61–70 of 78 posts
9/11 style terrorism was solved by reinforcing the cockpit doors. Everything else has been police state fear mongering.
He has good arguments (except for one) but history has mostly shown that it's not wise to say something can never happen. Now for what I feel was one of his bad arguments: "None of today's military aircraft are up to the job of intercepting it, and indeed, active radar can't even track it effectively—for that, you'd need something on the order of a cold war ballistic missile warning radar system, designed to provide…
Today, I can buy a ticket for about the same price as dinner for two, maybe three. Back in the day say the 50s and 60s it was only the elite who could purchase a ticket because the rates were so expensive. Then, bus travel ala Greyhound was the way to go for long distance travel before commercial airlines really became more affordable.
ADDENDUM: okay maybe a really nice dinner for two or three.
You can make a similar list about anything that doesn't exist yet. If it were easy, it probably would have been done. Eight years ago, you could have made an equivalent list about electric cars. Well, we have electric cars now and that situation is looking pretty good. Imagine you are an Elon-Musk-alike who wants to make fast air travel happen. Then this article isn't a list of why it's impossible, it is a list of pr…
Reminded of the Hamming quote: If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work. It's perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, `important problem' must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sen…
If something like the Sabre existed I can guarantee that high net-worth people in Europe/America with urgent business meetings (or a desire to maximise their holiday) in Australia would use it even if it meant needing to charter a helicopter to/from the space port to the centre of the city. Whether or not there would be enough demand to keep a regularly scheduled service going is another question. Stross is right when he says it's hard to see how it could compete with existing air transport options between shorter range locations (e.g. London - New York).
Sabre (or similar) would have advantages for New York (or London) to Beijing though, so, who knows, in another 10 or 20 years maybe there will be enough demand for a few well chosen scheduled routes. In any case, I don't buy the terrorism angle at all. The problem will be (as is often the case in commercial aviation) finding and pricing route(s) to produce a viable passenger yield. Tricky if the only routes that make sense are long-haul ones with a high density of frequent first class business flyers (that's a pretty small pool).
The first reason is "because terrorism". It's difficult to keep reading, because the logic the author follows does not fit with the title or point the author's trying to make. This is a largely list of reasons why sub-orbital airliners aren't already common; it's got baseline assumptions that technology will not rapidly improve, that airports will not innovate, that passenger demand is static, etc. I don't understand…
We may not see sub-orbital airliners for a long time, but those working on early analysis now can make a comfortable living on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not exactly a fact. In my view Concorde was killed by a 'perfect storm': changing market conditions, 9/11, that terrible crash in Paris. Together those three were what caused the towel to be thrown into the ring. Every time I visit Paris and I see it impaled on its stand it reminds me of a butterfly or something trying to escape. Such a sad image.
> It's not exactly a fact. Yeah, congress only banned SSTs and supersonic civilian flight right as concorde came online, that can't have had any impact on it.
It's no coincidence it's main routes (London->JFK, Paris ->JFK) are 90% over the Ocean.
If you actually managed to get long distance hypersonic routes (such as London->Sydney, or even London->Beijing, London->Tokyo, etc.) at a significant time reduction, I can see it working.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what the article points out (once you get through the OMG 911!!! crap) is that that's a very small target market. And scheduled commercial air travel generally doesn't serve tiny markets well because the demand is highly variable.
Busy routes, like NYC - London - Tokyo, will likely have enough traffic for a couple flights daily. The jet probably would not have to be as large as a Concorde was to be profitable.
Getting the size right is a problem I'm glad I don't have, but best not to make it too small or have too few flights bearing in mind your dollar development costs will be measured in 10s of billions.
Once we are talking about traveling to a destination and not simply going "straight" up and down, the costs, maintenance issues, safety requirements, development time, thermal management, mission management, guidance systems, etc., get within spitting distance of actually developing an orbital vehicle.
Future technology improvements and cost reductions cannot be ruled out, of course, but given the basic physics and what we know of the near future of aerospace technology, it seems a stretch (at least) to expect a profitable, safe point-to-point suborbital system to be a viable undertaking.
And once we are talking about orbital systems, where the cost and risk/reward equation at least seem to be more desirable and unrelated to point-to-point travel, the question of suborbital point-to-point fades into the background.