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VIDEO BY DAVIDE MONTELEONE, MANUEL MONTESANO, SAMANTHA AZZANI
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By Robert Kunzig, ENVIRONMENT Executive Editor
There’s a movement out there to shame us from flying—because if you fly in planes, it’s by far the biggest contributor to your personal carbon footprint. Along with the pandemic, flight-shaming has had one good effect: It has made at least some of us think about how unnecessary some of those trips we take are, especially the ones for business.
But if you’d like to feel inspired rather than ashamed about that future, check out October's issue of National Geographic, and in particular the illustration showing a proposed V-shaped plane (video of it being tested above). The prototype is far more aerodynamic and fuel-efficient than current models. And the fuel, in this design, is hydrogen, which emits no carbon dioxide when it’s burned.
As the cover feature makes clear, zero-emissions flight is a thorny engineering problem that we’re decades away from fully solving—but the solutions, including short-hop electric planes, are on the way.
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