4 ms·

I flown many long haul flights. The first time I heard Musk propose using rockets for international travel I thought it was insane. I still do. But if they are

I flown many long haul flights. The first time I heard Musk propose using rockets for international travel I thought it was insane. I still do. But if they are accident free for the next 10 years; would I then? Probably - if they could manage to keep my trip under ~3Gs.

perl4ever 7y ago
I think we have some data already on the probability of accidents - I believe I read that a SpaceX rocket failed to land properly after something like 50 successes...but it was a "soft" landing in the water? NASA lost 2 shuttles out of about 135 flights... So if I was going to make a ballpark estimate without further information, I'd say 98% of the time you should get there safely...and that's better than the coronavirus! People will often tell you how irrational it is that we demand such safety from commercial airlines, so isn't 98% really good enough?
- usrusr 7y ago
  For reference, that would be about 10x as risky as wingsuit BASE jumping so I guess the addressable market would be rather limited.
jabl 7y ago
Yeah, I wonder, would a suborbital ballistic trajectory save fuel compared to chugging along in the atmosphere? If this were to become common, would need some thinking how to distinguish this from a ballistic missile attack, though.
- AceyMan 7y ago
  Even in conventional aircraft a parabolic flight plan (the vertical path) is optimally efficient, all other things being equal. In practice it'd be a nightmare to separate traffic. Additionally it'd increase the pilot workload significantly considering the cruise phase of flight is typically the "ahh, I'll order some coffee from back" time as the primary duties then are (a) monitoring aircraft state (i.e., scanning the gages) and, (b) changing the radio frequency each time the flight moves into a new sector and checking in with ATC. [me: aircraft dispatcher for a US carrier in a previous life]

perl4ever 7y ago

I think we have some data already on the probability of accidents - I believe I read that a SpaceX rocket failed to land properly after something like 50 successes...but it was a "soft" landing in the water? NASA lost 2 shuttles out of about 135 flights... So if I was going to make a ballpark estimate without further information, I'd say 98% of the time you should get there safely...and that's better than the coronavirus! People will often tell you how irrational it is that we demand such safety from commercial airlines, so isn't 98% really good enough?

usrusr 7y ago
For reference, that would be about 10x as risky as wingsuit BASE jumping so I guess the addressable market would be rather limited.

jabl 7y ago

Yeah, I wonder, would a suborbital ballistic trajectory save fuel compared to chugging along in the atmosphere? If this were to become common, would need some thinking how to distinguish this from a ballistic missile attack, though.

AceyMan 7y ago
Even in conventional aircraft a parabolic flight plan (the vertical path) is optimally efficient, all other things being equal. In practice it'd be a nightmare to separate traffic. Additionally it'd increase the pilot workload significantly considering the cruise phase of flight is typically the "ahh, I'll order some coffee from back" time as the primary duties then are (a) monitoring aircraft state (i.e., scanning the gages) and, (b) changing the radio frequency each time the flight moves into a new sector and checking in with ATC. [me: aircraft dispatcher for a US carrier in a previous life]