16 ms·

Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

56 points by agronaut 5y ago

agronaut 5y ago
https://archive.is/Ut9az https://archive.is/Ut9az
bluescrn 5y ago
The better question, given Covid and the climate crisis, is 'Will we ever fly again? Is the age of affordable air travel over?'
- ghaff 5y ago
  Prices are elevated at the moment but people are already back to flying in large numbers at least in the US.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluescrn 5y ago
    Thinking more about the quarantine and testing costs flying internationally at the moment. And a post-Covid world with bankrupt airlines and a lot less flight availability. With the end of the Covid crisis blending into a more serious fight against climate change.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      International travel seems like more trouble than it's worth at the moment barring urgent need. One organization I know moved an early fall event from a non-US location to the US. Presumably, all going well, they're likely to at least get US audience/speakers. Not clear to me how big an effect climate change will have unless fuel taxes are really ramped up--which is of course possible.
yellow_lead 5y ago
They will still use an enormous amount of fuel, carry fewer passengers, and heavily pollute the environment. I'm not too excited about the prospects.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  All overland passenger transport should be rail. Over the oceans I suppose we should strive for ships and dirigibles. That said, I find it hard to believe that plane travel can be eradicated for e.g. diplomacy. And frankly, if frequent contract between the powerful different countries is needed to avoid e.g. world wars, it's is worth it. In the short term, any carbon we can capture needs to go in back in ground and stay there. But once we have good good greenhouse gas levels, much of carbon capture tech can be reused to make biofuels. I guess we can reward ourselves with lots of supersonic air travel then.
  - t0mas88 5y ago
    Air travel has a big PR problem, because somehow a lot of people think it's the absolute worst for the environment. While on many routes a car is worse in terms of CO2 emission per trip than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners.
    - eitland 5y ago
      ... and fast fashion is probably worse than both if what I read is correct. FTR: Years go by between everytime I travel by plane so I don't feel I have anything to defend, I just think it is good to keep the big picture in mind.
      - t0mas88 5y ago
        Agree, and the airlines absolutely need to keep working to become more climate friendly just like we need to make road travel better. But climate-shaming specifically air travel while at the same time driving a non-electric car or using air conditioning without having solar panels is very hypocritical because both of those and many other things are a far bigger part of the total emissions.
t0mas88 5y ago
> These studies, along with tens of thousands of claims against the Air Force for property damage—horses and turkeys had supposedly died or gone insane—led the F.A.A. to ban civil overland supersonic flight, in 1973. There was also a political part involved. The Concorde was a British-French creation, not a Boeing. Had there been a Boeing supersonic passenger plane first there would probably have been different FAA rules. Especially because military supersonic flight happens every day over US land, was never banned, and causes the same boom.
- BenoitP 5y ago
  Indeed it was political. IMHO if a US supersonic commercial plane comes into service without an Airbus counterpart, it won't have access to the European skies. At least not the over french territory. The industry is still very salty that the Concorde market was taken from under them.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    Europe banned supersonic commercial flights over the continent 2 years before the US did. Whilst this was political to some extent the politics were very much local, as in people don’t want to hear booms.
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      Also, shattered windows. A boom can easily smash windows.
      - blunte 5y ago
        Especially 100 year + old buildings with original glass.
      - hugh-avherald 5y ago
        Not that easily. Even with a fighter at 500 ft above, Mythbusters couldn't break windows. The Oklahoma tests had eight booms a day using very large aircraft. It took months before windows broke.
xchaotic 5y ago
Solving some societal or civilisational challenge with supersonic flight seems very narrow minded now. Yes I would like to fly to my work HQ faster but due to pandemic I have not visited in 3 years now and it’s been fine, so a better solution is excellent remote work tools such as HQ videoconferencing etc which is such an easier problem, yet many people and companies still struggle with it. In the overall ROI for things to do, I bet we shouldn’t be building businesses that REQUIRE supersonic flight to succeed.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  It would be nice if we had publically funded communication etc tools. I am not seeing a valid business nodel here that does not involve either massive spying, or poor people loosing access to rest of society.
  - bdamm 5y ago
    How does having public funding for communication help? Having a zoom equipped laptop available for use in a county building isn’t much of a stretch. Public funding of communication will also guarantee spying.
    - danielheath 5y ago
      Spying is already guaranteed. Public funding means accountability in well-functioning democracies (sadly rare).
- sneak 5y ago
  Fast transportation, like fast computers, or fast appliances, aren't required. They just make life better.
amelius 5y ago
Maybe under land, through a Hyperloop.
- randie63 5y ago
  Troll ? Isn't it common knowledge meanwhile that it's vaporware and not possible ? At least on the public of hacker news readers I would hope
dghughes 5y ago
I hope not mainly because where I live in south-eastern Canada we seem to be the tailpipe of North America. All aircraft heading east seem to go over my region. The summer in non-pandemic times) is a constant parade of large passenger jets flying over. The jets are high up and in the evening you hear the rumble as the aircraft highlighted by the sun fly over while the ground is in evening shadows. Even a dozen US military Osprey aircraft fly over a few weeks ago. I wouldn't want a dozen large supersonic passenger aircraft going over all the time.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  Do you live in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick? That seems to be where flights from NE USA to Europe fly over generally. That said they should be at cruising altitude by there. If you can hear them at 36k feet, it must be fairly quiet where you live! I live close to the path of the Heathrow approach, and planes tend to fly over me at about 5k feet, and I have to say that it's pretty rare I even hear them.
  - dghughes 5y ago
    You're close, I'm in Prince Edward Island. Yes it's pretty quiet here even in the largest town. Often I can hear the jets at night from inside my house. That's if there isn't any wind.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Fortunately there are no night flights to and from the airport here. Nonetheless, depending on weather I can hear them, mostly from/to Paris, France from/to many destinations in Asia, mostly China. They all cross over here, apparently.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks
blunte 5y ago
Sound is one thing, but there are other more significant obstacles. The benefits of faster travel really show on longer distances (London to Sydney for example). But over land, there just aren’t many common routes where the several hour savings would be worth it. The big challenges relate to risk. What happens to the vehicle when a major failure happens at high speed? What about sudden pressure loss at high altitude? Or mechanical failure or weather which causes a diversion (how much ground do you cover just turning around?). I find it hard to see legitimate overall benefits. Frankly, I think we could make greater overall time benefits by optimizing airport and boarding improvements.
- stouset 5y ago
  > What happens to the vehicle when a major failure happens at high speed? What about sudden pressure loss at high altitude? Or mechanical failure… The same thing that happens in any other plane. > … or weather which causes a diversion (how much ground do you cover just turning around?). This is an extremely weird concern. There’s so much wrong with it I’m not even sure where to start: planes can slow down, sharp turns due to weather mid-route are not even really a thing, I’m not even sure why covering extra ground is such a bad thing anyway.
  - blunte 5y ago
    > The same thing that happens in any other plane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_structural_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_structural_fa... The faster you are traveling (which really matters as a factor of the drag you are experiencing), the more serious any event is which changes the shape of your vehicle. Even non structural failures, such as an engine cowling coming off mid-flight can strike other parts of the aircraft, resulting in damage and changes to the structure. Tolerances for these events are much lower the faster you're going, meaning the outcome is more likely to be severe if you're traveling much faster than we currently do with passenger aircraft. Military fighters are built with higher tolerances and structural strength (and come in heavier, requiring more fuel and reducing range). Commercial aircraft are just impractical to operate safely at such high speeds. With respect to diversions and changes of route, you have to consider several things. Faster, heavier aircraft need longer runways to land. That limits your alternate landing choices. Diversions may cost you more fuel since they may be much greater distances away. And you cannot simply make a "sharp turn" at high speed. Your passengers (and the airframe on a large craft) are not prepared for 4G turns. They aren't even designed for 2G turns. Ask yourself this, can you turn your car as sharply at highway speed as you can in the parking lot? Sure you can slow down and then turn, but that takes time. That would not be considered "sharp". So while you're decelerating and turning, you are eating up great distances. It would be easy to overshoot a nearby location; thus you would need to plan ahead, take big slow turns, etc. Do you have enough extra fuel for that? Are you able/allowed to pass through all airspaces conveniently, or will that require extra planning and maneuvering? The complexity of flying larger and/or faster aircraft is much more than one might think.
rkagerer 5y ago
Richwine, of nasa, told me that he thinks S.S.T. could cut some flight times in half. But, he said, supersonic flight wouldn’t proportionately reduce over-all travel time until we fixed our infrastructure: How much better is flying from L.A.X. to J.F.K. in two or three hours if you spend twice that time in airports and traffic?
adolph 5y ago
[A] passenger version of the X-59 would be two hundred and thirty feet long, about the length of a Boeing 777, and carry around fifty people. That’s 22ft longer than Concorde with half the px. https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/about-ba/history-and-heritage/celebrating-concorde https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/about-ba/hi...
new_realist 5y ago
In a rapidly warming world, I don't see the need to spend all that energy on supersonic transport when Zoom will do just fine. There are sustainable fuels, but they use a ton of energy. It's an extravagance the world cannot afford.
- boulos 5y ago
  People definitely shouldn't fly if they don't need to, but I think you're overestimating the warming effect from aviation. Estimates put it in the ~3% range overall [1]. Most of that (80%) was passenger travel [2] (pre-pandemic) and 20% cargo. The EU's push for short-haul flight bans [3] makes a lot of sense though, especially when high-speed (and sometimes electrified) rail is an option. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban
- variant 5y ago
  What's the "right" temperature for the world? We'll be fine.
kristopolous 5y ago
Setting everything else aside, flying from LAX to Heathrow in 2-3 hours does sound pretty amazing. Even if it was say 2 or 3 times the price, I'd seriously consider it. I remember the first time I paid for the HSR option from Amsterdam to Brussels, way easier
aaron695 5y ago
OT but I think better than another boring air travel bad spiel - Dyson did some cool computer modelling around Helmholtz acoustic cavities to create quieter fans. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff we can re-visit today because of improved computer power around noise pollution - “At Dyson we make hundreds of incremental changes rather than one leap forward at a time,” said Schneider. “That means we produce and test hundreds of prototypes for each project. 640 prototypes from handmade models to 3D printed designs were made during the development of the Cool fan.” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-silent-fan https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-sil...
fallingfrog 5y ago
Yes, but probably only over countries we are actively bombing.
sunstone 5y ago
Starship will be doing this within a month or two max. Florida to Hawaii in thirty minutes.
ibaikov 5y ago
Is it possible to emit a small plasma field to eliminate air in front of the vehicle? How much power is needed?

56 points by agronaut 5y ago

https://archive.is/Ut9az https://archive.is/Ut9az

The better question, given Covid and the climate crisis, is 'Will we ever fly again? Is the age of affordable air travel over?'

ghaff 5y ago
Prices are elevated at the moment but people are already back to flying in large numbers at least in the US.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bluescrn 5y ago
  Thinking more about the quarantine and testing costs flying internationally at the moment. And a post-Covid world with bankrupt airlines and a lot less flight availability. With the end of the Covid crisis blending into a more serious fight against climate change.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    International travel seems like more trouble than it's worth at the moment barring urgent need. One organization I know moved an early fall event from a non-US location to the US. Presumably, all going well, they're likely to at least get US audience/speakers. Not clear to me how big an effect climate change will have unless fuel taxes are really ramped up--which is of course possible.

yellow_lead 5y ago

They will still use an enormous amount of fuel, carry fewer passengers, and heavily pollute the environment. I'm not too excited about the prospects.

Ericson2314 5y ago
All overland passenger transport should be rail. Over the oceans I suppose we should strive for ships and dirigibles. That said, I find it hard to believe that plane travel can be eradicated for e.g. diplomacy. And frankly, if frequent contract between the powerful different countries is needed to avoid e.g. world wars, it's is worth it. In the short term, any carbon we can capture needs to go in back in ground and stay there. But once we have good good greenhouse gas levels, much of carbon capture tech can be reused to make biofuels. I guess we can reward ourselves with lots of supersonic air travel then.
- t0mas88 5y ago
  Air travel has a big PR problem, because somehow a lot of people think it's the absolute worst for the environment. While on many routes a car is worse in terms of CO2 emission per trip than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners.
  - eitland 5y ago
    ... and fast fashion is probably worse than both if what I read is correct. FTR: Years go by between everytime I travel by plane so I don't feel I have anything to defend, I just think it is good to keep the big picture in mind.
    - t0mas88 5y ago
      Agree, and the airlines absolutely need to keep working to become more climate friendly just like we need to make road travel better. But climate-shaming specifically air travel while at the same time driving a non-electric car or using air conditioning without having solar panels is very hypocritical because both of those and many other things are a far bigger part of the total emissions.

t0mas88 5y ago

> These studies, along with tens of thousands of claims against the Air Force for property damage—horses and turkeys had supposedly died or gone insane—led the F.A.A. to ban civil overland supersonic flight, in 1973. There was also a political part involved. The Concorde was a British-French creation, not a Boeing. Had there been a Boeing supersonic passenger plane first there would probably have been different FAA rules. Especially because military supersonic flight happens every day over US land, was never banned, and causes the same boom.

BenoitP 5y ago
Indeed it was political. IMHO if a US supersonic commercial plane comes into service without an Airbus counterpart, it won't have access to the European skies. At least not the over french territory. The industry is still very salty that the Concorde market was taken from under them.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Europe banned supersonic commercial flights over the continent 2 years before the US did. Whilst this was political to some extent the politics were very much local, as in people don’t want to hear booms.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Also, shattered windows. A boom can easily smash windows.
    - blunte 5y ago
      Especially 100 year + old buildings with original glass.
    - hugh-avherald 5y ago
      Not that easily. Even with a fighter at 500 ft above, Mythbusters couldn't break windows. The Oklahoma tests had eight booms a day using very large aircraft. It took months before windows broke.

xchaotic 5y ago

Solving some societal or civilisational challenge with supersonic flight seems very narrow minded now. Yes I would like to fly to my work HQ faster but due to pandemic I have not visited in 3 years now and it’s been fine, so a better solution is excellent remote work tools such as HQ videoconferencing etc which is such an easier problem, yet many people and companies still struggle with it. In the overall ROI for things to do, I bet we shouldn’t be building businesses that REQUIRE supersonic flight to succeed.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
It would be nice if we had publically funded communication etc tools. I am not seeing a valid business nodel here that does not involve either massive spying, or poor people loosing access to rest of society.
- bdamm 5y ago
  How does having public funding for communication help? Having a zoom equipped laptop available for use in a county building isn’t much of a stretch. Public funding of communication will also guarantee spying.
  - danielheath 5y ago
    Spying is already guaranteed. Public funding means accountability in well-functioning democracies (sadly rare).
sneak 5y ago
Fast transportation, like fast computers, or fast appliances, aren't required. They just make life better.

amelius 5y ago

Maybe under land, through a Hyperloop.

randie63 5y ago
Troll ? Isn't it common knowledge meanwhile that it's vaporware and not possible ? At least on the public of hacker news readers I would hope

dghughes 5y ago

I hope not mainly because where I live in south-eastern Canada we seem to be the tailpipe of North America. All aircraft heading east seem to go over my region. The summer in non-pandemic times) is a constant parade of large passenger jets flying over. The jets are high up and in the evening you hear the rumble as the aircraft highlighted by the sun fly over while the ground is in evening shadows. Even a dozen US military Osprey aircraft fly over a few weeks ago. I wouldn't want a dozen large supersonic passenger aircraft going over all the time.

cameronh90 5y ago
Do you live in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick? That seems to be where flights from NE USA to Europe fly over generally. That said they should be at cruising altitude by there. If you can hear them at 36k feet, it must be fairly quiet where you live! I live close to the path of the Heathrow approach, and planes tend to fly over me at about 5k feet, and I have to say that it's pretty rare I even hear them.
- dghughes 5y ago
  You're close, I'm in Prince Edward Island. Yes it's pretty quiet here even in the largest town. Often I can hear the jets at night from inside my house. That's if there isn't any wind.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Fortunately there are no night flights to and from the airport here. Nonetheless, depending on weather I can hear them, mostly from/to Paris, France from/to many destinations in Asia, mostly China. They all cross over here, apparently.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks

blunte 5y ago

Sound is one thing, but there are other more significant obstacles. The benefits of faster travel really show on longer distances (London to Sydney for example). But over land, there just aren’t many common routes where the several hour savings would be worth it. The big challenges relate to risk. What happens to the vehicle when a major failure happens at high speed? What about sudden pressure loss at high altitude? Or mechanical failure or weather which causes a diversion (how much ground do you cover just turning around?). I find it hard to see legitimate overall benefits. Frankly, I think we could make greater overall time benefits by optimizing airport and boarding improvements.

stouset 5y ago
> What happens to the vehicle when a major failure happens at high speed? What about sudden pressure loss at high altitude? Or mechanical failure… The same thing that happens in any other plane. > … or weather which causes a diversion (how much ground do you cover just turning around?). This is an extremely weird concern. There’s so much wrong with it I’m not even sure where to start: planes can slow down, sharp turns due to weather mid-route are not even really a thing, I’m not even sure why covering extra ground is such a bad thing anyway.
- blunte 5y ago
  > The same thing that happens in any other plane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_structural_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_structural_fa... The faster you are traveling (which really matters as a factor of the drag you are experiencing), the more serious any event is which changes the shape of your vehicle. Even non structural failures, such as an engine cowling coming off mid-flight can strike other parts of the aircraft, resulting in damage and changes to the structure. Tolerances for these events are much lower the faster you're going, meaning the outcome is more likely to be severe if you're traveling much faster than we currently do with passenger aircraft. Military fighters are built with higher tolerances and structural strength (and come in heavier, requiring more fuel and reducing range). Commercial aircraft are just impractical to operate safely at such high speeds. With respect to diversions and changes of route, you have to consider several things. Faster, heavier aircraft need longer runways to land. That limits your alternate landing choices. Diversions may cost you more fuel since they may be much greater distances away. And you cannot simply make a "sharp turn" at high speed. Your passengers (and the airframe on a large craft) are not prepared for 4G turns. They aren't even designed for 2G turns. Ask yourself this, can you turn your car as sharply at highway speed as you can in the parking lot? Sure you can slow down and then turn, but that takes time. That would not be considered "sharp". So while you're decelerating and turning, you are eating up great distances. It would be easy to overshoot a nearby location; thus you would need to plan ahead, take big slow turns, etc. Do you have enough extra fuel for that? Are you able/allowed to pass through all airspaces conveniently, or will that require extra planning and maneuvering? The complexity of flying larger and/or faster aircraft is much more than one might think.

rkagerer 5y ago

Richwine, of nasa, told me that he thinks S.S.T. could cut some flight times in half. But, he said, supersonic flight wouldn’t proportionately reduce over-all travel time until we fixed our infrastructure: How much better is flying from L.A.X. to J.F.K. in two or three hours if you spend twice that time in airports and traffic?

adolph 5y ago

[A] passenger version of the X-59 would be two hundred and thirty feet long, about the length of a Boeing 777, and carry around fifty people. That’s 22ft longer than Concorde with half the px. https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/about-ba/history-and-heritage/celebrating-concorde https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/about-ba/hi...

new_realist 5y ago

In a rapidly warming world, I don't see the need to spend all that energy on supersonic transport when Zoom will do just fine. There are sustainable fuels, but they use a ton of energy. It's an extravagance the world cannot afford.

boulos 5y ago
People definitely shouldn't fly if they don't need to, but I think you're overestimating the warming effect from aviation. Estimates put it in the ~3% range overall [1]. Most of that (80%) was passenger travel [2] (pre-pandemic) and 20% cargo. The EU's push for short-haul flight bans [3] makes a lot of sense though, especially when high-speed (and sometimes electrified) rail is an option. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban
variant 5y ago
What's the "right" temperature for the world? We'll be fine.

kristopolous 5y ago

Setting everything else aside, flying from LAX to Heathrow in 2-3 hours does sound pretty amazing. Even if it was say 2 or 3 times the price, I'd seriously consider it. I remember the first time I paid for the HSR option from Amsterdam to Brussels, way easier

aaron695 5y ago

OT but I think better than another boring air travel bad spiel - Dyson did some cool computer modelling around Helmholtz acoustic cavities to create quieter fans. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff we can re-visit today because of improved computer power around noise pollution - “At Dyson we make hundreds of incremental changes rather than one leap forward at a time,” said Schneider. “That means we produce and test hundreds of prototypes for each project. 640 prototypes from handmade models to 3D printed designs were made during the development of the Cool fan.” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-silent-fan https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-sil...

fallingfrog 5y ago

Yes, but probably only over countries we are actively bombing.

sunstone 5y ago

Starship will be doing this within a month or two max. Florida to Hawaii in thirty minutes.

ibaikov 5y ago

Is it possible to emit a small plasma field to eliminate air in front of the vehicle? How much power is needed?