this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
405 points (98.6% liked)

Technology

87214 readers
5959 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
405
First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity (arstechnica.com)
submitted 17 hours ago by FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
99 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Actually dragging (or wheeling in) a wire or having a wire car supplying the plane with electricity during takeoff would work too.

After doing more of the math, I realized that the energetic cost of takeoff is quite a small fraction of the overall cost. So the only real benefit of the catapult would be to reduce the size and weight of the propulsive machinery on the plane. So externally providing just the electricity wouldn't be much of a benefit.