Since electric aircraft seem to be taking off, and since I'm extremely unlikely to start an aircraft company, here's my idea. Do with it what you wish (you can even ridicule it, but I'd rather not be directly mentioned in that case):
We got used, in hydrocarbon-fuelled aircraft, to their being built as a single unit that goes from take off to landing. I think there were good reasons for that, including availability of land and their place (relatively long haul flights) in the transport mix. But we don't have to stick with that model. In rocketry, we use multiple stages to reduce the amount of fuel-carrying infrastructure that needs to be lifted to orbit. With electric planes, we could do something similar, with a "sled", that carries the main fuselage to cruising height and speed, then detaches and returns to recharge and be reused. Optionally, this could also be done during landing.
One significant advantage of this idea (although it's not essential) is that the sled, because it can be mostly motors and batteries, should be able to support vertical take off (and optionally landing), followed by in-air acceleration before the sled detaches decelerates and returns to charge.
In principle, this could hasten, for example, practical use of electric jets for all NZ domestic routes, as well as allowing departures and arrivals at much smaller stations nearer to population centres and other transport infrastructure.
Could this be made workable?
Brett Adcock, Stefan Powell, Guglielmo S. Aglietti
Owner at Hangda New Energy (Shanghai). I am currently embarking a retirement life not too different from that of a swine - until next calling if the world recourses.
2moNice. It sounds like someone makes a lot of money lol. I have a dear friend of generation, MIT AeroAstro alumni class of '59, who, like his classmate madam chairwoman of GE board, did great services to America and around the global, many cannot be told. Would you young talents offer to help Boeing out? Just saying.