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So much this. Not to mention the reduced environmental impact. Flying is absolutely catastrophic in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and the Paris accord do

So much this. Not to mention the reduced environmental impact. Flying is absolutely catastrophic in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and the Paris accord doesn't cover even a fraction of it! (because flying occurs in "international space" and so it doesn't appear on any country's "balance sheet"... atrocious.)

audunw 8y ago
> Flying is absolutely catastrophic in terms of greenhouse gas emissions Uhm, flying is OK in terms of emissions per passenger mile. Not as great as train, but better than driving solo in a gasoline car. The problem is transcontinental flights. While they're OK in terms of efficiency per mile, the number of miles is staggering. The problem is, those trips can't be made by train. So in terms of flying, I think the main focus should be not to fly long distance if it can be avoided. Sure, it's much better to take the train if possible, but if you fly between countries within europe a dozen times a year, that's not a catastrophe.
- llukas 8y ago
  Is it still competetive vs car for supersonic flight?
- cornholio 8y ago
  I know Boeing proposed Methane turbofans, and they were estimated to have 60% less carbon emissions and cheaper than jet fuel - after eating the large development and infrastructure costs. You could take this even further, producing Hydrogen from clean electric energy is about three times more expensive than methane for the same energy content, leading to a moderate increase in the cost of even a low cost ticket. But as with all radically new technology, there needs to be a strong industry, government and consumer push. The program that produced the Methane turbofan concept (SUGAR Freeze) has lost any political appeal.
  - erezyehuda 8y ago
    Costs aside, wouldn't replacing carbon emissions with methane be drastically worse? Doing a casual search says that methane is 2000-3000% more potent as a GHG.
    - ufo 8y ago
      I assume the methane would be the fuel, not the byproduct.
      - JamesBarney 8y ago
        I imagine you won't combust 100% of the fuel. So wouldn't it be both.
        rlucas 8y ago
        Pure methane is a bunch of molecules with just one carbon, which simplifies things a bit vs. a cracked and heterogeneous mix of longer chain (10+) molecules. You can incompletely combust a 10-carbon molecule and wind up with other hydrocarbons but if you burn up CH4, you're definitely just getting one CO2.
- PsylentKnight 8y ago
  > Not as great as train, but better than driving solo in a gasoline car. It was my understanding that driving is better for shorter trips, because the overhead of taking off and landing is significant. I don't have a source. IIRC I read this in "Doing Good Better."
- schiffern 8y ago
  >The problem is, those trips can't be made by train. Transcontinental flights (one side of the continent to the other, see [1]) can usually be taken by train. You probably mean intercontinental flights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_airspeed_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_airspeed_reco...
  - ghaff 8y ago
    You're being pedantic. One can travel from New York to San Francisco (well, Emeryville) by train but it's going to take multiple days and, even if you handwave the existence of high-speed rail through two continental divides among other things, it's a very long trip. That's never going to be a mainstream replacement for even a subsonic 5 to 6 hour flight between a multitude of east coast-west coast city pairs.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      If there were high-speed trains that could make cross-US trips in, say, 15 hours, and at comparable or cheaper cost vs. airplanes, I can imagine there might be demand. I would be willing to take those overnight. But even if we could replace most <500 mile flights along the most popular routes (starting by connecting cities up and down the coasts), it would be a huge win as far as fuel economy is concerned.
    - schiffern 8y ago
      And you're being parochial. Who said "continent" was limited to North America? The claim was that the trip can't be made, not that it can be made but is undesirable as compared with alternatives.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  > The problem is, those trips can't be made by train. They can't now, but they could be. All that is required is a level of capital investment that can't ever be recovered while in competition with air and sea-surface travel... The transatlantic tunnel has been a sci-fi fantasy since 1895. It could cost as little as $500 billion today.
mehrdadn 8y ago
I'll point out that although it's indeed atrocious compared to a train ride, flying is still more efficient than driving a car. So if traveling is required and you're debating between driving vs. flying (say SF <-> LA), you should prefer flying unless you can carpool. I don't know the exact numbers since it depends on where you're going and what plane/airline you fly, but I would expect around 50-75 MPG for a reasonably full airplane [1], whereas your car might be more like 25-30 MPG on the highway, so you'd want at least 2-3 (ideally 4) people in the car to make it more efficient. However the thing about flying is of course that it burns fuel at a much, much faster rate, so if it means the difference between you driving to workplace A vs. flying to workplace B regularly, then you'll be burning one hell of a lot more fuel by flying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Airli...
- Reason077 8y ago
  That’s true today. But in the coming years and decades, ground transport will be largely electrified and it’s per-mile emissions greatly reduced. Hopefully, aviation can be electrified too one day (or it’s emissions reduced with hybrid technology), but unlike ground transport, the technology is not quite here yet.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    With battery capacities being what they are you'll also have to hang tight for the moment when they stretch long enough to allow you to even have the choice of driving to the same place you can fly. (Or swap batteries on the way somehow... not sure how well that would work.)
    - Reason077 8y ago
      This is already solved in technology terms. Battery capacities and charging speeds are already good enough for almost all long-distance travel scenarios. It’s now just a case of getting costs down and infrastructure built out. But that’s the easy part.

audunw 8y ago

> Flying is absolutely catastrophic in terms of greenhouse gas emissions Uhm, flying is OK in terms of emissions per passenger mile. Not as great as train, but better than driving solo in a gasoline car. The problem is transcontinental flights. While they're OK in terms of efficiency per mile, the number of miles is staggering. The problem is, those trips can't be made by train. So in terms of flying, I think the main focus should be not to fly long distance if it can be avoided. Sure, it's much better to take the train if possible, but if you fly between countries within europe a dozen times a year, that's not a catastrophe.

llukas 8y ago
Is it still competetive vs car for supersonic flight?
cornholio 8y ago
I know Boeing proposed Methane turbofans, and they were estimated to have 60% less carbon emissions and cheaper than jet fuel - after eating the large development and infrastructure costs. You could take this even further, producing Hydrogen from clean electric energy is about three times more expensive than methane for the same energy content, leading to a moderate increase in the cost of even a low cost ticket. But as with all radically new technology, there needs to be a strong industry, government and consumer push. The program that produced the Methane turbofan concept (SUGAR Freeze) has lost any political appeal.
- erezyehuda 8y ago
  Costs aside, wouldn't replacing carbon emissions with methane be drastically worse? Doing a casual search says that methane is 2000-3000% more potent as a GHG.
  - ufo 8y ago
    I assume the methane would be the fuel, not the byproduct.
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
      I imagine you won't combust 100% of the fuel. So wouldn't it be both.
      - rlucas 8y ago
        Pure methane is a bunch of molecules with just one carbon, which simplifies things a bit vs. a cracked and heterogeneous mix of longer chain (10+) molecules. You can incompletely combust a 10-carbon molecule and wind up with other hydrocarbons but if you burn up CH4, you're definitely just getting one CO2.
PsylentKnight 8y ago
> Not as great as train, but better than driving solo in a gasoline car. It was my understanding that driving is better for shorter trips, because the overhead of taking off and landing is significant. I don't have a source. IIRC I read this in "Doing Good Better."
schiffern 8y ago
>The problem is, those trips can't be made by train. Transcontinental flights (one side of the continent to the other, see [1]) can usually be taken by train. You probably mean intercontinental flights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_airspeed_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_airspeed_reco...
- ghaff 8y ago
  You're being pedantic. One can travel from New York to San Francisco (well, Emeryville) by train but it's going to take multiple days and, even if you handwave the existence of high-speed rail through two continental divides among other things, it's a very long trip. That's never going to be a mainstream replacement for even a subsonic 5 to 6 hour flight between a multitude of east coast-west coast city pairs.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    If there were high-speed trains that could make cross-US trips in, say, 15 hours, and at comparable or cheaper cost vs. airplanes, I can imagine there might be demand. I would be willing to take those overnight. But even if we could replace most <500 mile flights along the most popular routes (starting by connecting cities up and down the coasts), it would be a huge win as far as fuel economy is concerned.
  - schiffern 8y ago
    And you're being parochial. Who said "continent" was limited to North America? The claim was that the trip can't be made, not that it can be made but is undesirable as compared with alternatives.
logfromblammo 8y ago
> The problem is, those trips can't be made by train. They can't now, but they could be. All that is required is a level of capital investment that can't ever be recovered while in competition with air and sea-surface travel... The transatlantic tunnel has been a sci-fi fantasy since 1895. It could cost as little as $500 billion today.

mehrdadn 8y ago

I'll point out that although it's indeed atrocious compared to a train ride, flying is still more efficient than driving a car. So if traveling is required and you're debating between driving vs. flying (say SF <-> LA), you should prefer flying unless you can carpool. I don't know the exact numbers since it depends on where you're going and what plane/airline you fly, but I would expect around 50-75 MPG for a reasonably full airplane [1], whereas your car might be more like 25-30 MPG on the highway, so you'd want at least 2-3 (ideally 4) people in the car to make it more efficient. However the thing about flying is of course that it burns fuel at a much, much faster rate, so if it means the difference between you driving to workplace A vs. flying to workplace B regularly, then you'll be burning one hell of a lot more fuel by flying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Airli...

Reason077 8y ago
That’s true today. But in the coming years and decades, ground transport will be largely electrified and it’s per-mile emissions greatly reduced. Hopefully, aviation can be electrified too one day (or it’s emissions reduced with hybrid technology), but unlike ground transport, the technology is not quite here yet.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  With battery capacities being what they are you'll also have to hang tight for the moment when they stretch long enough to allow you to even have the choice of driving to the same place you can fly. (Or swap batteries on the way somehow... not sure how well that would work.)
  - Reason077 8y ago
    This is already solved in technology terms. Battery capacities and charging speeds are already good enough for almost all long-distance travel scenarios. It’s now just a case of getting costs down and infrastructure built out. But that’s the easy part.