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The classic problem with civilian air travel: Gains in airspeed can matter a whole lot less than gains in groundspeed. Getting from your house to the plane and

by Breza 3y ago

The classic problem with civilian air travel: Gains in airspeed can matter a whole lot less than gains in groundspeed. Getting from your house to the plane and then from the plane to your hotel on the other end can take as long as the flight itself. I live in DC, and we (finally) opened up a subway to Dulles airport. That drops the cost-adjusted travel time for DC residents more than a faster airplane for many flights.

rtkwe 3y ago
With the added wrinkle that you're out at sea and right now for the Falcon 9 SpaceX loads fuel after loading the people because they use super cooled fuels so they're denser. For Falcon 9 this is only 35 minutes before launch but Starship requires much more fuel so if they needed to follow that pattern they'd have to wait quite a while on the pad waiting for sufficient fuel to load for whatever trip too. (Plus do you have people in suits for this? Survivability of your passengers would point to yes so you've got to deal with all that or having some extremely fast abort to a survivable altitude)