This challenge originated in 2007 as the Personal Air Vehicle Challenge and in 2008 it was called the General Aviation Technology Challenge. In those challenges the teams demonstrated light aircraft that incorporate improvements to maximize fuel efficiency, reduce noise and improve safety. These innovations are intended to result in aircraft with less negative impacts on the environment and on their communities. These are features that might be applied in the full range of private, commercial and military aircraft of the future. Awards totaling $250,000 were made in the 2007 competition and awards totaling $97,000 were made in 2008.
The next aviation challenge will focus more directly on efficiency and will be called the Green Flight Challenge. The aircraft will still need to meet stringent safety and noise requirements as well as reasonable speed and range. The driving requirement will be to exceed an equivalent fuel-efficiency of 200 passenger miles per gallon. To compute the equivalence, the energy content of the electricity or fuel will be compared to one gallon of gasoline. The expectation is that electric, bio-fueled and hybrid-powered aircraft will compete. The competition will not be held until the summer of 2011, so that teams have time to develop and test truly novel aircraft.
The CAFE Green Flight Challenge was announced at AirVenture 2009 in Oshkosh, WI on July 31, 2009. The prize purse is $1,650,000. For rules and registration information see
http://cafefoundation.org/v2/cafenews_home.php. The competition will be held in July 2011 in Santa Rosa, CA. Click
here to view the press release.
Results of the 2008 Competition NASA awarded a total of $97,000 in prizes at the 2008 General Aviation Technology Challenge out of a total available prize purse of $300,000. The challenge event was held at the Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California from August 4 to August 10.
The largest prize awarded was $50,000 for the aircraft with the overall best safety features which was Vance Turner’s team flying a modified Pipistrel Virus. The Pipistrel team also won prize money for the CAFE 400 race ($2,000), shortest take-off distance ($3,750) best angle of climb ($3,750) and shared the prize for lowest cabin noise ($1,875). Vance Turner is based in El Dorado Hills, California.
The team led by John Dunham of Carson City, Nevada, flying a customized Lambada aircraft won $20,000 for the community noise prize and shared the prize for lowest cabin noise ($1,875). Pilot Bob Basham of Boise, Idaho, flying a Flight Design-CT won a prize of $3,750 for best glide ratio at 100 mph. Another team that attended the event but was unable to fly in competition was led by Geoff Stevenson from Scio, Oregon, who brought a Diamond DA20 aircraft modified to incorporate a very innovative custom-built bio-diesel engine.
A $50,000 Green Aviation Prize purse was offered but no team was able to exceed the minimum requirement of 30 miles per gallon during the 400-mile race to receive any portion of the prize, although all the competitors came close.
