The thing we do technically know how to do just haven't yet because there are no economic incentives to even tackle the finer engineering aspects let alone the regulatory approval ones, is to put a large vacuum-insulated (like a thermos/dewar) liquid hydrogen tank in the middle of a jet or a more-spherical shape front and back of the wing; and then just adjusting the plumbing and combustion chambers and nozzles to work for hydrogen instead of regular diesel-like jet fuel.
We have gas turbines running on hydrogen. They just work. We have tanks like it, just none tuned for the needs and wants of an airplane specifically.
They are more range than a normal jet fuel tank, because hydrogen is just so much lighter per energy.
The only issue is that the insulation needs and the sheer volume make it impractical to keep in regular jetliner wings.
Thus the need for putting a more-spherical tank in the tube shaped fuselage body of the plane.
I think such a plane would be around 5x as expensive today to operate due to fuel costs, and have otherwise pretty comparable performance specs.
There would probably be a separate front and rear cabin, though.
If you tax the CO2 enough you'd trigger such or similar to be put into production.
I think such a plane would be around 5x as expensive today to operate due to fuel costs, and have otherwise pretty comparable performance specs. There would probably be a separate front and rear cabin, though.
If you tax the CO2 enough you'd trigger such or similar to be put into production.