Transport · Waiting on a material
Electric aircraft
A megawatt motor light enough to fly needs a cryostat that survives a wing.
The record behind electric aircraft
The high-efficiency megawatt motor · NASASuperconductors in electric aircraft
Electrifying a regional aircraft needs a propulsion motor in the megawatt class at a specific power several times what conventional machines deliver, because every kilogram of propulsion is a kilogram not carried as payload or battery. Superconducting windings make the required field in far less mass, and every credible study of the configuration includes them. No aircraft flies on one.
What is stopping electric aircraft
The cold. A flight-weight cryogenic system that survives the vibration, the altitude cycling and the certification regime of an airframe does not exist, and the mass saved in the motor has to be handed straight back to the cryostat. Until a conductor works warm enough to change that arithmetic, this stays a design study.
What a better material would change for electric aircraft
Nowhere else on this list does a material decide so cleanly whether a machine exists at all. A conductor carrying propulsion-level current at a temperature a light, flight-qualified cooler could hold would move megawatt-class electric propulsion from a study into a program. Nothing else on the aircraft is waiting.
Near electric aircraft, in transport
SuperMatics is a platform infrastructure company for superconducting devices: software that finds the material and the process, lab work that makes and measures it, and pilot manufacturing with industrial partners.If you are working on something in this field and a material is what stands in the way, tell us about it.