Liquid hydrogen fueled aircraft

Schalit, L. M., and Read, H. E., "Military Applications of Liquid Hydrogen Fueled Aircraft", report AFFDL-TR-74-102, Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio 45433... 

The potential short-supply of petroleum-based fuels has led to activities by NASA to establish technical characteristics of air transportation systems that would use hydrogen-fueled aircraft. These activities cover sources and production of liquid hydrogen, aircraft configurations, and air terminal modifications, as affected by the introduction of liquid-hydrogen-fueled aircraft. ... 

CRYOPLANE "Liquid Hydrogen Fuelled Aircraft-System Analysis". Coals A large consortium of companies, research institutions and universities of 11 European countries, co-ordinated by Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace Airbus CmbH, in which the Spanish participation was held by CASA and the Polytechnics University of Madrid, run this project. The project objective considered liquid hydrogen as the only known fuel suitable for aviation to be produced from renewable energy sources and offering extremely low pollutant emissions. 

RICH, B.R., Lockheed CL-400 Liquid Hydrogen Fueled Mach 2.5 Reconnaissance Vehicle, Working Symp. on LH2 Fueled Aircraft, May 15-16,1973, NASA Langley Research Center (1973). 

Fourteen commercially available organic foam insulations were examined to determine their suitability for insulating liquid hydrogen tanks of subsonic hydrogen fueled aircraft. Materials investigated were polyurethane, polymethacryllmide, polyisocyanurate, polymetric isocyanate, polybenzamidazole, toluenedi isocyanate, and isocyanate foam. The test specimens included foams with chopped fiberglass reinforcements, flame retardants, and vapor barriers. 

Using liquid hydrogen as an aircraft fuel is not a new concept. Indeed, the first use of liquid hydrogen for aircraft use took place in the early 1950s at the then NACA facilities at Cleveland, Ohio. In addition, liquid hydrogen experiments took place at the Nevada Test Site on nuclear-powered aircraft, called the Pluto program. 

NASA is focusing on liquid-hydrogen power as part of its Vehicle Systems program. This includes a zero-emissions hydrogen-powered fuel-cell aircraft with cryogenic electric motors in the wing. 

In 1977, two fully loaded Boeing 747 commercial aircraft crashed into each other on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands. This accident was then the worst in aviation history and took 583 lives. An inquiry concluded most of the deaths in the Canary Islands accident resulted from the aviation fuel fire that lasted for more than 10 hours. G. Daniel Brewer, who was the hydrogen program manager for Lockheed, stated that if both aircraft had been using liquid hydrogen as fuel instead of kerosene, hun-... 

NASA has also funded research by several aerospace firms, including Lockheed and Boeing, to determine if liquid hydrogen could be practical for commercial aircraft and what modifications would be needed for airports and fueling systems. 

To interested observers, it appeared that the Soviet Union was gearing up to develop hydrogen-fueled aviation and that it had a leg up over the West in exploring this new technology. Maybe it was only old-style communist propaganda, but both TASS and the party newspaper Izvestia implied that aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid natural gas were going to be the wave of the socialist future. 

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