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Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

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Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#21

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #15
harimau777 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless we dramatically increase vacation time or dramatically increase rail speeds, that would mean that many people would not be able to see their families and friends or travel to events.

Absolutely not. 300 kph HSR rail exists in developed countries. (2680 miles) / (300 kilometers per hour) = 14.3768064 hours That's coast to coast in ~ 1/2 day. Ships and blimps represent a much larger decrease in travel time over airplanes than rail. They perhaps pose a to be solved, but rail doesn't.

And you can go ecen faster

>"TGV called V150 holds the record for the highest speed on any national rail system - it hit a whopping 357.2 mph "

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#23

Post by Ericson2314 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #19
_Microft wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air travel is not a problem because the emissions per kilometer are that bad but because one can easily travel one or two orders of magnitude farther than one usually would.

Exactly. It's not like if you couldn't fly from Los Angeles to New York once a month - you would just drive by yourself - and produce the same amount of carbon. You wouldn't produce any carbon, because you'd likely never make the trip!

Yes, this is why dealing with air is so tricky in economic terms, because "uninducing demand" does have more intrinsic downsides. Car -> rail is a mere political problem, once you get there it "unlocks" more travel so it is clearly economically good.

I guess thank god for 9/11 boosting security theater. Don't like all the other patriot act garbage, but the degree to which air travel is so awful really helps here.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#24

Post by beerandt »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #11
t0mas88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air travel has a big PR problem, because somehow a lot of people think it's the absolute worst for the environment. While on many routes a car is worse in terms of CO2 emission per trip than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners…

> While on many routes a car is worse than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. I never said cars. Cars are terrible. I would not complained if passenger-only cars were banned everywhere. > Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners. There are alternatives like wind pow…

Air travel is generally more energy efficient than trains, beyond a 300-400 mile range, depending on what you're traveling over/through.

Track and right-of-way is a scarce resource with large amounts of embedded energy. The sky, not so much.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #6
yellow_lead wrote: post #5

They will still use an enormous amount of fuel, carry fewer passengers, and heavily pollute the environment. I'm not too excited about the prospects.

All overland passenger transport should be rail. Over the oceans I suppose we should strive for ships and dirigibles. That said, I find it hard to believe that plane travel can be eradicated for e.g. diplomacy. And frankly, if frequent contract between the powerful different countries is needed to avoid e.g. world wars, it's is worth it. In the short term, any carbon we can capture needs to go in back in ground and s…

[deleted]

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#26

Post by ClumsyPilot »

xchaotic wrote: post #13

Solving some societal or civilisational challenge with supersonic flight seems very narrow minded now. Yes I would like to fly to my work HQ faster but due to pandemic I have not visited in 3 years now and it’s been fine, so a better solution is excellent remote work tools such as HQ videoconferencing etc which is such an easier problem, yet many people and companies still struggle with it. In the overall ROI for thi…

It would be nice if we had publically funded communication etc tools. I am not seeing a valid business nodel here that does not involve either massive spying, or poor people loosing access to rest of society.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#27

Post by beerandt »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #14
harimau777 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless we dramatically increase vacation time or dramatically increase rail speeds, that would mean that many people would not be able to see their families and friends or travel to events.

If we had high-speed rail everywhere at 300km/h you can cross almost any country overnight, that radius of 3600km would give you 80% of all plane travel.

At energy and cost levels that exceed airline travel, per passenger-mile.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#28

Post by ClumsyPilot »

t0mas88 wrote: post #8
Ericson2314 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All overland passenger transport should be rail. Over the oceans I suppose we should strive for ships and dirigibles. That said, I find it hard to believe that plane travel can be eradicated for e.g. diplomacy. And frankly, if frequent contract between the powerful different countries is needed to avoid e.g. world wars, it's is worth it. In the short term, any carbon we can capture needs to go in back in ground and s…

Air travel has a big PR problem, because somehow a lot of people think it's the absolute worst for the environment. While on many routes a car is worse in terms of CO2 emission per trip than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners…

We coupd sctuallu fly even more efficiently, but slower, with turboprops

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#29

Post by avereveard »

t0mas88 wrote: post #12

> These studies, along with tens of thousands of claims against the Air Force for property damage—horses and turkeys had supposedly died or gone insane—led the F.A.A. to ban civil overland supersonic flight, in 1973. There was also a political part involved. The Concorde was a British-French creation, not a Boeing. Had there been a Boeing supersonic passenger plane first there would probably have been different FAA r…

not really the same, fighters are quite smaller than airliners.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#30

Post by agent327 »

_Microft wrote: post #18
t0mas88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air travel has a big PR problem, because somehow a lot of people think it's the absolute worst for the environment. While on many routes a car is worse in terms of CO2 emission per trip than a small to mid sized airliner if there are less than 3 people in the car. Similar for your suggestion that we should take ships over the ocean, because cruise ships are much more polluting per passenger mile than modern airliners…

Air travel is not a problem because the emissions per kilometer are that bad but because one can easily travel one or two orders of magnitude farther than one usually would.

So your preferred solution is to restrict the allowed travel radius of people, a bit like with medieval serfs?
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