Self driving vehicles make sense as the next major change, akin to the jetliner, mass production car, steam train, and steamship. Until something along the lin

Self driving vehicles make sense as the next major change, akin to the jetliner, mass production car, steam train, and steamship. Until something along the lines of antigravity is discovered, I can't see any major modal change in aerospace. Fundamentally there's little different from today's 787 or a380 than a 747 or 707. As was pointed out, you used to be able to cross the Atlantic 3 times in a single day. The major change to open up Europe-far east travel wasn't high speed planes, it was the opening of Russian air space. Aside from some modest range improvements there's little change in 50 years on long haul travel. The only things on the horizon would be antipodal non stop flights, but those distances tend to be uneconomic due to having to carry the fuel. High speed trains are slightly faster than they were in 1980 but not by an order of magnitude, things like the Shanghai maglev seem doomed to be one off curiosities. There's not much in today's transport world that would shock someone from 60 years ago.