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NASA to begin historic new era of X-Planes
- rtpg 11y agoThis makes me think of that idlewords talk[0], where the intro talks about the failure of the Concorde. The fact that you could fly to NY in 3 hours instead of in 7 made not much of a difference, because with the airport travel time included, you're still going to end up losing a day... Though here they seem to be focusing on effectiveness rather than speed, so that's good. Just interesting to think about the fact that faster planes are only useful at this point if they're much, much faster. [0]:http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm
- jdavis703 11y agoLet's see. You leave for a London airport at 6am London time. You've finally gotten off the train, checked in, gotten through security and are at your boarding gate by 7:30am. Your flight takes off at 8. You fly for three hours landing at 6am NYC time. You take a train into the city, grab a bagel and coffee and are ready for your 8am meeting. That's not quite what I'd consider loosing a day.
- stevetrewick 11y agoAs a general guide you should aim to arrive: Long-haul and El Al: three hours before scheduled departure European flights: two hours before scheduled departure UK and Ireland flights: 90 minutes before scheduled departure. http://www.heathrow.com/departures/checking-in http://www.heathrow.com/departures/checking-in
- jdavis703 11y agoI usually arrive two hours early for long-haul international flights, and an hour early for domestic (or short-haul). Based on arrivials to the gate, I'm pretty sure others have lot smaller margins.
- Someone 11y agoIf they say they need you 3 hours before, that means that they need a bit less time to process everybody, say 2.5 hours. Now, the only thing they need is that the queue doesn't run dry during those 2.5 hours. That means half the passengers can arrive 1 hour 15 minutes later, one in five about 2 hours later. If you are one of them, you help those coming early in the sense that they are less likely to have to waste time waiting in the check-in queues than in the slightly less annoying areas behind it (and of course, the early-comers help you to spend that hour in even less annoying circumstances) And of course, assuming they have the capacity to process all passengers leaving every day, large airports could parallelize processing over multiple check-in queues, get processing time down to 30 minutes or so (using 6 check-in queues and a smart way to distribute load across them), and ask you to be there 60 minutes before departure. I do not really see why they do not do that. There used to be a problem getting luggage on board the right plane, but with modern luggage processing, all bags end up on the same conveyer belt, anyways.
- tajen 11y agoWake up at 4. Take the subway to the train station at 4.45. Reach the train station at 5.15, half an hour earlier in case of subway problems, and walk through the statin to fund the platform. Take the 5.50 train, reach the airport at 6.35. Check-in at 6.55. Go through security early, queue 40 minutes because it's Monday morning, it's 7.35. Submit yourself to the random terrorist check because you look like below 30 years old and in a hurry. It's 7.50. Run through the airport because you're at gate 167. You get your flight and be at work by 2pm, babbling because you woke up at 4 and sweaty because you've almost missed your flight. You'd believe you could reduce the margins for the subway, train, check-in, morning queue and terrorist check, but since you never know when they happen, they might happen all at once (anecdotic experience: I almost missed a SYD-LON flight and I systematically get terrorist-checked), and you don't want to come back to your boss saying you've missed your $3000 flight.
- iamflimflam1 11y agoGet driven to the airport in the limo, express check in and security checks for first class passengers, quick coffee/breakfast in the first class lounge and board at your leisure, arrive at work happy and relaxed... That's why Concorde worked.
- johnloeber 11y agoConcorde tickets, adjusted for inflation, often ran around $8-10k. No Concorde passenger would be taking the subway/train. They would use a fast private driver -- chances are they could even get some shut-eye in the car.
- ryanlol 11y agoEmirates for example has airport transports (Usually S-class or equivalent) included in tickets that cost less than a third of that.
- jdavis703 11y agoSo in other words you're travelling even faster. I'm almost certain that if Concord flew today you'd get express security (even "premium economy" gives you that for international flights). Also in some places taking the train is much faster than driving due to traffic.
- Reason077 11y agoConcorde didn't fail because there wasn't a market for fast travel between cities like London and New York. British Airways had no trouble filling them (at super-premium prices), and it's Concorde operations were quite profitable. The real problem was that there was no market for expensive planes that couldn't operate over land routes, or from many airports, because of the extreme noise and environmental concerns. If supersonic passenger planes are ever going to be a reality again then these are the things that need to be addressed, and thankfully it seems NASA realises this.
- fluffysquirrel 11y agoI had never heard that Concorde was "quite profitable"; to the contrary, I believe it was heavily subsidized by its operators' respective governments as a point of national pride. e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/09/business/france-extending-aid-to-concorde.html http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/09/business/france-extending-... http://articles.latimes.com/1987-12-01/business/fi-25795_1_supersonic-concorde http://articles.latimes.com/1987-12-01/business/fi-25795_1_s...
- Reason077 11y agoDevelopment of the Concorde aircraft itself was heavily subsidised. But in service, it was profitable - at least for British Airways: On average Concorde made and operating profit of £30-50 Million a year for British Airways in the boom years where many passengers were travelling first class. British Airways reportedly received £1.75 Billion in revenue for Concorde services against an operating cost of around £1 Billion. Air France made a much smaller profit. Source: http://www.concordesst.com/retire/faq_r.html http://www.concordesst.com/retire/faq_r.html
- maaku 11y agoI've been following this program since the beginning and I'm very excited. This could be the future of high speed air travel -- because it could reverse laws against overland travel.
- berntb 11y agoIn my more depressed moments, it seems to me that high speed air travel, like all mass transport, is dead. :-( There are too many religious/political idealists. When they get serious 3D printers, it should be possible to build metal objects (like the framework of luggage) around explosives, including batteries. Put the resulting metal object in bleach and rinse for a week. It should have no detectable explosives and be immune to X-rays and most other radiation.
- watersb 11y agoNASA's previous X-Plane initiative seemed to end without making any substantial change to civil (non-military) aviation. We could really use small jets out here in sparsely-populated Western USA. Eclipse Aviation got very close, then ran out of money. How much money would be required to start them up again? We need new engines. My 1966 Cessna 172 required leaded AV gas, which is as rare -- and as damaging -- as the tears from a weeping unicorn. Why invest in supersonic transport? We need low-end disruption, not high-end incremental improvements.
- throwaway_exer 11y agoThe assets of Eclipse were bought out, and the ~259 unfinished EA500 airframes were completed and sold. Then a new model, the EA550 was built by the new company. What killed Eclipse was gross mismanagement, lack of funding to cover that, and Cessna's Mustang.
- ardit33 11y agoThe main goals are efficiency and pollution, and eliminating the supersonic boom is a secondary goal. "Goals include showcasing how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75 percent less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than today’s jets – perhaps even when flying supersonic. " "Meanwhile, other experimental aircraft also are under consideration, including those with novel shapes that break the mold of the traditional tube and wing airplane, and others that are propelled by hybrid electric power. "
- lucaspiller 11y agoJust for comparison the Concorde (which used engines based on a military bomber) used around 5x as much fuel as an A380 to transport passengers over the same distance - so there is a lot of room for improvement. Economically I don't think there will ever be a market for the speed alone to command paying a much higher ticket price, but maybe technologies can be developed that will mean supersonic aircraft are as efficient (or more so) than subsonic aircraft.
- paganel 11y ago
- ndesaulniers 11y agoPure black screen on mobile
- ljf 11y agoWhat mobile / os / browser? Working great on Android with latest chrome.
- jeromeflipo 11y agoBlack on Firefox for Android (Nexus 5). More and more pages don't load correctly on Firefox(e.g Google Finance stock pages)
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoSame, black screen, FF on Android 4.3.
- ljf 11y agoWhat mobile / os / browser? Working great on Android with latest chrome.
- trendnet 11y agoI thought NASA bought X-Plane (a flight simulator from Laminar Research) to revitalize it as Lockheed Martin did something like that with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Oh well...
- m_mueller 11y agoYou just wait for VR adoption - I'm pretty sure there's going to be a big revival of sims of all sort.
- jgeada 11y agoAll really interesting & immediately commercially useful. So why aren't these research projects being funded by Boeing, Lockheed etc? Why are we using NASA as the R&D division of commercial companies? Shouldn't NASA's role be more blue-sky research for things we don't know yet are feasible or possible?
- markvdb 11y agoIt's one way to package development subsidies to private players. One of the reasons could be to minimise trade agreement disputes the kind of "Airbus got x€ of direct subsidies!" versus "But Boeing got x$ subsidies!"?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Ankaios 11y agoThe quiet supersonic transport is potentially commercially viable, but without a demonstration that the technique actually works in flight, the size and risk of the investment necessary to try it have seemed to be too large for the private sector. (The concept has been out there for a while.) Another motivation is a desire to understand the design principles and behavior of such concepts at a deep and general level. That's not usually something industry does—often industry's level of analysis and experimentation is just "good enough" to get a job done. If that gets repeated a few times, it leads to both wasted effort and a proliferation of mediocre designs. (As another example, that motivation also drove the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics—NASA's predecessor agency—to undertake an exhaustive study of airfoils. NASA still undertakes quite a bit of research from a similar perspective.)
- chrisatumd 11y agoI saw a discussion about a supersonic jet company on HN not too long ago. http://boom.aero/ http://boom.aero/ Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329286
- razzaj 11y agoAS i look at the rendering on this plane, all i could think of is "gee, this eerily looks like the SX from black & mortimer" http://images.gibertjoseph.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/058/9782870970058_1_75.jpg http://images.gibertjoseph.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1...
- rdiddly 11y agoLooks like they've got some x-planing to do.
- erikb 11y agoWhat is an X-Plane? I assumed something like a Star Wars X-Wing, but it doesn't look like it at all.
- detaro 11y agoNASA name for eXperimental Planes of all kinds, testing new designs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_X-planes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_X-planes
- KKKKkkkk1 11y agoNASA's original mission was to put an American on the moon. Fifty years later, and it's still going strong, churning out projects to justify its existence. Perhaps it's time for the US government to let the likes of Milner and Hawking take the front of the stage.
- Ankaios 11y agoNASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was formed from a pre-existing agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), that did amazing work advancing the field, and that work never stopped within NASA. Also, to be clear: between Milner's two (fantastic) projects, he has committed $200 M, to be spent over roughly a decade. NASA's budget is about $19,000 M annually. For fast, efficient progress we need both—large amounts of government resources as well as private-sector funding of ideas that NASA and NSF are overlooking or not prioritizing for whatever reason.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- KKKKkkkk1 11y agoSo do I understand correctly that you're saying that NASA should keep running indefinitely because they're spending $19B/pa? Isn't the logic here reversed?
- Ankaios 11y agoNo. Your claim was that the government should let Milner et al. "take the front of the stage." Their work is fantastic, but it is focused on some narrow but important topics. There is a vast amount of other progress continually being made by NASA. For a healthy ecosystem, we need both sorts of actors (along with others) building on each other's efforts.
- KKKKkkkk1 11y agoThe job of the DOD is to run the military. The job of the EPA is to protect the environment. What is the job of NASA? I'm arguing that there is no such thing, and the $19B could be better spent on other uses (perhaps even by the NSF).