Posted on 02/24/2008 4:59:21 AM PST by decimon
LONDON - The world's first commercial flight powered by biofuel has taken off from Heathrow Airport.
The goal of Sunday's Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet test flight from London to the Netherlands is to show that biofuels can produce less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels.
Before it took off, Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic's president, said the breakthrough would help Virgin Atlantic to fly planes using clean fuel sooner than expected.
Oh, I thought it was a Virgin who flew the plane, ah, never mind then.
Start making the JP/Diesel fuels from coal via the Fisher-Tropsch Process so we can tell the Saudi's, Chavez, and Mexico to pound sand....
Oops, not B5, B-52.....
Sir Richard needs to lay out the process in which the bio fuel was made. Unless he just ramming vegetation into the tanks, there is a process involved. Then we can discuss the great CO2 savings more effectively as we freeze our a$$es off the next 20 winters.
Richard Branson is a PR genius.
That was my thought.
Good thing it's not Eunuch Airlines.
I’ll bet they used real virgin olive oil.
Only in First Class.
Fish and chips shops under the flight path report that sales have doubled.
I wonder how much food it took to fuel the plane.
Anybody got pics of the glide slope as she comes in for her landing?
Look at the price of groceries these days and you’ll get an idea.
Nice touch, I like it!!
How many starving children in (insert your favorite famine stricken nation here) died today because this airplane flew?
During the 1970s, the government of Rhodesia was under an international oil embargo. The country’s small force of jet aircraft was a vital resource in the war against communist supported black nationalist guerrillas.
In the absence of petroleum, the planes were fueled with sunflower oil, abundant in the “Breadbasket of Africa,” as white-ruled Rhodesia was then known. The stuff was easy to produce and required little if any modication to the aircraft.
It was to no avail, the rebels won with support from the Kremlin and Jimmy Carter, and turned the country into Zimbabwe. Foodstuffs of all kinds are very hard to come by there these days, but Carter’s conscience is clear.
I`m sure Carter does`nt miss a minutes sleep over what has happened.
No way! They can starve children but not my chickadees.
Actually, I have nothing against biofuels as long as they are not subsidized. Left to market forces, farmers will produce both food and fuel.
> Sir Richard needs to lay out the process in
> which the bio fuel was made.
He didn’t want to do that, because it would have
revealed that this flight used the entire 2008 supply.
_______
Symbolism trumps substance.
It’s a liberal mantra.
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