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Comment by ryanmarsh | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the sentiment but this is a permanent installation for a US base in North Carolina. Also there is nothing tactical about a solar farm.

JP-8 (similar to diesel) is easy to source the world over, has high energy density, is easy to transport and runs nearly everything in the military.

Solar is a nice idea but we’re nowhere near (economical) panel efficiencies necessary to transition field electricity use. Keep in mind, the further you get from the flag pole the less electricity you need. Things are designed that way for obvious reasons.

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Only thing even close for energy density and thus potentially useful for logistics would be a small modular reactor, which could then be used to create diesel on site. Trucking the reactor in though has obvious security concerns.

Wouldn't the early iterations of something generally be pretty lame?

Seems possible in 50 years or so things could be more mobile or advanced in other manners.

Either way, certainly interested in seeing what the USAF will be doing to get to 0 emissions. I have a sense they may be able to harness resources towards goal a bit more effectively than some of our more fractured systems of governance.

Only if you can also make energy storage super small and portable for those times when the sun isn’t shining.

Seems easier to invest in micro reactors.

Micro reactors are an obvious dead end.

"Super small" energy storage is called synthetic fuel, something that has already been demonstrated practical for military deployment.

USAF can go carbon-neutral by sourcing synthetic fuel. Zero-emission, never.

Emitting only water vapor is well within foreseeable development. LH2 fuel would provide better range, besides.

In certain circumstances, ammonia as fuel would make more sense.

Replacing compact, lightweight, low-maintenance kerosene tanks with larger cryogenic containers and fighting hydrogen's propensity to penetrate metals and rubbers and make them brittle is not an easy sell. It may make sense in some cases (like large cargo planes), but in a lot of others, like small, high-g semi-autonomous combat aircraft of the future, it may not be practical.

Or maybe metallic hydrogen at standard conditions will be attained soon enough.

People will do whatever makes better sense according to experience and instant circumstances. There is no need to speculate.

But LH2 aircraft, wherever actually deployed, will be impossible to compete with.

Sun does not even produce enough watts per square meter to be practical for transportation of heavy artillery (nevermind that it produces zero at night). It's ridiculous to imply solar ever has potential beyond supplemental energy.

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