5 ms·

Meta-comment: here are the typical arguments about consumer supersonic flight on HN. 1. It will be pricey. Counter-point - having the availability for the sele

Meta-comment: here are the typical arguments about consumer supersonic flight on HN. 1. It will be pricey. Counter-point - having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing; and perhaps it's not so expensive with new tech. 2. Environment. Counter-points - "if it were up to you, you'd ban air travel entirely"; let them purchase carbon credits or fund electric flight; is the marginal environmental impact that bad? 3. General comment about speed of innovation, regulations, where smart people these days are working, etc.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing In the days of Zoom and soon stuff like Starlink, what population groups is this the case for?
- airstrike 5y ago
  Not every meeting can or should be done via Zoom
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    How many of those need supersonic flight to attend?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Probably a greater percentage than of all meetings. The kind of stuff you need to be in person for tends to be the stuff that doesn't give you the advance timing to plan travel.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        That isn't my experience at all. International events, press tours, a series of customer meetings, etc. are the sort of thing that most benefits from in-person attendance and they're scheduled well in advance.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You're thinking way too positive. Lots of lawyers/technicians/consultants/reps have to be places on short notice for bad reasons.
      - nonameiguess 5y ago
        That's mathematically vacuous. Any number except 0 is a greater percentage of any enumerable proper subset than of the entire set.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      The corollary to #1 upthread is that, unless you can bring pricing roughly in line with very comfortable international first/business class, the number of people who will want/need to spend many thousands of dollars to save 12 hours is almost certainly not a lot.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Australia is pretty far from the rest of the world. Singapore is 8h nonstop from Sydney. Tokyo is 9h. Los Angeles is 13h. Qantas was considering launching a 20h nonstop to London before COVID. It‘s a much better value prop than halving transatlantic travel time, which is 6h, the smaller side of a reasonable sleep.
      - hannasanarion 5y ago
        But the time in-flight isn't wasted anymore. Planes have wi-fi now, you can be doing other work or even attending other virtual meetings during the flight. Being on a plane for 13 hours doesn't mean 13 hours of thumb-twiddling anymore.
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        How is it? My understanding is that it's pretty pricey, I can't imagine it'd be very fast (certainly wouldn't be if everyone is using it). I work at a place that doesn't pay for anything beyond basic economy for business travel, which isn't that uncommon of a cost-cutting measure. I'm definitely not going to be able to expense expensive in flight wifi. To say nothing of work productivity on a cramped tin tube.
        hannasanarion 5y ago
        If you're working in a place that only pays for basic economy, then you are certainly not a candidate for a supersonic flight at a typical ticket price of $16,000 transatlantic, no matter how important the meeting you need to get to is, just to avoid spending $100 on in-flight wifi.
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        The early days of jet travel were also very expensive. We didn't get to Ryanair-style low fares overnight, but through successive iterations. At least one of the startups working on it has promised comparable or lower per-seat mile cost, and has orders on book: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36952/boom-rolls-out-its-xb-1-baby-boom-supersonic-demonstrator-jet https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36952/boom-rolls-out-i...
  - blocked_again 5y ago
    Meeting is just exchange of bytes. Exchange of bytes that requires movement of atoms thousands of miles is completely ineffecent and legacy tech.
    - dchapp 5y ago
      Consider a meeting in which you are attempting to read the body language of an adversary. Video chat may not be sufficient. For a concrete example, consider poker. Note that I am taking a fairly broad definition of "meeting" here.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Australia has pretty bad national internet speeds. There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc. And some types of business like sales also work better in person.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > Australia has pretty bad national internet speeds. Which is why I mentioned Starlink. > There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc. I have family in Australia, and visit them without supersonic flight.
    - jdminhbg 5y ago
      People visited Australia before commercial transoceanic flight too, I don't see why improvements have to stop now.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        There's diminishing returns. Going from weeks to a day - not to mention cheaper - makes a whole lot of sense. Going from a day to half a day at a higher price and likely a less cushy aircraft does not.
        jdminhbg 5y ago
        Transoceanic flight wasn't cheaper when it was first introduced[0], it took economies of scale to bring the price down. Additionally, the fact that Australia is a day away and Europe is half a day away is a major factor in why I have visited Europe a number of times and never been to Aus/NZ. I am almost certainly not the only person like this. [0] https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/the-first-trans-atlantic-passenger-flight/ https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/the-first-trans-atl... $375 flight vs $159 first class by boat https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/1930s-sailing-to-france-from-new-york-for-159-first-class/ https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/1930s-sailing-to-france-fr...
        5y ago
_Microft 5y ago
> the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing If you actually believe that, you might want to look deeper into the environmental impact of the lifestyle of the super-rich. A very large percentage of aircraft emissions comes from frequent flyers already and an even more disproportionate part is by charter flights and private aircraft.
- iso1631 5y ago
  Aircraft emissions come from the engines. Charge a carbon tax. If one set of people (specialist field engineers for example) are disproportionatly causing mroe emissions, they (or their company) will pay disproportionately pay more.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    The general counter-argument to this position is that it assumes over-consumption to be ok. In other words, saying "X put Y tons of CO2 in the air, they must pay for carbon offsets" doesn't necessarily disincentivize the CO2 to be put out in the first place (meaning there's no downward pressure to reduce consumption of other ancillary resources, e.g. oil extraction, metal mines, etc) Case in point: bottled water costs a fortune compared to the equivalent amount of tap water (despite being basically the same or worse quality in many cases) and yet people are more than happy to pay the premium. The CA surtax on plastic bottles is but a blip on the radar for most consumers there. It's similar to the discussion about how one side says having recycling programs makes over-consumption forgivable, but in practice, everything breaks down because manufacturers meld different recyclable materials together in such a way that makes the package unrecycleable, or use plastic types that cannot be sold by recyclers due to low demand, or consumers contaminate their trash, etc, and we just end up trucking mountains and mountains of unusable bales of materials to landfills somewhere instead.
    - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
      If the cost of carbon is the cost to rip it out of the air then everything works out let them fly as much as they want. We don't really care per say about reducing consumption just fixing the side effects of consumption (green house effects).
rangoon626 5y ago
The same graduating class of environmentalists who complained about supersonic flight also complained about nuclear energy and also promised global cooling. These people need to sit down and shut up for once.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  No, they were right about the Concorde being dirty - burns 5x as much fuel per passenger as subsonic airliners. And Chernobyl, TMI, Windscale and Fukushima are dirty and expensive toxic waste dumps. In the US, nuclear plant insurance is limited to $13 billion, whereas Chernobyl and Fukushima are headed to $1 trillion each. I guess the local county would have to eat the rest after a convenient bk. Sounds like you should "sit down and shut up for once."
nostromo 5y ago
4. "Call me when you've built an actual plane and not just a PowerPoint deck." And in this case, I think this would be a valid complaint. This is just an announcement that some people might look into some things. It's also a company that has wanted to build a spaceport in Australia for 20 years, and... hasn't.
- trhway 5y ago
  Yes, framing this as "Australia Joins..." is a bit misleading. It is by an Ukranian immigrant who is coming from USSR times. His idea seems to involve the Ukrainian MotorSich engine factory. He may get a lot of support from the current Ukrainian government - in my view it is a pretty progressive one which tries to pay attention to Ukraine industrial development, and the MotorSich is among the key objects of this attention. For the space port venture they are planning to launch Ukraninan made Zenith rocket (which was used for Sea Launch back then). Looking into their top people - there are also Canadian based Ukraine immigrants, etc. One can see the pattern here. It is a pretty typical style of venture in immigrant communities with its natural advantages and disadvantages. Wrt. SST to Australia - the best trajectory is ballistic, and Starship 1 hour flight LA to Sydney, 100 pax business or 500 cattle class is the future I think.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Does it make sense to distinguish between cattle- and bizniz-class in the context of hypothetical hypes like Starship? With hypothetical hype I mean the assumption this will be used for ballistic pax transport. What would be the differentiator, if the ballistics dictate a full seat/couch anyways? The cattle in a mesh net, the bizniks in full divan? Would it make sense when any conceivable trip would be three hours max? Not to mention constraints mandated by entities like FAA for ... I don't know ... spatial arrangement regarding speed of evacuation to the emergency chutes, whatever? edit: Thinking about it, would they even bother? Or would it rather be something like one seat fits all, after the applicants have sworn their fealty to their elonzniak overlord by opting into NetJets style access card? Similar to how Starlink is 99 universal credits everywhere?
nonameiguess 5y ago
It's also a lot more noise pollution than normal aircraft. I lived under the reentry path of the space shuttle back when it landed at Edwards Air Force base, and the sonic booms were loud as hell and shook the entire house, but only once every couple of months thankfully. We're not talking super close, either. Near middle of Los Angeles, almost 100 miles south. I guess they could wait until they've very far away to actually go supersonic, though, and slow down while still really far from the landing strip, but if they're flying over populated regions at all supersonic, it's going to mini earthquake everyone underneath the flight path.
- KuiN 5y ago
  There's a lot of effort going into researching ways to make booms from SSTs quieter. NASA's has a low-boom research program trying to turn the booms into "gentle thumps" by changing the shape of plane's shockwaves [0]. Lockheed are building the X-59 for demonstration flights for the program. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/X59 https://www.nasa.gov/X59
redis_mlc 5y ago
> Meta-comment: here are the typical arguments about consumer supersonic flight on HN. It's obvious that you're a fanboi with no actual industry knowledge ... > 1. It will be pricey. Counter-point - having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing; and perhaps it's not so expensive with new tech. The issues are fuel cost (5x regular flights), eq. cost and cannibalization of first class/business class from regular routes. Virgin ddn't get the leftover Concordes because BA and AF didn't want to be cannibalized on their premium seats. > 2. Environment. Counter-points - "if it were up to you, you'd ban air travel entirely"; let them purchase carbon credits or fund electric flight; is the marginal environmental impact that bad? Carbon credits don't fix the problem that 5x fuel is burnt, and the exhaust is directly injected into the high atmosphere where it can affect weather. There's no electric airliners because of energy density issues with batteries. (One study found that jet exhaust today increases local temperatures by 3% during the day, so flying at nite is recommended. The effects at 60,000 feet are unknown.) > 3. General comment about speed of innovation, regulations, where smart people these days are working, etc.
mshook 5y ago
4. No-one has really solved "flying east"... I mean following the sun (aka flying west), you "gain" time as in you can land local time (@arrival) "before" you left local time (@departure). Going east is a totally different story so you might as well take the red-eye flight and catch a good night of sleep. So the whole "business" argument of having a full work day flying east doesn't really work. Unless you can fly really really really fast which none of these planes do. The only gain flying east is less flying time.
- avmich 5y ago
  If you leave Tokyo in the morning via a suborbit you can get to San Francisco before the end of previous business day. So when it really needs to be there yesterday... fly east.

ceejayoz 5y ago

> having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing In the days of Zoom and soon stuff like Starlink, what population groups is this the case for?

airstrike 5y ago
Not every meeting can or should be done via Zoom
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  How many of those need supersonic flight to attend?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Probably a greater percentage than of all meetings. The kind of stuff you need to be in person for tends to be the stuff that doesn't give you the advance timing to plan travel.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      That isn't my experience at all. International events, press tours, a series of customer meetings, etc. are the sort of thing that most benefits from in-person attendance and they're scheduled well in advance.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You're thinking way too positive. Lots of lawyers/technicians/consultants/reps have to be places on short notice for bad reasons.
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      That's mathematically vacuous. Any number except 0 is a greater percentage of any enumerable proper subset than of the entire set.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The corollary to #1 upthread is that, unless you can bring pricing roughly in line with very comfortable international first/business class, the number of people who will want/need to spend many thousands of dollars to save 12 hours is almost certainly not a lot.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Australia is pretty far from the rest of the world. Singapore is 8h nonstop from Sydney. Tokyo is 9h. Los Angeles is 13h. Qantas was considering launching a 20h nonstop to London before COVID. It‘s a much better value prop than halving transatlantic travel time, which is 6h, the smaller side of a reasonable sleep.
    - hannasanarion 5y ago
      But the time in-flight isn't wasted anymore. Planes have wi-fi now, you can be doing other work or even attending other virtual meetings during the flight. Being on a plane for 13 hours doesn't mean 13 hours of thumb-twiddling anymore.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        How is it? My understanding is that it's pretty pricey, I can't imagine it'd be very fast (certainly wouldn't be if everyone is using it). I work at a place that doesn't pay for anything beyond basic economy for business travel, which isn't that uncommon of a cost-cutting measure. I'm definitely not going to be able to expense expensive in flight wifi. To say nothing of work productivity on a cramped tin tube.
        hannasanarion 5y ago
        If you're working in a place that only pays for basic economy, then you are certainly not a candidate for a supersonic flight at a typical ticket price of $16,000 transatlantic, no matter how important the meeting you need to get to is, just to avoid spending $100 on in-flight wifi.
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        The early days of jet travel were also very expensive. We didn't get to Ryanair-style low fares overnight, but through successive iterations. At least one of the startups working on it has promised comparable or lower per-seat mile cost, and has orders on book: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36952/boom-rolls-out-its-xb-1-baby-boom-supersonic-demonstrator-jet https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36952/boom-rolls-out-i...
- blocked_again 5y ago
  Meeting is just exchange of bytes. Exchange of bytes that requires movement of atoms thousands of miles is completely ineffecent and legacy tech.
  - dchapp 5y ago
    Consider a meeting in which you are attempting to read the body language of an adversary. Video chat may not be sufficient. For a concrete example, consider poker. Note that I am taking a fairly broad definition of "meeting" here.
bobthepanda 5y ago
Australia has pretty bad national internet speeds. There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc. And some types of business like sales also work better in person.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Australia has pretty bad national internet speeds. Which is why I mentioned Starlink. > There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc. I have family in Australia, and visit them without supersonic flight.
  - jdminhbg 5y ago
    People visited Australia before commercial transoceanic flight too, I don't see why improvements have to stop now.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      There's diminishing returns. Going from weeks to a day - not to mention cheaper - makes a whole lot of sense. Going from a day to half a day at a higher price and likely a less cushy aircraft does not.
      - jdminhbg 5y ago
        Transoceanic flight wasn't cheaper when it was first introduced[0], it took economies of scale to bring the price down. Additionally, the fact that Australia is a day away and Europe is half a day away is a major factor in why I have visited Europe a number of times and never been to Aus/NZ. I am almost certainly not the only person like this. [0] https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/the-first-trans-atlantic-passenger-flight/ https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/the-first-trans-atl... $375 flight vs $159 first class by boat https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/1930s-sailing-to-france-from-new-york-for-159-first-class/ https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/1930s-sailing-to-france-fr...
      - 5y ago

_Microft 5y ago

> the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing If you actually believe that, you might want to look deeper into the environmental impact of the lifestyle of the super-rich. A very large percentage of aircraft emissions comes from frequent flyers already and an even more disproportionate part is by charter flights and private aircraft.

iso1631 5y ago
Aircraft emissions come from the engines. Charge a carbon tax. If one set of people (specialist field engineers for example) are disproportionatly causing mroe emissions, they (or their company) will pay disproportionately pay more.
- lhorie 5y ago
  The general counter-argument to this position is that it assumes over-consumption to be ok. In other words, saying "X put Y tons of CO2 in the air, they must pay for carbon offsets" doesn't necessarily disincentivize the CO2 to be put out in the first place (meaning there's no downward pressure to reduce consumption of other ancillary resources, e.g. oil extraction, metal mines, etc) Case in point: bottled water costs a fortune compared to the equivalent amount of tap water (despite being basically the same or worse quality in many cases) and yet people are more than happy to pay the premium. The CA surtax on plastic bottles is but a blip on the radar for most consumers there. It's similar to the discussion about how one side says having recycling programs makes over-consumption forgivable, but in practice, everything breaks down because manufacturers meld different recyclable materials together in such a way that makes the package unrecycleable, or use plastic types that cannot be sold by recyclers due to low demand, or consumers contaminate their trash, etc, and we just end up trucking mountains and mountains of unusable bales of materials to landfills somewhere instead.
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    If the cost of carbon is the cost to rip it out of the air then everything works out let them fly as much as they want. We don't really care per say about reducing consumption just fixing the side effects of consumption (green house effects).

rangoon626 5y ago

The same graduating class of environmentalists who complained about supersonic flight also complained about nuclear energy and also promised global cooling. These people need to sit down and shut up for once.

redis_mlc 5y ago
No, they were right about the Concorde being dirty - burns 5x as much fuel per passenger as subsonic airliners. And Chernobyl, TMI, Windscale and Fukushima are dirty and expensive toxic waste dumps. In the US, nuclear plant insurance is limited to $13 billion, whereas Chernobyl and Fukushima are headed to $1 trillion each. I guess the local county would have to eat the rest after a convenient bk. Sounds like you should "sit down and shut up for once."

nostromo 5y ago

4. "Call me when you've built an actual plane and not just a PowerPoint deck." And in this case, I think this would be a valid complaint. This is just an announcement that some people might look into some things. It's also a company that has wanted to build a spaceport in Australia for 20 years, and... hasn't.

trhway 5y ago
Yes, framing this as "Australia Joins..." is a bit misleading. It is by an Ukranian immigrant who is coming from USSR times. His idea seems to involve the Ukrainian MotorSich engine factory. He may get a lot of support from the current Ukrainian government - in my view it is a pretty progressive one which tries to pay attention to Ukraine industrial development, and the MotorSich is among the key objects of this attention. For the space port venture they are planning to launch Ukraninan made Zenith rocket (which was used for Sea Launch back then). Looking into their top people - there are also Canadian based Ukraine immigrants, etc. One can see the pattern here. It is a pretty typical style of venture in immigrant communities with its natural advantages and disadvantages. Wrt. SST to Australia - the best trajectory is ballistic, and Starship 1 hour flight LA to Sydney, 100 pax business or 500 cattle class is the future I think.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Does it make sense to distinguish between cattle- and bizniz-class in the context of hypothetical hypes like Starship? With hypothetical hype I mean the assumption this will be used for ballistic pax transport. What would be the differentiator, if the ballistics dictate a full seat/couch anyways? The cattle in a mesh net, the bizniks in full divan? Would it make sense when any conceivable trip would be three hours max? Not to mention constraints mandated by entities like FAA for ... I don't know ... spatial arrangement regarding speed of evacuation to the emergency chutes, whatever? edit: Thinking about it, would they even bother? Or would it rather be something like one seat fits all, after the applicants have sworn their fealty to their elonzniak overlord by opting into NetJets style access card? Similar to how Starlink is 99 universal credits everywhere?

nonameiguess 5y ago

It's also a lot more noise pollution than normal aircraft. I lived under the reentry path of the space shuttle back when it landed at Edwards Air Force base, and the sonic booms were loud as hell and shook the entire house, but only once every couple of months thankfully. We're not talking super close, either. Near middle of Los Angeles, almost 100 miles south. I guess they could wait until they've very far away to actually go supersonic, though, and slow down while still really far from the landing strip, but if they're flying over populated regions at all supersonic, it's going to mini earthquake everyone underneath the flight path.

KuiN 5y ago
There's a lot of effort going into researching ways to make booms from SSTs quieter. NASA's has a low-boom research program trying to turn the booms into "gentle thumps" by changing the shape of plane's shockwaves [0]. Lockheed are building the X-59 for demonstration flights for the program. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/X59 https://www.nasa.gov/X59

redis_mlc 5y ago

> Meta-comment: here are the typical arguments about consumer supersonic flight on HN. It's obvious that you're a fanboi with no actual industry knowledge ... > 1. It will be pricey. Counter-point - having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing; and perhaps it's not so expensive with new tech. The issues are fuel cost (5x regular flights), eq. cost and cannibalization of first class/business class from regular routes. Virgin ddn't get the leftover Concordes because BA and AF didn't want to be cannibalized on their premium seats. > 2. Environment. Counter-points - "if it were up to you, you'd ban air travel entirely"; let them purchase carbon credits or fund electric flight; is the marginal environmental impact that bad? Carbon credits don't fix the problem that 5x fuel is burnt, and the exhaust is directly injected into the high atmosphere where it can affect weather. There's no electric airliners because of energy density issues with batteries. (One study found that jet exhaust today increases local temperatures by 3% during the day, so flying at nite is recommended. The effects at 60,000 feet are unknown.) > 3. General comment about speed of innovation, regulations, where smart people these days are working, etc.

mshook 5y ago

4. No-one has really solved "flying east"... I mean following the sun (aka flying west), you "gain" time as in you can land local time (@arrival) "before" you left local time (@departure). Going east is a totally different story so you might as well take the red-eye flight and catch a good night of sleep. So the whole "business" argument of having a full work day flying east doesn't really work. Unless you can fly really really really fast which none of these planes do. The only gain flying east is less flying time.

avmich 5y ago
If you leave Tokyo in the morning via a suborbit you can get to San Francisco before the end of previous business day. So when it really needs to be there yesterday... fly east.