6 ms·
The emissions of supersonic aircraft are insane. They’re just so inefficient. Nobody needs to fly anywhere that fast when they can sleep on a lie flat bed in bu
by 7e 1y ago
The emissions of supersonic aircraft are insane. They’re just so inefficient. Nobody needs to fly anywhere that fast when they can sleep on a lie flat bed in business class instead. Let’s stop polluting the earth and put that money into battery and hydrogen aircraft instead.
- api 1y agoFuel is the #1 cost of airlines, so this will be niche unless the efficiency problem is solved. As for climate change and oil use, all aviation globally is only about 7% of oil use and about 3% of carbon emissions. It’s not the main thing to worry about. Coal fired electricity followed by oil fired land transport (mostly easily electrified cars) are together well over 50% of all emissions and are the easiest things to fix. Deforestation and agricultural emissions are also up there. All of these sources are way easier and cheaper to address than decarbonizing aviation.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoWe can worry about more than one thing at a time
- api 1y agoIt makes the most sense to tackle the easiest biggest wins first. There is limited attention, money, and political capital. Aviation is perhaps the hardest single thing to decarbonize.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoAnd the biggest consumers of air passenger travel are the rich. They can be incentized to fly less with the stroke of a pen: tax usage. I'm sure the world will keep spinning despite them having only one of two trips to their private island each year. Thankfully we don't have to stop at one thing. Or even limit ourselves to doing one thing at a time.
- api 1y agoIf you want to argue against inequality, make that argument on its own merit without hijacking climate change and using it as a stalking horse. Climate change is its own problem. Physics doesn’t care what our gini coefficient is. A more equal society that emits too much carbon still has this problem. A decarbonized society powered by renewable and nuclear energy could still have too much inequality.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoUntil democracy is fixed I don't think these problems can be disconnected. But I'll admit that even an equal society could barrel toward its own destruction. I just think equal societies are less likely to, because all our livelihoods would be on the line. None could deny the problem and strong arm the government to ignore it--for the short term benefit of the few at the top.
- api 1y agoI think a more equal society would, if it were using fossil fuels, emit more carbon. A more equals society would have fewer people in poverty. It would have more active services for people who need them. All that represents a lower entropy state. Lower entropy states require more external energy input to maintain, not less. Allowing vast numbers of people to rot in squalor while a few rich people live it up is a lower energy higher entropy state. Individual rich people may use crazy amounts of energy but there are not many of them. Bezos’ jet consumes a tiny fraction of the power required to provide continuous modern health care to everyone, for example.
- appreciatorBus 1y agoThis assumes that decarbonizing aviation is the only way to address the issue. A much simpler one, that costs nothing, is simply if we did less aviation. If we had the political will, even just trying to get somewhere close to pricing pollution externalities of aviation (in addition to other pollution sources, to be clear), would immediately reduce demand and make other forms of transportation more competitive. Of course we don’t have that political will, so it may be true that the only choice is to come up with expensive and esoteric technologies to decarbonize aviation. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that flying less was always an option we (collectively) had, but chose not to take.
- api 1y agoTrue, but why is it that so many people concerned about climate fixate on aviation? It’s 3% of world carbon emissions. It’s tiny, it’s pivotal to the economy, and it’s hard to change. It’s the worst thing to fixate on, the one you’ll make the least progress toward. What we should be fixating on is “end coal” because coal burning, largely for power generation, is both the largest single source and one of the easiest to replace. Yet that climate group is called “end oil” not “end coal.” Why? If we actually think climate change is a problem we need to think like scientists and engineers and prioritize rationally. We also have to be willing to put politics aside and make a broad and wide appeal, arguing that fixing this is in everyone’s long term interest (because it is).
- appreciatorBus 1y agoI think part of the answer is that not everyone is convinced it's pivotal. Only a small amount of aviation is pivotal by any definition, and that portion isn't very price sensitive, so paying for externalities wouldn't make much difference to it. Even in the richest country in the world, only half of the population took even one plane trip in 2024, and the distribution among those who did, probably skews heavily toward a very small # of frequent fliers. Aviation is super useful, no doubt. But like many difficult political problems, the benefits are concentrated on those who fly the most, or who consume most of the products that typically fly, and the costs are spread among those who fly the least, or not at all. Anyway, I have never seen someone advocate to ignore coal in favour of focussing on aviation. But I have seen a lot of people advocate to ignore aviation in favour of focussing on anything but aviation. As others have said, we can do more than one thing. Some of us can focus on coal, others on aviation. I am just a message board pundit, not involved in coal or aviation, nor advocacy around climate change on either. I am just skeptical of approaches that privilege one pollution source over another. Maybe politics means it's the best we can do, but that's not a very satisfying answer to some of us.
- Robotbeat 1y agoThe difference in efficiency between subsonic and supersonic is about 2, which is smaller than the difference between a high density seatIng arrangement and lie-flat density (a factor of 3, I think?). If you’re doing a lie-flat bed, you just eliminated the entire difference in emissions per passenger.
- i80and 1y agoI realize this makes me very unusual and this is probably not a good business idea, but I'd be happy to fly pod-hostel style. I don't mind being stacked as long as I get to lie down.
- genocidicbunny 1y agoJust don't forget your multipass.
- closewith 1y agoMe too, but it will never happen due to evacuation issues.
- ghc 1y agoI think you're exhibiting a lack of imagination here. There's plenty of time sensitive items the Concorde was used to transport, like organs for transplants, or serum for snake bite victims. Since the retirement of the Concorde we've regrettably had to use fighter jets for some of these life-saving flights. Sure, rich people subsidized all of it to shave a few hours off their business flights, but given how much avgas Elon's jet uses, it is really more efficient if they half the people who would take a supersonic flight take small private jets instead?
- echoangle 1y agoMaybe unpopular opinion but with the costs associated with flying around organs for transplants or serum for snake bites at supersonic speeds, you could save a lot more people in different situations.
- geertj 1y ago> given how much avgas Elon's jet uses Jets don’t consume avgas.
- ghc 1y agoTIL. I've only made a few business plane trips, but thinking back on it they were all turboprops.
- jordanb 1y agoTurboprops also run on jet fuel. Only reciprocating engines use avgas.
- jcalvinowens 1y agoJets will run on anything that burns, most turboprops are allowed to burn avgas in emergencies. Some officially allow 100+ hours of avgas operation between overhauls.
- dghlsakjg 1y ago
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoThey should tax emissions