6 ms·

I strongly agree with your point, but I think some extra context is warranted. As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to optimise for reducin

I strongly agree with your point, but I think some extra context is warranted. As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to optimise for reducing fuel consumption, since that's (by far) the biggest fraction of a commercial aircraft's operating cost. If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because the economics will make sense, which (in my mind) will be either because of: - Somehow reduced fuel consumption, potentially through engines that leverage the effects of the supersonic flight regime for increased fuel efficiency (e.g. ramjets, through that likely wouldn't be possible in low-supersonic flight) -> As another commenter in this thread mentioned, drag decreases with lower atmospheric pressure at higher altitudes, so there are fuel efficiency gains to be made just by flying higher, within the engines' design constraints. - It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets to skip highway traffic. There's likely more cases than just these, but these are just the greatest hits as far as I can tell; and I say all of that as someone who's not involved in the aviation industry. For the record, I don't support this second niche existing, but it does, and it can be an economic driver.

AlphaCharlie 4y ago
That's a very eloquent way to put it, I agree to it all :)
CyanBird 4y ago
The second niche as a rule of thumb pollutes-more-than-God already(0) I am skeptical that lifting barriers to them polluting more would land any type of net benefit given that ultra-luxury products such as said jets don't tend to land outsized downstream advancements than let's say, funding basic sciences such as what Boeing or Airbus are already doing (0) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-mi... If it could be proved that things like faster private jets or faster planes could benefit in a sizeable and proportionate way to the general public, then yeah I would be in favor of this too, but as it stands I don't find the available info compelling, I'd rather them to pay more taxes
- verandaguy 4y ago
  You're preaching to the choir; human progress isn't proportional to the number of billionaires with fleets of Gulfstreams (or rather, if it is, there's almost certainly no causation there).
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    I’m constantly in pain about how much human ingenuity takes the back seat just to keep the wheels turning in lives. If we actually tried to meet most of the requirements for people, creative thinking would flourish.
    - seventytwo 4y ago
      100%. I like to bring up the question of how many startups and how much innovation is stifled because people stay with their jobs because of the healthcare.
      - jandrewrogers 4y ago
        Isn’t Europe evidence of the answer to this question?
        aaomidi 4y ago
        Healthcare isn’t the only thing keeping people back.
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    I’m not a billionaire apologist, but billionaires get a lot of flak for using private aircraft where it makes a lot of sense. Zoom is not a valid substitute when you’re trying to make high stakes decisions that involve millions - billions of dollars and complex relationships in multiple time zones. Saying that human progress depends on it is a bit dramatic but these folks allocate large amounts of capital and have an outsized impact on the economy.
drewcoo 4y ago
> If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because the economics will make sense And not because it kills the planet less. [cue sad trombone]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  You can offset environmental impact by excise-style taxes on the polluting activity that are used to subsidize environmentally-friendly processes elsewhere that would've otherwise used fossil fuels due to cost. It's not perfect (as fossil fuels are still being burned) but it's better than nothing and a much more realistic solution than some extremist ideas such as stopping using fossil fuels overnight and effectively shutting down the economy as a result.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    IIRC, with aviation fuel it's kind of complicated due to international treaties on taxation of fuel.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      Yeah and those are necessary to avoid airlines filling all the way up at the cheapest location and thus wasting more energy carrying unneeded fuel around
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    You could, but you could also maintain the status quo. Not everything needs a market based solution.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      You can tax enough to remove 150% of the pollution. I'd call that much better than the status quo. And that's before we talk about the usefulness of funneling rich people money into technology research.
oliwarner 4y ago
Given the ecological cost, the economic balance has to be thumbed; taxed to the hilt to fund restorative programmes. Being absurdly rich shouldn't give you license to destroy the planet.
- golemotron 4y ago
  I hate to break it to you but the planet is very resilient. It was here long before humanity and it will be here and habitable for life long after we've disappeared or evolved into something else.
  - oliwarner 4y ago
    This is a pretty odd outlook. As trajectories go, currently habitable places will become uninhabitable within the lifetime of people you know. And that process isn't nice. Becoming uninhabitable means a series of natural disasters (and clean water pressures) that force people to migrate. Mass migration means global turmoil as people scramble to get safe. And many will die along the way. That's already started. The planet will physically be here but its habitability matters too. I don't really care about what comes after humans, as long as it doesn't come now and kill me and mine. If your only argument is "life, uhh, finds a way", that's great. Thank you for your contribution. Now find us a way to relocate a billion people in the next three decades.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    Stop it. We must seize the wealth of all billionaires before the water rises to the second rung of the ladder on Barack Obama's dock in Martha's Vineyard.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Yeah, if we stanrt a nuclear holocaust, the planet will still be here, but all its inhabitants will be dead. The best combination of being technically correct of missing the point.
    - TechBro8615 4y ago
htag 4y ago
> It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets to skip highway traffic. To skip highway traffic a richer-than-god person would use a helicopter. Private jets are used for further distances.
- javiramos 4y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/kylie-jenner-short-private-jet-flights-super-rich-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/kylie-je...
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    "She was attacked by twitter users" Nice language, was she stabbed? Has she lost money, job? Why conflate well-deserved criticism with violence?
    - h0h0h0h0111 4y ago
      attacked is a widely used synonym for criticised
      - htag 4y ago
        > to assail with unfriendly or bitter words https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attacked https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attacked
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
grumple 4y ago
Crew and maintenance are both higher costs for most airlines, according to this and other sources I've found: https://www.icao.int/mid/documents/2017/aviation%20data%20and%20analysis%20seminar/ppt3%20-%20airlines%20operating%20costs%20and%20productivity.pdf https://www.icao.int/mid/documents/2017/aviation%20data%20an... Let's say that you can now make twice as many flights in a day. You can now do twice as many flights with the same crew and aircraft (same maintenance costs). Your fuel costs increase, but your other costs remain fixed, so despite the increase in fuel costs, you still end up making more profit. You might be able to charge more for the faster flights as well, and there may be beneficial second-order effects.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bobthepanda 4y ago
> As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to optimise for reducing fuel consumption, since that's (by far) the biggest fraction of a commercial aircraft's operating cost. Not only this, but in general jet speeds have decreased due to airspace congestion. There is a lot of schedule padding due to delays at hubs like JFK, LAX, LHR, etc.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Flights to and from Beijing between the USA have (or had before the pandemic) at least a one hour pad due to PLA airspace restrictions popping up randomly combined with airport congestion. It often meant arriving in Seattle early before customs and immigration opened.

AlphaCharlie 4y ago

That's a very eloquent way to put it, I agree to it all :)

CyanBird 4y ago

The second niche as a rule of thumb pollutes-more-than-God already(0) I am skeptical that lifting barriers to them polluting more would land any type of net benefit given that ultra-luxury products such as said jets don't tend to land outsized downstream advancements than let's say, funding basic sciences such as what Boeing or Airbus are already doing (0) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-mi... If it could be proved that things like faster private jets or faster planes could benefit in a sizeable and proportionate way to the general public, then yeah I would be in favor of this too, but as it stands I don't find the available info compelling, I'd rather them to pay more taxes

verandaguy 4y ago
You're preaching to the choir; human progress isn't proportional to the number of billionaires with fleets of Gulfstreams (or rather, if it is, there's almost certainly no causation there).
- aaomidi 4y ago
  I’m constantly in pain about how much human ingenuity takes the back seat just to keep the wheels turning in lives. If we actually tried to meet most of the requirements for people, creative thinking would flourish.
  - seventytwo 4y ago
    100%. I like to bring up the question of how many startups and how much innovation is stifled because people stay with their jobs because of the healthcare.
    - jandrewrogers 4y ago
      Isn’t Europe evidence of the answer to this question?
      - aaomidi 4y ago
        Healthcare isn’t the only thing keeping people back.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  I’m not a billionaire apologist, but billionaires get a lot of flak for using private aircraft where it makes a lot of sense. Zoom is not a valid substitute when you’re trying to make high stakes decisions that involve millions - billions of dollars and complex relationships in multiple time zones. Saying that human progress depends on it is a bit dramatic but these folks allocate large amounts of capital and have an outsized impact on the economy.

drewcoo 4y ago

> If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because the economics will make sense And not because it kills the planet less. [cue sad trombone]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Nextgrid 4y ago
You can offset environmental impact by excise-style taxes on the polluting activity that are used to subsidize environmentally-friendly processes elsewhere that would've otherwise used fossil fuels due to cost. It's not perfect (as fossil fuels are still being burned) but it's better than nothing and a much more realistic solution than some extremist ideas such as stopping using fossil fuels overnight and effectively shutting down the economy as a result.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  IIRC, with aviation fuel it's kind of complicated due to international treaties on taxation of fuel.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Yeah and those are necessary to avoid airlines filling all the way up at the cheapest location and thus wasting more energy carrying unneeded fuel around
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  You could, but you could also maintain the status quo. Not everything needs a market based solution.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    You can tax enough to remove 150% of the pollution. I'd call that much better than the status quo. And that's before we talk about the usefulness of funneling rich people money into technology research.

oliwarner 4y ago

Given the ecological cost, the economic balance has to be thumbed; taxed to the hilt to fund restorative programmes. Being absurdly rich shouldn't give you license to destroy the planet.

golemotron 4y ago
I hate to break it to you but the planet is very resilient. It was here long before humanity and it will be here and habitable for life long after we've disappeared or evolved into something else.
- oliwarner 4y ago
  This is a pretty odd outlook. As trajectories go, currently habitable places will become uninhabitable within the lifetime of people you know. And that process isn't nice. Becoming uninhabitable means a series of natural disasters (and clean water pressures) that force people to migrate. Mass migration means global turmoil as people scramble to get safe. And many will die along the way. That's already started. The planet will physically be here but its habitability matters too. I don't really care about what comes after humans, as long as it doesn't come now and kill me and mine. If your only argument is "life, uhh, finds a way", that's great. Thank you for your contribution. Now find us a way to relocate a billion people in the next three decades.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  Stop it. We must seize the wealth of all billionaires before the water rises to the second rung of the ladder on Barack Obama's dock in Martha's Vineyard.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Yeah, if we stanrt a nuclear holocaust, the planet will still be here, but all its inhabitants will be dead. The best combination of being technically correct of missing the point.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago

htag 4y ago

> It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets to skip highway traffic. To skip highway traffic a richer-than-god person would use a helicopter. Private jets are used for further distances.

javiramos 4y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/kylie-jenner-short-private-jet-flights-super-rich-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/kylie-je...
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  "She was attacked by twitter users" Nice language, was she stabbed? Has she lost money, job? Why conflate well-deserved criticism with violence?
  - h0h0h0h0111 4y ago
    attacked is a widely used synonym for criticised
    - htag 4y ago
      > to assail with unfriendly or bitter words https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attacked https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attacked
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

grumple 4y ago

Crew and maintenance are both higher costs for most airlines, according to this and other sources I've found: https://www.icao.int/mid/documents/2017/aviation%20data%20and%20analysis%20seminar/ppt3%20-%20airlines%20operating%20costs%20and%20productivity.pdf https://www.icao.int/mid/documents/2017/aviation%20data%20an... Let's say that you can now make twice as many flights in a day. You can now do twice as many flights with the same crew and aircraft (same maintenance costs). Your fuel costs increase, but your other costs remain fixed, so despite the increase in fuel costs, you still end up making more profit. You might be able to charge more for the faster flights as well, and there may be beneficial second-order effects.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bobthepanda 4y ago

> As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to optimise for reducing fuel consumption, since that's (by far) the biggest fraction of a commercial aircraft's operating cost. Not only this, but in general jet speeds have decreased due to airspace congestion. There is a lot of schedule padding due to delays at hubs like JFK, LAX, LHR, etc.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Flights to and from Beijing between the USA have (or had before the pandemic) at least a one hour pad due to PLA airspace restrictions popping up randomly combined with airport congestion. It often meant arriving in Seattle early before customs and immigration opened.