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Thread: Will electric planes eventually replace fuel based aircraft ?
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Old Nov 23, 2016 | 5:06 pm
  #38  
YVR Cockroach
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Originally Posted by mandolino
The Germans who invented mp3 (and AAC too, not lot of people know that) had to wait about 20 years for certain technical improvements and market conditions, like more widespread broadband and mass market mp3 players , before their invention really gained momentum.

So even that "sudden" revolution took about 25 years in total, and against a lot of resistance.
Or it took that much time for the technology to implement it to be developed?

There are a lot of inventions that are theoretically possible but engineering knowledge and material science haven't allowed their development to be economically (or technologically) feasible.

Though supermagnets have been commercially developed and are available, a lot of spinoffs from Strategic Defense Initiative (a.k.a. "star wars") R&D spending of the '80s still haven't been developed into commercial technology.

As for what the future could hold, think space elevator, or more appropriately for air transport, SCRAMjets.
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