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The future of ultra-fast passenger travel
- jMyles 1y agoWhile the engineering and innovation surrounding fast travel is interesting and compelling, I think that ultra-comfortable but slow-and-sustainable travel is more likely to win the day.
- Animats 1y agoThe airship enthusiasts keep saying that, but nobody is flying luxury lighter than air yachts.
- jMyles 1y agoMy head goes to really kickass trains. Imagine a train roughly twice as wide as today's trains, where you can kinda bring your own small-house-size-module and travel about the world at 15-30mph. If this is too far a reach, then maybe self-driving motorhomes will fill a similar desire. I can definitely imagine a very lightweight motorhome - less like a bus, more like an overbuilt enormous e-bike - being viable, maybe even by solar power (say, 2 days to charge for every day on the road, something like that). I mostly live in a school bus, but too much of my time is spent driving, and those driving times are mostly a) on highways, and b) at speeds which represent a constant threat to everything around me. I'd love to have an autopilot to take us on country roads at much slower speeds.
- qayxc 1y agoThere's reasons for that. One of them being that literally no one even builds airships anymore. Blimps don't count. Another reason is helium being very expensive and the irrational fear of using hydrogen as a lifting gas.
- Animats 1y agoTwelve Zeppelin NT ships were built. Some are used for tourism, some for advertising, and one was used for prospecting with a gravity meter. It's still a tiny niche.
- zeristor 1y agoCharm of Concorde sort of noise dived when it exploded.
- Jtsummers 1y agoWhat's "noise dived"? I presume you mean "nose dived". But it did not explode, it crashed. The cause of the accident was FOD (Foreign Object Damage). Debris on the runway, a 17"x1" strip of titanium, caused damage to the tire which caused additional damage and ultimately the crash. Perhaps less dramatically, but that's not a unique-to-Concorde kind of accident. FOD is taken seriously in the aviation industry.
- oceanplexian 1y agoIf Boeing was held to the same standard they would have stopped making airplanes a half a dozen plane crashes ago.
- appreciatorBus 1y agoA whole section on economics, efficiency and speed without any mention of externalities.
- robotresearcher 1y ago“More fuel per seat‑km means higher CO₂ if sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is scarce. Supersonic NOₓ and water vapour are emitted directly into the lower stratosphere, affecting ozone and radiative forcing . Methalox rockets also inject large quantities of H₂O and NOₓ at >30 km.”
- appreciatorBus 1y agoFair enough, I was literally searching for the word. I assumed the history of noise externalities from supersonic aircraft might merit a broader discussion of externalities. It’s great that they are talking about air pollution, but I’d still argue that there are many other externalities to supersonic air travel, (and sub sonic air travel, and ground transport, etc) I just think we’d get saner transport policy and better innovation if we talked about them, and how to balance the benefits for people inside the vehicle for the costs to those outside the vehicle.
- namuol 1y agoJust give us high speed rail. Who does supersonic travel actually serve?
- daft_pink 1y agoMost people using these flights would be traveling over oceans that are not serviceable by rail.
- namuol 1y agoMy point stands. Who needs to cross oceans so regularly and so fast?
- AlotOfReading 1y agoEven with the decline of business travel, there's plenty of people traveling constantly who would pay absurd amounts of money to arrive faster. Celebrities, sports teams, entertainers, the ultra-wealthy, etc. Less flight time allows them to get more rest and spend extra time preparing for the events they're traveling to.
- psadri 1y agoAnother approach would be more comfortable travel at today’s speeds (or even slower). Imagine boarding a plane with a luxury hotel like experience. A buffet breakfast, some work/reading in a nice library, followed by some treadmill / stationary bike time, then a shower, lunch, a massage in the spa. Dinner later before a classical concert and finally heading to sleep in a comfy bed. Then wake up and disembark at your destination.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoMany of the people I mentioned already travel in luxurious conditions, and the economics for luxury aviation are well-explored. It misses the fundamental issue here though. Time spent traveling is time that isn't spent setting up for an event or meeting with fans/media/business interests. You can't solve that with classical music.
- Y_Y 1y ago> Concorde, ... ultimately failed economically due to ... regulatory restrictions on overland supersonic flights. Hardly fait to blame regulation here, the problem was that it was incredibly loud and unpleasant. You can try to make it sound like government overreach, but it takes some serious mental aerobatics.
- pfdietz 1y agoThe problem was it was very expensive. There should be a name for the principle that one needn't look for more complicated explanations when economic ones suffice.
- xdfgh1112 1y agoThat's Occam's razor more or less.
- wongarsu 1y agoAnd it was very expensive because it was a Cold War prestige project. A three-way race between the US, Europe and the Soviet Union. Just like the Apollo program it was forced into existence through force of will, on a tight deadline with limited economic considerations. If anything it's a miracle how practical the Concorde was and how long it remained in operation
- pfdietz 1y agoThat was why it was done at all, but not why it was expensive.
- jajko 1y agoAt that time, maybe yes. These days, it would fail in many other criteria. Sound pollution is brutal, can't be effectively mitigated and it was all just about rich sparing few hours to get to NY/Paris faster. Fuck the rich, take normal airliner like everybody else if you are so poor to not have your own jet. We are not bending health standards to whims of few moderately wealthy individuals, sounds like some societal progress there. A sort of self-regulating issue for a change.
- pfdietz 1y agoMakes the mistake of to some extent conflating propellant and fuel. Liquid oxygen is very cheap, much cheaper than hydrocarbon fuels per unit mass, a fact not in evidence in the article.
- daft_pink 1y agoIt’s kind of interesting the way the entrenched players really aren’t interested in this technology so much.
- nunez 1y agoI believe United Airlines invested in Boom.
- dopa42365 1y agoCan't go supersonic over inhabited land in this day and age. So all it does is shave some time off on ocean crossing. Like flying the 3000km from East Canada to West Ireland in 1.5 instead of 3 hours. At extremely increased cost. It's a hard sell in an industry that's competing for price efficiency.
- testing22321 1y agoInteresting like how entrenched auto makers are not interested in EVs, and entrenched power companies are not interested in solar , and entrenched health insurers are not interested in making healthcare more efficient? Follow the money. Always.
- satyrun 1y agoYea that is why every "entrenched auto maker" has an EV. Maybe you need to get off your social media and use your brain a little more.
- testing22321 1y agoToyota? Most of the big OEMs have one or two EVs and less less in a quarter than Tesla do in a day. (F150 lightning, Silverado, mustang mach e, muscle cars)
- barbazoo 1y agoF150 lightning sales are about double compared to Cybertruck.
- juujian 1y agoFabulous, even more means for the ultra rich to consume and generate greenhouse gases while the quality of life for the 99% stagnates.
- Jtsummers 1y agoIf they use Starship, though, it would reduce the number of ultra rich out there as their wealth gets divided through rapid unscheduled inheritance.
- atoav 1y agoMake a list of people flying in these things and attribute the consequences of climate change to their heads. Then you have them pay the bill for their lifetime, potential inheritances pay after. Not to put a too fine point on it, but climate change is an existencial global, international and inter-generational problem. It is about time we hold those accountable who contribute to it overly much, without loopholes. If this comes across overly vindictive, consider that the rich will be the people who are least likely to be unable to avoid the consequences of global warming.
- areoform 1y agoFor the self-described "skeptics," 2 hour travel to anywhere on Earth means that everyone gets to have a donor organ shipped to them within the viability window. If we could go from SF to Tokyo in 2 hours, it would permanently change geopolitics. Imagine commuting between Shenzhen and SF. One foot in each of the two most innovative cities on Earth. The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago>The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes. and the quicker disease can spread.
- areoform 1y ago> and the quicker disease can spread. People who haven't been on HN for a while tend to think HN keeps getting worse etc. and that's rarely the case, but I do think something has changed in the site's core audience. HN has attracted its share of luddites. People who aren't interested in building a better future. But are very interested in tearing it down. When did HN become a place where dreams of a better future were met with proclamations of disease?
- Avicebron 1y ago> When did HN become a place where dreams of a better future were met with proclamations of disease? As there as been a general broadening of discussion as to exactly what "a better future" means and I suppose more specifically to whom.
- supportengineer 1y agoMarch 2020, approximately
- tom_ 1y agoYou can make the case for whatever case you are trying to make, without pushing back on this quite specific extremely correct point. When people meet. disease spreads. If it doesn't spread when they breathe on one another, it will spread when they touch. If it doesn't spread when they touch, it will spread when they fuck. If it doesn't spread when they fuck - phew, crikey, this disease is useless indeed, and natural selection will see it off quickly. Meanwhile our protagonists now have flu, norovirus and crabs.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Animats 1y agoThe future of ultra-fast passenger travel is Zoom calls. A supersonic bizjet is a possibility. It's not cost effective, but it's a status symbol.
- atoav 1y agoIf I want travel I'd love a mix of night trains and high speed trains, preferably on entirely separate rails and separate from any freight train and/or regional/light trains. Arguably we already have it already comparably good in the EU, but, rhe capacity and reliability is nowhere near the levels I'd like to see. Trains need to be the no-brainer-mode of transportation if not only for the reason they are the most energy efficient way of moving people in high numbers for reasonable distances.
- pestatije 1y agoif that was only true...my international flight was 4 times cheaper than the train trip airport -hometown
- guenthert 1y agoultra-fast passenger travel is clearly a first-world problem. it doesn't take much to see that this first-world is shrinking rapidly.
- MichaelRazum 1y agoIsn't most the time consumption in the airport anyway? Like people supposed to be ther 2-3 hours ahead. If you could get 10m before the flight to the airport that would save so much more time.