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Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

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Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#161

Post by _Microft »

nradov wrote: post #145
yurishimo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think autonomous vehicles will help here eventually too. A lot of road maintenance is due to large semi-trucks. If those vehicles are operated autonomously, they can be programmed to drive more efficiently in regards to wear on the roads. Slower braking, slower speeds (since you don’t need stops for drivers to sleep to reach your destination in the same amount of time). We’d also see a closure of many roadside stop…

Road wear is caused by weight. Driving and braking slower won't make a significant difference.

Road damage is said to be proportional to the fourth power of axle weight [0]. The link to reference 14 on the article is dead but the internet archive has a copy of it at [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#Importance

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150709151027/http://www.nvfnor...

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#162

Post by vinay427 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #123
katbyte wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very loud sounds can panic/shock animals and if it's too much for them, they die.

Well, in that case, when will we start jailing bikers with loud exhausts for the deaths of old people from heart attacks?

Many places do regulate the noise levels of exhausts, which seems a bit more appropriate and less punitive than permitting any exhaust and hoping people don't die as a result. The penalties for noncompliance are obviously not as high as jail time, but at least to me, (among other things) there is an element of premeditation or willfulness missing in these deaths.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#163

Post by Gibbon1 »

cortesoft wrote: post #122
ant6n wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if there was no air travel, rail lines everywhere would likely be practical... again. If trains could go 250km/h on average, that 5000km trip would take 20 hours - that's plausible for an overnight trip, leave 6pm, arrive 10am. A flight over this is distance is probably a much more stressful red eye. Sure this is quite speculative, but perhaps less so than hyperloop dreams, or supersonic aircraft that somehow h…

That seems a strange argument… yes, if we didn’t have planes, trains would be our best option… but it would be a much worse experience. 20 hours is a lot longer than the 5 it takes me to fly to New York. If there was no air travel, I would just travel a lot less. If you want to argue that the environmental cost of air travel is too great to allow it to happen is one thing, but done act like it wouldn’t make the trave…

I'd like to see a graph of miles flown per year by decile.

internet foo

Found this. As I suspected, hockey stick graph.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1579/airlines.aspx

Half the people in the US don't fly at all. 25% fly 1-2 times a year. People that don't fly at all, and people that fly 1-2 times year. Probably wouldn't be much impacted if they had to take a high speed train instead of a plane.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#164

Post by vinay427 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #124
the8472 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restrictions may not be needed. Remove subsidies and price in externalties.

Most people dont realise that aircraft industry and fsrming use special fuel and pay no tax on it. While it makes sence that we sibsidiae cost of food, it is less clear why we subsidise airlines

> While it makes sence that we sibsidiae cost of food

That's already a thorny subject given that most governments also subsidize food sources that are vastly inefficient and resource-intensive even in cases where reasonable alternatives exist. Meat/dairy producers are still the primary recipients of subsidies in the US and many other countries, at least in Europe.

This number distinguishes between fruit/vegetables and other products, although the article apparently suggests that the use of corn/soy in meat production makes this figure more relevant:

> According to recent studies, the U.S. government spends up to $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, with less than one percent of that sum allocated to aiding the production of fruits and vegetables.

https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/removing-meat-subsidy-our-cogn...

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#165

Post by ClumsyPilot »

inglor_cz wrote: post #159
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tonnels, we are made massive ones through the alps in europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

Gotthard is impressive, but it took the Swiss 17 years to build it. Nearby, Brenner Base Tunnel is under construction between Italy and Austria, and it is expected to take 25 years to complete. I can't imagine how long would it take to tunnel through the Rockies. Look at the map, they are far wider than the Alps. Getting through the Rockies is like getting from Denmark to Croatia.

Better get started soon then! Once you make a tonnel, it stays there forever, it's a good investment

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#166

Post by nojokes »

the8472 wrote: post #41
agent327 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Restrictions may not be needed. Remove subsidies and price in externalties.

If intentions are the same then these still can be seen restrictions on mobility.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#167

Post by throw0101a »

nostromo wrote: post #76
failwhaleshark wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying, in-general, is inefficient unless it's a large, lifting body in ground effect.

Flying on a full or almost-full plane is more carbon efficient than driving solo. And that's not taking into account the cost of the road networks we build and maintain to allow high volumes of vehicular traffic. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-...

> Flying on a full or almost-full plane is more carbon efficient than driving solo.

… in a fossil-fuel burning automobile. Do things changes with the rise of EVs?

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#168

Post by throw0101a »

cortesoft wrote: post #38
marcosdumay wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in a plane trip you have 3 lost hours before it starts and after it ends, so a normal train, running at 130km/h will be faster than a plane at 850km/h for any trip of less than ~460km. If you make it a fast train, at 350km/h, it will beat the plane on any trip up to 1700km. Most trips are short, so no, most trips can be done by train and people still spend less time on them than by plane.

I live in Southern California, with family in Kansas, Wisconsin, and New York. The closest one is 2500kms away. The longest is almost 5000kms A train would take a lot longer than a plane. Even more than just the distance, though, is the fact that there would be no practical way to have direct rail lines to every major city in the US. Trains are useful, but there is no way they could replace air travel in the US.

> I live in Southern California, with family in Kansas, Wisconsin, and New York. The closest one is 2500kms away. The longest is almost 5000kms A train would take a lot longer than a plane.

Perhaps people/families have spread themselves all over the continent because in the past energy has been 'too cheap' (i.e., didn't price in externalities).

With carbon pricing people may make different decisions in how far they want to travel from their 'home town', and what that would mean for seeing family.

>95% of the population of the US (and CA) are people who moved across an ocean and had basically zero expectation of seeing their families once they left. The only communication would be letters, telegraphs, and later trans-oceanic telephone calls.

Given the realities of climate change, and what it's cost us with regards to damage to the planet, expectations need to adjust.

Re: Will we ever fly supersonically over land?

#169

Post by sokoloff »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #165
inglor_cz wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotthard is impressive, but it took the Swiss 17 years to build it. Nearby, Brenner Base Tunnel is under construction between Italy and Austria, and it is expected to take 25 years to complete. I can't imagine how long would it take to tunnel through the Rockies. Look at the map, they are far wider than the Alps. Getting through the Rockies is like getting from Denmark to Croatia.

Better get started soon then! Once you make a tonnel, it stays there forever, it's a good investment

Indeed, if we want tunnels to make a rail network cross the Rockies, we had really better get started, since you'd need 5 east-west routes to make trains practical ("less impractical"?) to cross the Rockies. No one is going to take an additional 1000 mile (7+ hour) diversion north-south to pass through a tunnel to repeat that north-south diversion on the other side.
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