From: j.halpenny@Rogers.com   
      
   bob_jenkins@burtleburtle.net wrote:   
      
   > How come the commercial airlines use jet fuel rather than LOX/H2?  I   
   > would have thought LOX/H2 would be lighter and would give the planes a   
   > longer range.  Is petroleum just cheaper?   
      
   There have  been experiments with hydrogen fuel in aircraft.   
      
   Zeppelins had bags of hydrogen to keep them up, and diesel fuel to run the   
   engines. They actually had to release hydrogen to trim the ship as the   
   fuel was burned off, so some trials were made on burning the hydrogen. It   
   turned out that hydrogen worked so poorly as a fuel that a 300 HP engine   
   would only put out 50 HP on hydrogen, so the idea was abandoned as   
   impractical.   
      
   The eventual answer to the trim problem was to condense the water out of   
   the engine exhaust. The water produced from burning fuel oil weighs more   
   than the original fuel, so they always had ballast to match the weight   
   that was burned off.   
      
      
      
      
   --   
      
      John Halpenny   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)