraded, and when meaningfully better batteries – or perhaps some sort of modular fuel cell system, perhaps, or indeed a small nuclear reactor (a man can dream) – become available, integrate them into the vehicle and at last fly it.
2 responses to “The X-57 won’t fly”
Just a repeat of the VLJ/air taxi debacle.
Investors usually run from aviation due to up-front costs…and executives want their fast jets.
Aviation just needs its own internet billionaire like Elon.
The manufacturer (Tecnam) pulled out and scrapped their own related project. Their principal client Cape Air has gone big 75 orders for the Eviation Alice aircraft. The project was out of funds and time in September and it “wasn’t safe” for whatever reason so why go forward?
With this evolving so quickly I suspect the market massed them by and it wasn’t worth throwing more money at.
I’m not optimistic that electric aircraft are the way to go for most applications but we will see.