Swiss Startup Unveils “World’s First Hydrogen VTOL Jet”

Look­ing a lit­tle sim­i­lar to a Lil­i­um Jet, Swiss start­up, Sir­ius Avi­a­tion, has unveiled what it describes as “the world’s first liq­uid hydro­gen VTOL air­craft” with an ambi­tious plan to have it in the air by 2025, reports freethink.com.

What makes Sir­ius dif­fer­ent to its rivals is that instead of elec­tric­i­ty as the ener­gy source, this jet uses liq­uid hydro­gen allow­ing for a much longer flight dis­tance. The com­pa­ny claims its air­craft could fly from New York City to Mia­mi with­out a refu­el.

Please Watch Video

The jet’s propul­sion sys­tem com­bines this hydro­gen with oxy­gen, pulled in from the out­side air, to gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty need­ed to pow­er it. The only byprod­uct of this process is water.

Sir­ius has unveiled two ver­sions of its hydro­gen VTOL: The Sir­ius Mil­len­ni­um Jet and the Sir­ius Busi­ness Jet. The air­craft has been designed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with BMW’s Design­works and Sauber Group, an engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny known for its For­mu­la 1 cars.

The Mil­len­ni­um has room for five pas­sen­gers and a pilot, and its flight range of 650 miles is more than enough to fly from Wash­ing­ton, DC to Chica­go. The Sir­ius Busi­ness Jet, mean­while, has room for three pas­sen­gers and a pilot and a range of 1,150 miles, enough for a trip between New York and Mia­mi. Both have a cruise speed of 320 mph. Com­pare this to Joby Aviation’s eVTOL with a range of 150 miles and a top speed of 200 mph or Archer Midnight’s 100 miles and 150 mph. 

While the FAA has already cer­ti­fied one hydro­gen plane already as “air­wor­thy” — the Uni­ver­sal Hydrogen’s Dash-800 — as Sir­ius’ hydro­gen VTOL is the first of its kind, there’s no prece­dent for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. This means the process could take some time to achieve. For liq­uid hydro­gen is a nov­el fuel source for air­craft. Most in-devel­op­ment hydro­gen planes store the fuel in a gaseous form. The first pilot­ed flight of a craft fuelled by liq­uid hydro­gen only took place last Sep­tem­ber.

Even so, Sir­ius has laid out an ambi­tious time­line for its jets, with the first test flights planned for 2025, fol­lowed by cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2026 and the launch of com­mer­cial ser­vices by 2028. 

As with any start­up, suf­fi­cient fund­ing will be the pri­ma­ry obsta­cle to over­come. Up to now, invest­ment has come inter­nal­ly. Alex­ey Popov, CEO of Sir­ius, told Avi­a­tion Week, “We have funds, but not enough as the mar­ket is hot and we need to move fast.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://siriusjet.com/

(News Source: https://www.freethink.com)

(Images: Sir­ius Avi­a­tion)