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Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

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Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#211

Post by btilly »

actionfromafar wrote: post #190
btilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

It might but it would still take a long time. Industry moves slowly.

That's a double edged sword.

If Boeing begins the design of a new plane now, they would be planning on finding customers in 10 years who expect to use the planes for the following 20.

But in 5 years we should have a good sense of whether Starship is viable. If it is, then 10 years from now Boeing won't have a market.

Even if you give Elon only a modest chance of success, it makes sense to stretch out the sales cycle for existing planes and delay starting new development for 5 years.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#212

Post by btilly »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #154
btilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

Given the similarity of the launch and flight stages to other scary things militaries look out for (icbms), I can't see how point to point rocket flights become a geopolitical reality. Airplanes can barely fly a straight line through Europe or Asia as it is. Point to point is only really a reality over North America, oceans, and Australia.

As long as the countries at the endpoints agree to the flight, it is hard for others to stop suborbital flights.

Commercial airlines have to deal with going over countries that have air forces which can intercept them. Intercepting satellites is quite a bit harder. And attempting to gets everyone mad at you because of how much garbage it creates. In fact people are STILL unhappy with China because of the fallout from their attempt to TEST their capacity to do that in 2007!

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#213

Post by elzbardico »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #115
rippercushions wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing, Airbus, and Rolls-Royce are going to be in for a rude awakening if/when the Chinese aircraft industry ever gets their shit together, and/or if batteries ever become light/dense enough to support electric passenger flight. That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath. The twin-aisle C929 is still a decade aw…

The C919 and C929 both fly with western avionics and jet engines, so they aren’t really that far off from airbus and Boeing, and don’t really bring anything new to the table beyond more competition from China in putting everything together.

Probably the Chinese will have to rely on some derivative of the Russian PD-14 engine. It is very probable that the chinese will lose access to western engines due to sanctions in the not so remote future, and their indigenous projects are still very far behind the state of art in jet engines.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#214

Post by bryanlarsen »

WalterBright wrote: post #167
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that no one is paying me to bury a bunch of logs. The fact is, there is ample demand for high density energy storage. People want to go places, people want stuff brought to them. Until battery technology makes a massive leap into the realm of eating roses and shitting rainbows, combustible fuels are the only economically feasible option. In that realm, our options are A) keep digging up fossil fuels…

Your equation overlooks simply growing trees. Build houses with the lumber instead of burning them.

Have you run the numbers on that? It takes 10 years to grow a tree. How many trees does it take to sequester gigatonnes of CO2? Some trees are useful, that many trees aren't.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#215

Post by anaganisk »

908B64B197 wrote: post #210
anaganisk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$9 converted to Indian currency is Rs720 with a conversion rate of 80Rs per dollar which is around 3 lakhs a month, which is a lot in India, equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford. I'm not sure how you are trying to make a point here. Also it's unfortunate that you retort to blaming the coders and mild racism, instead of accepting Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any av…

> equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford. So they can convert it to six figures USD? > Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any aviation experts blamed the code, Boeing went cheap and removed a redundant device the MCAS system needs during a malfunction. McDonnell Douglas-Boeing messed up indeed. The 9$/h coders are just one of the many symptoms of a culture that lead to th…

You are just not able to comprehend, the difference in USD and INR. I will give you a simple example for you to comprehend. The cost of Unlimited 5G internet in India with 2GB allowance per day billed at 1 YEAR is 43 USD. It's 80 USD at minimum in US per MONTH. The cost of groceries for a 4 person family per month is 243 USD. The mortgage payment on a decent 3BHK house I pay is 182 USD per month. The cost of living and expenses in India is way cheaper. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve by emphasising 9$/hr coders. It's less in US, it's a lot in India, you are not even in the middle class at that point. They hired some competent coders if they paid that rate in India. Comparing competency of a coder paid in USD vs INR is plain foolish.

The successful Indian Space Research Organization is probably paying $15/hr to it's engineers if you are to question their competency next, I'm not sure if you even understand anything.

I mean that's the reason they outsource, it's cheaper because they have to pay way less in USD, but can hire the same level of talent, if needed. Since in INR it's a lot.

And why should they convert to USD, that's completely foolish, they live in India LOL.

Why do you think a lot of people come to US, even if it means working low income jobs. They send their money to India where it's a lot. And hoard a lot of wealth there.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#216

Post by OkayPhysicist »

WalterBright wrote: post #163
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the fact that I'm also growing said trees. If I plant a bunch of trees to sell the lumber as firewood, I turn around and plant more trees so I can sell more wood in the future. Those trees capture the C02 released by the first batch, and then I sell them again. This is especially true with algae ponds, because 1) there's no chance there was an existing algae pond that would put me 1 batch in the hole o…

> You're missing the fact that I'm also growing said trees. But you can grow trees and capture carbon anyway, and not burn them.

Sure. But the conversation here is about biofuel. Leet's say I want to fly to London because I'm sick of the gorgeous weather in California. In order for aviation to exist, we need energy storage substantially denser than what batteries can currently provide. Our options are A) Biofuel, which captured CO2 in its development, or B) Fossil Fuels, which did not.

A) is objectively the superior option, because buying said biofuel puts an economic incentive on the guy making the biofuel to keep capturing more CO2 to make more biofuel, resulting in ~about carbon neutrality. B) releases a bunch of CO2 that has been sequestered since long before you or I ever existed.

If you want to pay purely to sequester carbon, go for it, buddy. Nobody's stopping you from going to your local tree farm, buying a tree, and burying it. That's your perogative. But your buried tree doesn't get me to my Jack the Ripper street tour or whatever.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#217

Post by WalterBright »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #216
WalterBright wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're missing the fact that I'm also growing said trees. But you can grow trees and capture carbon anyway, and not burn them.

Sure. But the conversation here is about biofuel. Leet's say I want to fly to London because I'm sick of the gorgeous weather in California. In order for aviation to exist, we need energy storage substantially denser than what batteries can currently provide. Our options are A) Biofuel, which captured CO2 in its development, or B) Fossil Fuels, which did not. A) is objectively the superior option, because buying said…

Burning a log you just cut is no different from burning a log you dug up. You've accomplished nothing whatsoever in reducing CO2 emissions.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#218

Post by WalterBright »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #214
WalterBright wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your equation overlooks simply growing trees. Build houses with the lumber instead of burning them.

Have you run the numbers on that? It takes 10 years to grow a tree. How many trees does it take to sequester gigatonnes of CO2? Some trees are useful, that many trees aren't.

> How many trees does it take to sequester gigatonnes of CO2?

Are you saying biofuels are not only ineffective at reducing CO2 emissions, but impractical as well?

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#219

Post by WalterBright »

testrun wrote: post #194
WalterBright wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there isn't. Read my other replies.

And they are plainly wrong. Carbon captured and released is not the same as new carbon released from oil.

> Carbon captured and released is not the same as new carbon released from oil.

You've fallen for the fraud. It is the same. Think about it.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#220

Post by WalterBright »

progman32 wrote: post #188
WalterBright wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every reply to me makes the same mistake. The fix: Grow a tree. Burn a tree you dug up. Net zero carbon.

Until that tree that was just planted dies and decays back into co2. I understand that there's ways to prevent this from happening for a while, but I'm not convinced that the economics of that work well enough to offset the high quantity demand of aviation fuel. We already grow lots of trees to use in houses etc. In any case, your comments helped me understand the greater picture. I still think biofuels are a good id…

> Until that tree that was just planted dies and decays back into co2.

Unless you build a house with the wood. Wood is a great building material. Unlike concrete, which releases CO2 in its production, wood construction reduces CO2.

Besides, you'll never ever create enough biomass to fuel the economy, and you'll wreck the environment trying.

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