NASA Has a Battery to Let You Fly

NASA’s Solid State Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety (SABERS) is claiming they have created a solid-state battery that will break the barriers that held back the development of electric-powered planes. Some of the advantages of the new battery include it is not made with the scarce resource of lithium. It is also lighter than lithium-ion batteries, is not highly flammable, and has a greater range than lithium-ion batteries do.

From oilprice.com:

SABERS has also been able to overcome a major disadvantage associated with solid-state battery technology. Typically, lithium-ion batteries are much more efficient when it comes to discharging power. But through a new innovation SABERS has been able to “increase a solid-state battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 – and then by another factor of five,” according to a report from Yahoo! News.

SABERS’ Rocco Viggiano, an investigator at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland said, “We’re starting to approach this new frontier of battery research that could do so much more than lithium-ion batteries can. Not only does this design eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the battery’s weight, it also allows us to double or even triple the energy it can store, far exceeding the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries that are considered to be state of the art.”