Aviation mandates in an automated fossil-free century

Two trends are rumbling down parallel runways in the new century, likely to take off close to simultaneously. One is the reduction or elimination of flight-deck crew, at least in some flights. The other is the reduction or elimination of fossil-fuel power and its replacement by renewable power. A third trend, unification of national airspaces into a global airspace under the ICAO umbrella, is relatively well advanced. Fully unmanned aircraft (UAVs) and halfstaffed aircraft (HAVs) both depend on remote pilots sitting anywhere in a globally connected world. A major mandate question is minimum requirements for staffing, especially for passenger flights. Renewable-power aircraft are represented in this paper by electrically powered airships (EPAS) in which hydrogen fuel cells supply motors that turn large ducted fans. What global mandates will be necessary and sufficient to steer the effects of these trends in a global airspace? Transitioning the “national airspace” concept to “global airspace” is not a remarkably big stretch at this point. Airline companies, though generally promoting national cultures in their fleets, are increasingly multi-national. The top-level problem is to obtain, from these twenty-first century trends, the greatest good for the greatest number-of shippers and shoppers, of stayat-homes as well as passengers. From its infancy, aviation has been mandated to serve societal needs in addition to the business of carrying passengers and freight for profit-making fares. In a century inevitably preoccupied with coping with climate change, mandates may well expand beyond fuel efficiency to participation in geo-engineering. EPASs have the great virtue of getting the air transport job done with a carbon footprint of zero, but by deploying artificial photosynthesis, they can perform actual scavenging of atmospheric carbon dioxide, retrieving carbon for recycling.