Flying-V

Here's an interesting fact I just learned about this aircraft.  The team hopes to provide the Flying-V with sustainable propulsion, allowing it to carry liquid hydrogen instead of kerosene.  The concept seems awesome, given that it would eliminate the carbon footprint of the plane.  However, based on other research, it doesn't seem like it's something very feasible:

At best, the mechanical energy you can release by evaporating liquid nitrogen would be about its heat of vaporization, which is 5.56 kJ/mol or roughly 200 kJ/kg. (Converting this energy to useful thrust probably requires you to use the expanding nitrogen to drive a turbine that drives a fan or propeller, but that's a Simple Matter of Engineering, at least comparatively).

The chemical energy density of jet fuel is about 46 MJ/kg.

Even if we suppose the efficiency of a nitrogen engine could be a bit better than that of hydrocarbon-burning engines, this still means that you would need to carry about a hundred times more nitrogen (by weight) than jet fuel for the same result.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with though!

Check out the test flight of the model on Youtube September 1st, 2020!

I created an alternate building method for the wing in an attempt to save pieces, but it wasn't a huge difference (491 vs 487); I'm not sure I like the way it looks either:

Where's what the size of the plane looks like compared to another LEGO plane:

Here's what the actual plane looks like: