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This is a good summary of the author's point. In a historical context, it may be the case that the only useful way to enforce "quiet skies" was to put a speed l

This is a good summary of the author's point. In a historical context, it may be the case that the only useful way to enforce "quiet skies" was to put a speed limit, but that doesn't account for changes in technology that may enable quiet booms. Most commenters in this thread seem to take issue with the author's assumption that there is no other justification for a speed limit other than noise reduction. Honestly, I find the author's premise to be vaguely reasonable, but the whole thing is undermined by the god-awful chart which extrapolates historical aircraft speeds to imply that without the "speed limit" rule, we would have commercial aircraft crossing the Atlantic Ocean at 2500 mph. (Per wikipedia[0], the fastest manned aircraft in history, a SR-71 blackbird flight, capped out below 2200 mph.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record

jedberg 4y ago
Yeah this is a good point. The military was never capped by speed limits nor fuel costs or pollution limits. And even they didn't go faster than 2200mph as far as we know. Which either means there was no reason to figure out how to go faster, or they just couldn't do it. If the former, maybe with commercial pressures there would be a reason to go faster, but that's unlikely. And with the latter, well I'm not sure a commercial entity would out-innovate the military-industrial complex.
- hughw 4y ago
  "as far as we know" -- they're famous though for trotting out the Blackbird and setting a new public speed record just exceeding whatever the Soviets had previously advertised.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > The military was never capped by speed limits nor fuel costs or pollution limits. And even they didn't go faster than 2200mph as far as we know. But the military had other constraints, and needs. One thing the military doesn't need as much as the civilian world is comfort. You might prefer to go from New York to Hawaii in 2 hours instead of 11. The military might prefer that too, but maybe not as much. A lot of the things for which the military needs speed have alternatives: if you want to bomb a place, you can send missiles, if you want to surveil it, you may use satellites. If you want to evade some incoming surface-to-air missile, you are out of luck anyway. That's the reason the top speed of F-35 is lower than the top speed of earlier jet fighters like F-14, F-15 and F-16. On the other hand, the military needs to optimize for other things. Maneuverability. Ability to open up a bomb bay and drop bombs (imagine Concorde opening up some hatch in the middle of its supersonic flight). Capability to take off from shorter runways. High G forces. And of course for more recent military jets low observability. Compared to that, civilian aircraft is very boring: it needs to fly at a constant altitude and constant speed. That's the reason Concorde flew more supersonic miles than all the military jet fighters in the world combined.

jedberg 4y ago

Yeah this is a good point. The military was never capped by speed limits nor fuel costs or pollution limits. And even they didn't go faster than 2200mph as far as we know. Which either means there was no reason to figure out how to go faster, or they just couldn't do it. If the former, maybe with commercial pressures there would be a reason to go faster, but that's unlikely. And with the latter, well I'm not sure a commercial entity would out-innovate the military-industrial complex.

hughw 4y ago
"as far as we know" -- they're famous though for trotting out the Blackbird and setting a new public speed record just exceeding whatever the Soviets had previously advertised.
credit_guy 4y ago
> The military was never capped by speed limits nor fuel costs or pollution limits. And even they didn't go faster than 2200mph as far as we know. But the military had other constraints, and needs. One thing the military doesn't need as much as the civilian world is comfort. You might prefer to go from New York to Hawaii in 2 hours instead of 11. The military might prefer that too, but maybe not as much. A lot of the things for which the military needs speed have alternatives: if you want to bomb a place, you can send missiles, if you want to surveil it, you may use satellites. If you want to evade some incoming surface-to-air missile, you are out of luck anyway. That's the reason the top speed of F-35 is lower than the top speed of earlier jet fighters like F-14, F-15 and F-16. On the other hand, the military needs to optimize for other things. Maneuverability. Ability to open up a bomb bay and drop bombs (imagine Concorde opening up some hatch in the middle of its supersonic flight). Capability to take off from shorter runways. High G forces. And of course for more recent military jets low observability. Compared to that, civilian aircraft is very boring: it needs to fly at a constant altitude and constant speed. That's the reason Concorde flew more supersonic miles than all the military jet fighters in the world combined.