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Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

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Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#191

Post by anon7000 »

pkulak wrote: post #178
arjie wrote: post #41

This is so exciting. The only ones I know working on this are Boom (unless they’ve pivoted entirely into AI DC turbines). Between this and the wind-turbine-blade air transporter it’s an exciting time for aviation. Now if we can only transition off leaded fuel!

> This is so exciting. How exactly? Purely on a tech basis? Because it's not solving a real problem anyone has. Some millionaire who wants to go from NYC to LA a couple hours faster is not a problem worth solving. And certainly not when it's less efficient, and inconveniences everyone in the flight path with a very loud noise.

Not immediately. But small changes add up over a long period. Air travel is currently hard limited by the sound barrier & fuel efficiency. I can’t easily visit my family on the other side of the country for a weekend because it takes a full day to travel.

Faster travel time makes a lot of places feel much closer together, which I think is generally a good thing.

Supersonic flight is one example, rockets are another. Neither are commercially viable… yet. But people get excited about technology like this because these investments are required for it to be possible in the future.

Saying it’s not a problem worth solving is ridiculous. You’re suggesting that humanity is never and should never get faster at traveling between point A and point B. But many places on the planet are still very far apart.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#192

Post by redsocksfan45 »

smt88 wrote: post #71
arjie wrote: post #41

This is so exciting. The only ones I know working on this are Boom (unless they’ve pivoted entirely into AI DC turbines). Between this and the wind-turbine-blade air transporter it’s an exciting time for aviation. Now if we can only transition off leaded fuel!

Why is this an exciting time for aviation? Or more specifically, why should I (a person who never spends more than $2,000 on air travel) be excited?

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Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#193

Post by remh »

anon7000 wrote: post #191
pkulak wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is so exciting. How exactly? Purely on a tech basis? Because it's not solving a real problem anyone has. Some millionaire who wants to go from NYC to LA a couple hours faster is not a problem worth solving. And certainly not when it's less efficient, and inconveniences everyone in the flight path with a very loud noise.

Not immediately. But small changes add up over a long period. Air travel is currently hard limited by the sound barrier & fuel efficiency. I can’t easily visit my family on the other side of the country for a weekend because it takes a full day to travel. Faster travel time makes a lot of places feel much closer together, which I think is generally a good thing. Supersonic flight is one example, rockets are another.…

Don't want to be a downer and I fly regularly myself, but I think right now Air Travel is limited by 1 thing: the supply of carbon neutral fuel.

A few weeks of war in Iran showed us the impact of reduced availability of oil. The rise in the number of amplitude of climate events show us that a lot of what we do is not sustainable.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#194

Post by Grombobulous »

anon7000 wrote: post #191
pkulak wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is so exciting. How exactly? Purely on a tech basis? Because it's not solving a real problem anyone has. Some millionaire who wants to go from NYC to LA a couple hours faster is not a problem worth solving. And certainly not when it's less efficient, and inconveniences everyone in the flight path with a very loud noise.

Not immediately. But small changes add up over a long period. Air travel is currently hard limited by the sound barrier & fuel efficiency. I can’t easily visit my family on the other side of the country for a weekend because it takes a full day to travel. Faster travel time makes a lot of places feel much closer together, which I think is generally a good thing. Supersonic flight is one example, rockets are another.…

Given the state of our global climate that it’s orders of magnitude more important to tackle aviations fuel efficiency and emissions than figuring out how to make supersonic travel commercially viable.

You say you can’t easily travel to visit family on the other side of the country for a weekend because it takes a full day to travel, but that’s not strictly true because red eye flights exist. You can just fly during sleeping time and sleep.

It’s just not really worth it because a subsonic jet is already going so fast. It’s not like the train to plane transition where a 50 hour train ride (California Zephyr) turns into a 5 hour flight.

The longest commercial flight is about 20 hours long. Cutting off half of that, yeah, saving a day for a round trip is nice, but still a very limited benefit by comparison, especially when you consider the sleep schedule. When you remove “time you have to sleep anyway” it makes the time savings less impactful.

And as far as comfort sleeping on a plane…I guarantee you a lie flat seat on a subsonic jet is always going to cost less than an economy seat on a supersonic jet.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#195

Post by Grombobulous »

remh wrote: post #193
anon7000 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not immediately. But small changes add up over a long period. Air travel is currently hard limited by the sound barrier & fuel efficiency. I can’t easily visit my family on the other side of the country for a weekend because it takes a full day to travel. Faster travel time makes a lot of places feel much closer together, which I think is generally a good thing. Supersonic flight is one example, rockets are another.…

Don't want to be a downer and I fly regularly myself, but I think right now Air Travel is limited by 1 thing: the supply of carbon neutral fuel. A few weeks of war in Iran showed us the impact of reduced availability of oil. The rise in the number of amplitude of climate events show us that a lot of what we do is not sustainable.

Is there a good estimation of how long the world has left of actual commercially viable oil that can be refined into jet fuel?

Even disregarding climate impact (which we shouldn’t) it seems like supersonic flight is just the wrong direction to be going in. If the commercial aviation industry is to survive beyond a century or two they probably need to find a different energy source for planes.

Also, it’s just not like the train to plane transition where passengers experienced 5-10x average speed improvements. The maximum amount of time you can save for a round trip flight is about a day. There’s just a limit to how much value that has. Business travelers can work on the plane, leisure travelers can just take another day off.

I mean, speaking of trains, flights sometimes gave a hard time competing with those, too. There are a lot of situations where going a little slower isn’t a problem.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#196

Post by rjh29 »

anon7000 wrote: post #191
pkulak wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is so exciting. How exactly? Purely on a tech basis? Because it's not solving a real problem anyone has. Some millionaire who wants to go from NYC to LA a couple hours faster is not a problem worth solving. And certainly not when it's less efficient, and inconveniences everyone in the flight path with a very loud noise.

Not immediately. But small changes add up over a long period. Air travel is currently hard limited by the sound barrier & fuel efficiency. I can’t easily visit my family on the other side of the country for a weekend because it takes a full day to travel. Faster travel time makes a lot of places feel much closer together, which I think is generally a good thing. Supersonic flight is one example, rockets are another.…

Isn't it already ridiculous that we can get to the other side of the world in half a day? It used to be straight up impossible, and then it took months by boat. We're now at diminishing returns, saving a couple of hours.

How long are we going to keep running up this hamster wheel instead of being satisfied with what we have?

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#197

Post by tomhow »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #166
tomhow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF? Please don't comment like this on HN. It breaks multiple guidelines. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

In light of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48728408 : you're appreciated and also it's okay to take breaks.

Thanks I guess but can you explain what you mean with any more clarity?

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#198

Post by wizzwizz4 »

tomhow wrote: post #197
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In light of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48728408 : you're appreciated and also it's okay to take breaks.

Thanks I guess but can you explain what you mean with any more clarity?

You advised someone against responding "Wtf", a few days ago, then responded "WTF" 2 days ago (which showed as "2 hours" due to the second-chance pool), which I interpreted as emotional distress; and I'd just seen someone else saying mean things about you, so I assumed you'd seen more of it. Taking into account the actual timestamps, this story I constructed is false. Beyond that, there's no real significance to my comment.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#199

Post by UranusDuzen »

nradov wrote: post #122
IAmGraydon wrote: post #82

That's funny - I had no idea it was actually banned in the first place. I live near a number of large military bases and hear the fighter jets break the sound barrier on a somewhat regular basis.

Are you sure you're actually hearing sonic booms? The low-bypass turbofan engines used on most current tactical aircraft are quite loud even in subsonic flight. F-35 and F/A-18 fighters overfly my house occasionally and while I don't mind the noise they're definitely much louder than airliners. They generally only go supersonic over designated training ranges away from heavily populated areas.

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