[HN Gopher] Time to end the speed limit in US airspace?
___________________________________________________________________
Time to end the speed limit in US airspace?
Author : danboarder
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-03-25 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elidourado.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elidourado.com)
| AlphaCharlie wrote:
| The faster the plane goes, the more fuel it consumes due to the
| drag increase by the square of the speed. In a world where fossil
| fuel is needed to fly airplanes and where oil is causing a
| destruction of the world we inhabit, it's dangerous to suggest we
| should make the flying industry polluting more than they already
| are.
|
| If anything we should look at the trade-off benefits of flying
| with the least amount of fuel consumption per passenger and miles
| flown. Flying faster than mach-1 to save time will be reserved to
| a small elite. How does it benefit the masses?
| raincole wrote:
| Maybe it should be replaced with a fuel-per-mile limit?
| sroussey wrote:
| Maybe fuel per passenger?
| panick21_ wrote:
| > The faster the plane goes, the more fuel it consumes due to
| the drag increase by the square of the speed.
|
| ... at the same altitude.
| mpweiher wrote:
| IIRC, that's what made jet planes possible in the first
| place. Jet turbines in general, and particularly the first
| ones, were horribly inefficient compared to props. However,
| they let you fly so much higher that it kind of canceled out.
|
| The turbofan engines of today mitigate this inefficiency by,
| in essence, strapping a big prop in front of the turbine,
| except we call it a fan.
| programmer_dude wrote:
| Turboprop is also a thing BTW.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I think it's called a fan and not a prop, because it's a
| fan and not a prop.
|
| Props employ lift like a wing. Fans are screws.
|
| It's really a spectrum where most props & fans actually
| posess at least a little of both properties, and there are
| some in the middle that had to simply be called propfans.
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh interesting.
|
| Looking it up, the Concorde flew at 60,000 ft, compared to
| normal planes at 30,000 ft.
|
| And atmospheric pressure at 60k ft is less than a quarter of
| what it is at 30k.
|
| Is it possible to fly twice the speed of a regular aircraft
| but without using that much more fuel, by flying higher? Or
| does the plane have to burn even more fuel to get up to that
| altitude and maintain lift in a thinner atmosphere?
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a balance. And the Concorde had to have weird stuff
| to get that high but yes - you can get better performance
| higher to a point.
| gallexme wrote:
| Not twice as much I think, but it's definitly more efficent
| to fly higher if it's in the efficent envelope of these
| engines , just alone cause winds up there are way way
| faster which can be very favorable, because of the Coriolis
| Effect
| klyrs wrote:
| Take it just a little further: why not ballistic flight?
| Sure, they call it the "vomit comet" for a reason but with
| the right marketing and some investment in gravol, I feel
| like the zero g portion of the flight should be a selling
| point.
| Retric wrote:
| Which is offset by the need to climb through 30,000 ft on
| the way to 60,000 ft.
|
| It turns out that higher cruising altitude isn't nearly as
| useful as atmospheric pressure might suggest. Aircraft end
| up optimized for their cruising altitude, but there's a lot
| of tradeoffs when targeting a higher altitude.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| One of the bits of trivia about the Concorde: It nominally
| flew at 60k feet, but a "cosmic radiation" sensor was
| added, and if went above some limit, they would descend to
| 47k feet or lower.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I haven't ever thought of cosmic radiation in that way
| before. It would be interesting to know more data on the
| rate of bit flips when flying at altitude.
|
| If I edit my photos on the flight home, am I more likely
| to corrupt my files with bit flips?
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I just imagined this as Nethack, where a pilot readout
| suddenly says, "Oh wow! Everything looks so cosmic!" and
| then everyone/everything in the cabin begins
| hallucinating.
| 57FkMytWjyFu wrote:
| Not sure the quotes are necessary. That's exactly what it
| was.
|
| "In the days when the supersonic transport was in active
| service, and cruising at between 60 and 68,000 feet, the
| estimated radiation received by the crew was 50-130
| mSv/yr. thus, obviously, as newer generations of aircraft
| cruise ever higher, by the time we reach altitudes above
| 60,000 feet, it is entirely possible that, especially
| with crews flying trans-Atlantic or transpolar routes,
| the acceptable maximum safe dose of radiation per year
| will be exceeded. In addition, these numbers do not take
| into account the possibility of pregnancy in female
| crewmembers. "
|
| See Van Allen Belts.
| zamnos wrote:
| Doesn't that also imply that it would be possible to fly a
| modified plane at the regular speed of a regular aircraft
| at that much higher altitude, and use way less fuel?
| Airlines' main cost driver is fuel, so it seems like they'd
| take advantage of that as much as possible.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| It's not that easy.
|
| If you go higher, the speed of sound decreases so you
| have to go slower to avoid going above the critical Mach
| number for your aircraft. Normal airliners have to stay
| quite a bit below Mach 1 to avoid any part of the airflow
| going supersonic, since that would create big issues like
| shock waves making the aircraft uncontrollable.
|
| But due to the air being really thin, you also have to go
| faster. Otherwise your wings will not generate enough
| lift to keep flying.
|
| At some point you cannot go faster and you cannot go
| slower, that effect is called Coffin Corner and limits
| how high a subsonic airliner could fly: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Coffin_corner_(aerodynamics)
| barelysapient wrote:
| I think that would require a different plane design since
| they'd have less lift at that altitude.
| davidw wrote:
| Seems like a good job for a carbon tax to change the economic
| calculations involved. Perhaps for some, the speed would be
| worth it, but they'd be paying for it.
| hanniabu wrote:
| The more credits they buy, the more expensive they should
| become
| mLuby wrote:
| Yes, because the carbon-emitting companies are having to
| buy those credits from carbon-reducing companies.
|
| The more demand there is, the more incentive there is for
| carbon-reducing companies to arise.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| This is a terrible argument because it presumes there are no
| uses of faster travel that are beneficial. The proper argument
| is for a carbon tax that captures the externalities caused by
| emitting carbon and then to let individuals decide if they want
| to pay that or not for whatever activity they are partaking in.
|
| Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant, what
| is relevant is that the use is worth more than the correctly
| priced cost of carbon
| aziaziazi wrote:
| What is relevant is the inhabitability of the earth, not who
| pays what.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant
|
| Why is that irrelevant? Must we permit everything that might
| be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of
| everyone else?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to
| someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else?
|
| If we can offset "the expense of everyone else" (in this
| case via a carbon tax), why not?
| thfuran wrote:
| Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air. All it
| does is ensure that only the rich have the right to fuck
| everyone else over. If the government committed to
| funding carbon capture at a rate of at least as much as
| they would've in the counterfactual where there was
| instead a ban plus the additional amount funded by the
| carbon tax revenue, taxing the externality would probably
| be adequate redress, but that isn't ever going to happen.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air
|
| Unless you use that tax to pay someone to clean the air?
| thfuran wrote:
| You have to both put the entirety of the tax towards it
| and ensure that the fact that you're funding it through
| the tax doesn't decrease the amount of additional funding
| you put towards it or else that decrease effectively
| decreases the tax rate (at least as far as carbon capture
| is concerned). The second part is harder than the first.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Because the problem with carbon is that the cost of
| emitting it is not reflected in the market price of the
| things emitting it. This is called an externality in
| economics. You fix the externality by taxing the carbon
| emission at a level that covers the externality. After that
| you let the much more efficient market sort out what emits
| and what doesn't because it does a far better job than than
| any grouping of hacker news commenters expressing what ever
| combination of the seven deadly sins you think makes them
| hate the most productive people in society. Markets work
| and envious, wrathful authoritarians don't. You just end up
| with another episode of great moments in unintended
| consequences going down that road.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Markets work and envious, wrathful authoritarians don't.
|
| So EPA, FDA, etc regulations should be replaced with fees
| for poisoning everyone rather than outright bans, because
| to desire freedom from such concerns is to be a jealous
| tyrant?
| avereveard wrote:
| How are fines from fda and epa different than fees?
| jltsiren wrote:
| If you want to tax something, you have to define it,
| measure it, and report it. You need a system for
| collecting the taxes, a system for enforcing the
| collection, and a system for validating that the reported
| numbers are correct. You will need more regulations and
| more bureaucracy than if you had simply banned it.
|
| Banning something is a solution that prevents some people
| from doing what they want. Taxing something is a solution
| that subjects a (potentially much) larger group of people
| to a reporting and tax burden and random inspections. If
| it's authoritarianism you are concerned about, you have
| to contrast the sizes of these groups and the potential
| harms from the banning and tax collection to determine
| which solution is worse.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That taxation system already exists for jet fuel. Nothing
| new needs to be added.
| pydry wrote:
| >The proper argument is for a carbon tax
|
| The proper argument is to get a carbon tax _first_ before
| unbanning anything like this.
|
| And it's not on the political horizon so....
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Carbon taxes (as they exist now) are a con. You just buy
| some carbon credits from some company that is supposedly
| carbon-negative, because it plants forests somewhere so
| obscure that nobody checks.
|
| And anyway, forests are _not_ carbon-negative; all that
| lives must die. They 're carbon-neutral.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Carbon tax != carbon credits. Carbon credits are part of
| emission trading approach. Carbon tax doesn't need
| credits cause uses money. Not being cheatable is one of
| the advantages of carbon tax.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| This seems like a pretty bad reason to want speed limits,
| because the thing you actually want to limit is fuel
| inefficiency. I think rules should normally try to achieve
| their goals through first-order effects rather than second
| order effects.
|
| I don't think wanting fuel efficiency is incompatible with
| getting rid of the speed limit rule.
| seventytwo wrote:
| If we had a robust carbon pollution tax, then this wouldn't be
| a problem. The emissions would be priced into the ticket, and
| we could all (theoretically) fly easy.
|
| The root of all this is really just that the pollution from
| fossil fuels needs to be paid for.
| verandaguy wrote:
| I strongly agree with your point, but I think some extra
| context is warranted.
|
| As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to
| optimise for reducing fuel consumption, since that's (by far)
| the biggest fraction of a commercial aircraft's operating cost.
|
| If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because the
| economics will make sense, which (in my mind) will be either
| because of:
|
| - Somehow reduced fuel consumption, potentially through engines
| that leverage the effects of the supersonic flight regime for
| increased fuel efficiency (e.g. ramjets, through that likely
| wouldn't be possible in low-supersonic flight)
|
| -> As another commenter in this thread mentioned, drag
| decreases with lower atmospheric pressure at higher altitudes,
| so there are fuel efficiency gains to be made just by flying
| higher, within the engines' design constraints.
|
| - It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets
| to skip highway traffic.
|
| There's likely more cases than just these, but these are just
| the greatest hits as far as I can tell; and I say all of that
| as someone who's not involved in the aviation industry.
|
| For the record, I don't support this second niche existing, but
| it does, and it can be an economic driver.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because
| the economics will make sense
|
| And not because it kills the planet less.
|
| [cue sad trombone]
| [deleted]
| Nextgrid wrote:
| You can offset environmental impact by excise-style taxes
| on the polluting activity that are used to subsidize
| environmentally-friendly processes elsewhere that would've
| otherwise used fossil fuels due to cost.
|
| It's not _perfect_ (as fossil fuels are still being burned)
| but it 's better than nothing and a much more realistic
| solution than some extremist ideas such as stopping using
| fossil fuels overnight and effectively shutting down the
| economy as a result.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| IIRC, with aviation fuel it's kind of complicated due to
| international treaties on taxation of fuel.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You could, but you could also maintain the status quo.
| Not everything needs a market based solution.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You can tax enough to remove 150% of the pollution. I'd
| call that much better than the status quo. And that's
| before we talk about the usefulness of funneling rich
| people money into technology research.
| htag wrote:
| > It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets
| to skip highway traffic.
|
| To skip highway traffic a richer-than-god person would use a
| helicopter. Private jets are used for further distances.
| AlphaCharlie wrote:
| That's a very eloquent way to put it, I agree to it all :)
| oliwarner wrote:
| Given the ecological cost, the economic balance has to be
| thumbed; taxed to the hilt to fund restorative programmes.
|
| Being absurdly rich shouldn't give you license to destroy the
| planet.
| CyanBird wrote:
| The second niche as a rule of thumb pollutes-more-than-God
| already(0)
|
| I am skeptical that lifting barriers to them polluting more
| would land any type of net benefit given that ultra-luxury
| products such as said jets don't tend to land outsized
| downstream advancements than let's say, funding basic
| sciences such as what Boeing or Airbus are already doing
|
| (0) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-
| emits-mi...
|
| If it could be proved that things like faster private jets or
| faster planes could benefit in a sizeable and proportionate
| way to the general public, then yeah I would be in favor of
| this too, but as it stands I don't find the available info
| compelling, I'd rather them to pay more taxes
| verandaguy wrote:
| You're preaching to the choir; human progress isn't
| proportional to the number of billionaires with fleets of
| Gulfstreams (or rather, if it is, there's almost certainly
| no causation there).
| aaomidi wrote:
| I'm constantly in pain about how much human ingenuity
| takes the back seat just to keep the wheels turning in
| lives. If we actually tried to meet most of the
| requirements for people, creative thinking would
| flourish.
| seventytwo wrote:
| 100%.
|
| I like to bring up the question of how many startups and
| how much innovation is stifled because people stay with
| their jobs because of the healthcare.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Isn't Europe evidence of the answer to this question?
| [deleted]
| bendbro wrote:
| > In a world
|
| > world we inhabit
|
| > dangerous to suggest
|
| > benefit the masses
|
| I hope "the masses" put you in a camp. You need to be
| reeducated until you stop writing like this.
|
| PS. The camp I'm referring to is administrated by a communist
| government, so your liberal sensibilities prevent you from
| downvoting this comment.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| [flagged]
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Bold claims such as man made climate change require bold
| evidence.
|
| Boy is it a good thing we have it then.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Would you mind sharing it?
| AlphaCharlie wrote:
| I'm going to assume you are not trolling and hope this
| will change your mind, but I am not sure what proof you
| expect will convince you. It's worth asking yourself
| before reading these what is the level of proof you
| require to be convinced, and then see if these are
| fulfilling your expectations.
|
| - from CalTech: https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topic
| s/sustainability/ev... - from NASA:
| https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ - from Cornell: https:
| //news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-ag...
| - from Columbia:
| https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/04/04/how-we-know-
| cli... - See statements from scientific organizations
| across the world (in case you the leading schools of the
| USA aren't convincing you): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Scientific_consensus_on_climat... - scientific journal:
| https://phys.org/news/2017-11-man-made-climate-
| proven.html - united nations: https://www.un.org/en/un-
| chronicle/climate-change-disasters-...
|
| I have not read this one in depth but maybe it will help
| change your mind on some misconceptions:
| https://skepticalscience.com/
|
| I'm happy to link similar studies from across the world
| if you speak other languages.
|
| I know for every link I send you, you will find an equal
| number of links from climate change deniers. Put please
| put in perspective the number of people on one side of
| this issue and the other: the overwhelming majority of
| scientists agree.
|
| And even if they are wrong, is it really that bad to try
| to burn less oil and make the air less polluted and our
| planet more hospitable?
| tormeh wrote:
| > The faster the plane goes, the more fuel it consumes due to
| the drag increase by the square of the speed
|
| This is not actually true. Drag is at max at around mach 1.
| After that it goes down again. If you go fast enough you can be
| very efficient.
| avereveard wrote:
| Drag goes back from the transonic peak but not below what was
| at subsonic speed.
|
| The gain comes from being able to fly in thinner air if the
| plan be is designed to survive the the transonic regime and
| supercuise, because mach speed becomes lower higher you fly
| and the air thinner, so lift available to subsonic planes is
| limited
| TylerE wrote:
| You can get around that by flying higher, where the air is
| thinner. This is easier if you faster.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Funnily enough the SR71 at Mach 3.5 had a better mpg than a
| Boeing 747 below Mach 1. It's kind of hard to compare apples to
| apples here - but at supersonic speed, different engine
| technology can be used with better fuel efficiency...
| [deleted]
| taeric wrote:
| You also have to compare getting to that speed. And, of
| course, the comparison is dead when done per passenger. Might
| as well compare a missile in there, or a drone.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Probably also because it flew much higher with less air
| density and drag.
| AlphaCharlie wrote:
| The SR71 was flying at a much higher altitude to achieve
| lower drag and fits 2 pilots, 0 commercial passengers.
|
| If you want to compare apples to apples, I suggest you refer
| to the 2 metrics I mentioned: - gallons of fuel per miles
| flown - fuel used per passenger
|
| One without the other is a useless comparison as you pointed
| out.
| looping__lui wrote:
| U miss the point entirely that supersonic planes work
| differently from "traditional" subsonic planes. Just
| assuming that "faster equals less fuel efficient" is not
| really correct. Turbofan engines are kind of draggy and not
| so fuel efficient close to Mach 1. Ramjets change your
| equation... :-)
| post-it wrote:
| A Ferrari probably has better fuel efficiency than a bus,
| yeah.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Are you optimizing for throughput or latency?
| looping__lui wrote:
| And I guess the brains behind a Ferrari enjoy their work
| more than engineers designing said bus. And Ferraris will
| attract more attention than a bus. Maybe some things are
| just unnecessary. Conquering the useless and doing
| unnecessary things is what keeps me sane and happy. But our
| mileage on that topic might vary.
| dsr_ wrote:
| True. An average city bus gets 7 mpg; an 812 Superfast gets
| 13mpg.
|
| The bus wins when carrying 3 or more passengers besides the
| driver. And in a city with dedicated bus lanes, the bus may
| win for route speed, too.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| Doing what? sat at 70mph, yeh probably. stop/starting
| chundling around town I guarantee not.
| tormeh wrote:
| Drag also works differently at supersonic speeds.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Funnily enough the SR71 at Mach 3.5 had a better mpg than a
| Boeing 747 below Mach 1.
|
| The SR-71 had a maximum takeoff weight of 140,000lbs.
|
| The 747 has a maximum takeoff weight of 735,000-910,000 lbs,
| depending on model.
|
| That helps quite a bit for the former using less fuel per
| mile.
| thfuran wrote:
| And a considerably higher percentage of the 747's weight is
| passenger/cargo as well.
| looping__lui wrote:
| [flagged]
| gleglegle wrote:
| Per passenger?
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| No.
| lfowles wrote:
| It also only carried 2...
| neilv wrote:
| For the convenience of the wealthy?
| omeysalvi wrote:
| "Let's create a nuisance for everyone so that billionaires can
| save 20% time in the air"
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No justification is given for ending the ban. Supersonic places
| are expensive enough that supersonic flight will be the exclusive
| domain of the wealthy for years.
|
| I'm okay with not having to deal with the booms if it means the
| wealthy are stuck flying the same speed as the rest of us.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| The obvious retort is that many modern conveniences began as
| expensive goods that we eventually figured out how to scale, or
| make more cheaply. It's not as obvious that this counter-
| argument is robust, given the known history that we have with
| the Concord3. But if the economic is won't work out, they won't
| work out.
|
| But I'm increasingly leery of arguments that imply the best way
| to achieve fairness is for everyone to have fewer nice things.
| And I say that as someone who thinks we should be taxing the
| wealthy at much higher rates than we do.
| a0zU wrote:
| Even disregarding the sonic boom, why would we even want mediocre
| civil pilots to have access to aircraft thag are necessarily more
| dangerous and more destructive in the event of a crash?
| avidiax wrote:
| Planes usually crash at takeoff and landing, hence supersonic
| or not doesn't matter for that case.
|
| Crashing at any other time, sure, there is potentially more
| energy in a supersonic plane. I doubt that people on the ground
| will know the difference between a plane crashing on them at
| 600mph vs 1200mph.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| What an amazing scientific experiment: "we flew a fighter jet
| over a Texas city to purposely annoy people, and asked how
| annoyed they were." Followed by: "only 17 people rated 'very
| annoyed' so that's a win." No mention of the number of people who
| put down any other annoyance level...
| hughw wrote:
| And annoyed people won't be able to like, move away from
| Galveston and get away from it. It's going to be over the whole
| country. Several times a day. I could see suicides rising.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I'm sure they also have an airtight statistical regression to
| determine how annoyed people will be when it's happening 30
| times a day!
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| In the NYC metro they have a capacity to launch 4200 flights
| a day, and to my understanding it's about 3000 in actuality.
| So! Enjoy!
| rickydroll wrote:
| While I don't worry about the impact of sonic booms on humans,
| and were concerned about the impact on the rest of the natural
| world.
|
| Like low-level sonic booms, light pollution was never considered
| to be a big issue but eventually crossed the threshold where it
| now has significant negative impact on animals insects and
| plants. My concern is that once little sonic booms become
| commonplace and we start noticing the impact on the natural
| world, there will be too much money in play to stop the damage.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00665-7
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627884/
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi8322
|
| [edit] just remembered another low-level fact that people did not
| think was important. Jet contrails significantly increase high-
| level cloud cover which alters weather patterns and holds more
| heat in the atmosphere. A simple change in flightpath by
| modifying altitude by couple thousand feet can eliminate 80% or
| more of cultural formation but the airlines won't do it because
| of the small amount of additional money it would cost.
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Isn't the real killer of supersonic commercial flights the
| inefficiency? You're using ~5x more fuel to have a flight that's
| ~2x faster. I suppose you can recoup the fuel cost with expensive
| tickets, but should we encourage even less efficient flights?
|
| https://theicct.org/new-supersonic-transport-aircraft-fuel-b...
| noja wrote:
| "..there is something decadent about putting a complete halt to
| the development of a key technology simply because a few
| otherwise harmless sonic booms might annoy a vocal minority."
|
| -> _benefit_ a minority?
| Awelton wrote:
| The low boom aircraft designs are something I haven't seen and
| are quite interesting. I have been under a few "non low boom"
| supersonics, and they rattle entire buildings and set off car
| alarms.
| danboarder wrote:
| "Fifty years ago today, on March 23, 1973, Alexander P.
| Butterfield, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation
| Administration, issued a rule that remains one of the most
| destructive acts of industrial vandalism in history. ... The rule
| imposed a speed limit on US airspace. Not a noise standard, which
| would make sense. A speed limit."
|
| Imagine how quiet hypersonic planes would be now if the rule had
| been a based on loudness instead of speed. I imagine getting from
| LA to NY in an an hour in near-silence... That would be awesome!
| fossuser wrote:
| Makes sense to focus on the actual issue (noise) and not speed.
|
| It'd be awesome to have supersonic commercial aircraft that were
| also quiet. I'm excited about YC's Boom and their overature
| plane, but it'd be so cool to able to fly coast to coast at
| supersonic speeds.
|
| Hopefully something like this can pass.
| [deleted]
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| This is unbelievably ignorant... the author literally linerally
| extrapolates the speed increases of early airliners to today and
| says "we could have 2500mph airliners if the FAA didn't stop us".
|
| If the author had done even cursory research, they would realize
| there are many reasons we don't have supersonic passenger
| aircraft, none of which have anything to do with government
| regulation. Start by reading this:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport
| frompdx wrote:
| _I'm struck by the fact that American economic growth went off
| the rails in 1973, the same year the overland ban on supersonic
| flight came into force._
|
| This seems like a hasty conclusion to make. There are plenty of
| things that correlate with the stagnation of economic growth. I'm
| aware the author goes on to say almost the same thing after
| making this statement, but it is clear the author is trying to
| offer the ban on supersonic flight over soil to be the cause of
| economic stagnation in America.
|
| _To borrow a term from Ross Douthat, there is something decadent
| about putting a complete halt to the development of a key
| technology simply because a few otherwise harmless sonic booms
| might annoy a vocal minority._
|
| I fail to see how there has been a complete halt on the
| development of supersonic technology. A ban on supersonic flight
| over US soil is not a ban on the development of the technology.
|
| _We need to get back to doing great things._
|
| Who says we aren't?
|
| _If we want growth--if we want greatness--it's time to make
| America boom again._
|
| I can't agree with the author's conclusion. Besides, they don't
| really make an effort in their article to tie the development of
| supersonic flight over land to economic growth. This is more of a
| "build it and they will come" conclusion. I don't buy it.
| macintux wrote:
| > A ban on supersonic flight over US soil is not a ban on the
| development of the technology.
|
| I am not defending the author's economic arguments, but this
| sentence is quite dubious.
|
| Who's going to spend millions (or billions) of dollars
| developing better supersonic technology when one of the most
| important markets is off-limits?
|
| (Edit: remove superfluous word.)
| frompdx wrote:
| _Who 's going to spend millions (or billions) of dollars
| developing better supersonic technology when one of the most
| important markets is off-limits?_
|
| Militaries, for one. But that doesn't mean supersonic flight
| is completely off limits to passenger flight. There used to
| be regular flights across the Atlantic at supersonic speeds
| operated by Air France and British Airways. The last one was
| in 2003. Did the Concorde program fail because they couldn't
| fly over the CONUS?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Isn't the whole problem with boom shaping that it requires a
| thinner fuselage meaning you transport even fewer people? I just
| don't see this being viable.
|
| Musk has talked for a long time about a supersonic jet that would
| fly higher and thus not be heard on the ground. However batteries
| would need to get quite a bit better still and it would be a
| massive expansive project.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I live on my sailboat near Cape Canaveral, FL. I hear sonic booms
| when SpaceX lands their Falcon9 back on the pad. 1) it's never at
| night, usually on weekends or evenings (thank you SpaceX!). 2)
| It's an awesome feeling but can leave the less healthy feeling a
| bit distraught. 3) Because they are able to land a stage 1 back
| at the pad, and that is a huge feat of engineering excellence,
| I'll allow it. So awesome!
|
| _edit_ my point is there are people that aren't as bothered by
| it as others and would like to see us do great things as a
| species
| lumb63 wrote:
| The glaring issue I see with this proposal is the author supposes
| that people who say that they could "live indefinitely with sonic
| booms" have all the facts needed to make that assessment and are
| correct, or that they want to live indefinitely with sonic booms.
|
| People could "live indefinitely" with ionizing radiation (and
| non-ionizing, I might add), but that does not mean it does not
| impact their health or wellbeing. There are detriments outside of
| the immediately obvious "loud noise bothers someone", such as
| property damage, ecological destruction, environmental concerns,
| health impacts, passenger safety, etc.
|
| I couldn't disagree more with this.
| thejenk wrote:
| > Not a noise standard, which would make sense. A speed limit.
|
| Is enforcing a perceived noise, or even a measured decibel limit
| on the ground even realistic? It would be difficult to
| investigate reported infractions unless they're consistently
| coming from a scheduled route, because the noise level on the
| ground depends on more than just the plane. "Supersonic jets that
| don't have a lot of headroom on the noise limits in a dry, flat
| desert shouldn't fly supersonic through this area because the the
| land underneath is shaped like a parabola and it's very humid."
| is much more difficult for a pilot to manage and a regulation
| body to enforce than "Don't fly faster than this airspeed."
| especially when the effect was the same back when the bill was
| introduced.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > issued a rule that remains one of the most destructive acts of
| industrial vandalism in history.
|
| Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth. Seriously, f this guy. I
| suppose he's in favor of letting us chuck all of our garbage out
| of open windows while we drive, too.
|
| I've heard sonic booms before at air shows, and it's not some
| quiet little "beep". They're loud and disturbing. As someone who
| values silence, hearing these frequently at any hour of the day
| would drive me insane.
|
| I don't doubt there is technology that can make booms quieter,
| but until it's 0, STFU. Sick of people arguing that creating
| technology for the benefit of a tiny few (as others have
| mentioned, supersonic travel will always be inherently more
| inefficient) is OK, the externalities on the rest of the populace
| be damned.
| yinser wrote:
| Tell me you didn't read the paragraph without saying you didn't
| read the paragraph. By your own admission the sound is the
| problem. The author states the rule should've been written
| around sound levels not speed levels. You are governed by
| emotions
| notahacker wrote:
| The author doesn't make a particularly good case for it
| though, because it's relatively straightforward to define
| whether an aircraft is or isn't exceeding Mach 1 (and even
| more straightforward to stay well below it), whereas decibel
| levels from a sonic boom depend on the position of the
| observer amongst other things, and what's "acceptable" is as
| the article discusses still a research problem. Non-US
| markets and airframers exist, a first generation Mach 1
| airliner existed and failed to gain traction, people worked
| on "low boom" supersonic airliner projects anyway, and if a
| working implementation didn't remain purely hypothetical,
| Congress is perfectly capable of amending a law.
|
| He also misses the _much bigger_ impediment to supersonic
| jets than a local rule in the US being fuel cost, most
| amusingly when he points out that 1973 was the beginning of a
| so-called Great Stagnation but somehow misses the oil embargo
| and the resulting fears over fuel prices affecting everything
| that decade, including killing the demand for Concorde in the
| rest of the world and changing airframers ' focus to fuel
| economy. I think when he's suggesting that only a "vocal
| minority" (which exceeded the number of people ever to have
| experienced the rich person's pleasure of supersonic flight)
| held us back from linear progress in commercial aviation
| speed so we'd all be flying around at Mach 4 by now, he's
| also being governed by emotions.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I did read it. Most of it was arguing "Hey, it's not that
| bad, we did some tests and only a few folks were really
| bothered about it, and some people are bothered by anything,
| so screw them!"
|
| If I decide to go live in the middle of nowhere for some
| solitude, I shouldn't have to defend my choices to enjoy that
| solitude as "you're just too sensitive!".
| yinser wrote:
| So you admit then that a speed limit was a poor rule and it
| should've been a sound rule and your vitriol was
| unjustified?
| fwlr wrote:
| "I've heard sonic booms before at air shows, and it's not some
| quiet little "beep". They're loud and disturbing."
|
| I highly doubt you've heard a sonic boom at an airshow, it's
| illegal to perform them and has been for a long time. A true
| sonic boom performed at low altitude at an airshow would blow
| out the eardrums of every attendant at the show and all the
| windows in every car in the parking lot. Only the military is
| allowed to cause them and only for very good reason. There was
| a recent case in the UK where fighter jets caused a sonic boom
| as they were scrambled to respond to a malfunctioning plane;
| the video is here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fGR96Zz0dXk and
| it had people from over 20km away calling the police to report
| that a bomb had gone off somewhere nearby.
|
| What you've heard at airshows is _close_ to a sonic boom, it's
| called "tickling the cone" and it's highly compressed but _not_
| collapsed sound waves. It resembles the regular roar of an
| airplane, but packed into a few seconds. Very different to a
| sonic boom, which sounds exactly like an explosion.
|
| (The practical upshot is this strengthens your argument.)
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Ok, and from the other side of things, I've never heard a sonic
| boom in my life. No idea how loud it is, or what the tradeoffs
| are. Shouldn't we get a say?
|
| More generally, bans on a technology "forever" just seem silly.
| It should at least be revisited every decade or so. A decade
| brings lots of advancement; maybe there's some clever way of
| minimizing the boom from a sonic boom now.
|
| Or maybe there isn't. But it's not nearly as clear cut as "if
| it's >0, ban it. No noise whatsoever!" Like... you've heard
| loud motorcycles. Why not argue for those to be banned too?
| sroussey wrote:
| A sonic boom is quite loud and will shake all the windows of
| every home across a state (though only a smaller section of
| the state if it is large like California).
|
| I have not heard them since the Space Shuttle was retired.
|
| I agree with the forever part in theory. However in politics
| (and law) if you leave a door slightly open, then people are
| incentivized to open it wide open and "get around" various
| rules.
|
| Permanent "for forever" laws and never that. They are forever
| until someone changes them. That's more binary and easier to
| reason about than "this sonic boom is better than that sonic
| boom so it's ok, and it the 1980s already so let's have at
| it!". You set some threshold number, then the politics is
| about the number not the booms themselves really.
|
| If technology has truly advanced enough, people will change
| the laws. Done.
|
| Now as an engineer, I prefer the threshold. But it's so much
| easier to change that. You start a company in 1980 and have
| so much better tech after 10 years in 1990, but it doesn't
| materially change things enough, so you shut down or try and
| change the threshold. What do you do?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Implying we have any control over the laws. :) It's
| lobbyists all the way down. Outsourcing our freedom to
| lobbyists seems like a bad idea in almost every case.
|
| "Just change the law" is usually not an easy proposal. One
| could argue that it shouldn't be. But technology advances
| much faster than the law, and having a lag time of decades
| doesn't seem optimal in most cases.
| lagadu wrote:
| You went to airshows where the show was being performed at
| airliner cruising altitude of 30-40k feet?
| drewg123 wrote:
| Did you actually read the article?
|
| He's proposing allowing sonic booms below certain decibel
| limits that are apparently below what any aircraft can achieve
| today. So your experience with airshow sonic booms is not
| directly relevant.
| sroussey wrote:
| Once that's a law, it's super easy to get politicians to
| alter that number a bit more your way every year. That won't
| make news or cause pushback that a binary decision makes.
|
| No, the better thing is to demonstrate the lower number as
| achievable first, then change the rules to go into
| production.
| yinser wrote:
| Are you a politician or want to qualify anything you just
| blabbered by showing FAA standards and the influence of
| elected officials on their rules?
| mastax wrote:
| Were those sonic booms from airplanes at cruising altitude, or
| from low flying jets showing off?
| eviks wrote:
| Non sonic boom noise from the airplanes > 0, ban them all?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| You only hear them if you live near an airport, and only if
| you're right under the landing approach or takeoff route. But
| not when they're cruising at 30,000ft, or even if you live
| within visual range of the airport but not under the
| takeoff/landing path.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The French used to fly Mirage jets over the sea near where
| my family used to go on seaside holidays - no airport
| anywhere near. I don't know what altitude they were flying
| at, but you could see them clearly - as long as you looked
| at the opposite side of the bay from where the sound came
| from.
|
| To be clear, they boomed, and it was loud and annoying.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Fwiw I was thinking of passenger jets, not military
| planes. I don't have a good sense of how loud or quiet
| the latter are.
| eviks wrote:
| So what? The 0 rule is more compassionate than you are, so
| it cares about the groups of people you mentioned too!
| Bloating wrote:
| Taxes! Raise Taxes! But, just raise that other guys taxes
|
| and, it needs to be cheaper
| jedberg wrote:
| I think a lot of people here are missing the author's point. It's
| not about letting people go faster per se. It's about the fact
| that the ban doesn't actually target the right thing.
|
| The purpose of the Mach 1+ ban is to reduce noise. But if the
| goal is to reduce noise, why not just set noise limits? We have
| the ability to measure noise, so if the goal is to reduce noise,
| set a limit on noise.
|
| Then let the airplane operators innovate however makes sense for
| their business. If you're worried about pollution (which is a
| good thing to worry about!) then there should be a separate fuel
| per mile limit or a carbon tax. Then they can innovate within
| both constraints.
|
| But the whole point is that the metric being used is wrong -- it
| should be noise output, not speed.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Author never stated what the current noise level is, but in my
| experience when I'm in the middle of nowhere and a jet passes
| over at cruising altitude, I pretty much can't hear it
|
| If this changes it so that this is no longer true, then no,
| screw this idea.
|
| Plus the reality is it would just be used by rich people to jet
| about, probably emitting much more c02 per mile.
| ccooffee wrote:
| This is a good summary of the author's point. In a historical
| context, it may be the case that the only useful way to enforce
| "quiet skies" was to put a speed limit, but that doesn't
| account for changes in technology that may enable quiet booms.
|
| Most commenters in this thread seem to take issue with the
| author's assumption that there is no other justification for a
| speed limit other than noise reduction.
|
| Honestly, I find the author's premise to be vaguely reasonable,
| but the whole thing is undermined by the god-awful chart which
| extrapolates historical aircraft speeds to imply that without
| the "speed limit" rule, we would have commercial aircraft
| crossing the Atlantic Ocean at 2500 mph. (Per wikipedia[0], the
| fastest manned aircraft in history, a SR-71 blackbird flight,
| capped out below 2200 mph.)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah this is a good point. The military was never capped by
| speed limits nor fuel costs or pollution limits. And even
| they didn't go faster than 2200mph as far as we know.
|
| Which either means there was no reason to figure out how to
| go faster, or they just couldn't do it. If the former, maybe
| with commercial pressures there would be a reason to go
| faster, but that's unlikely. And with the latter, well I'm
| not sure a commercial entity would out-innovate the military-
| industrial complex.
| hughw wrote:
| "as far as we know" -- they're famous though for trotting
| out the Blackbird and setting a new public speed record
| just exceeding whatever the Soviets had previously
| advertised.
| flerchin wrote:
| In any spot in the country, you can look up and see aircraft, or
| contrails, every day, all day. Unless near an airport, you
| generally do not hear them at all. Even with boom reduction
| technology, booms would be heard by everyone, everyday. This is
| _not cool_. The author makes a valid point that the restriction
| should be on the noise generated, not the speed, but even the
| mitigated booms would not pass a reasonable test.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| There is also the qualitative aspect.
|
| I live near an Air Force base that luckily doesn't do
| supersonic stuff.
|
| Constant white noise, even at a pretty high level is something
| that can be tuned out pretty easily.
|
| I'm not sure the same can be said of singular events like a
| sonic boom.
|
| I think of it like the difference between a lawnmower half a
| block away, and a subwoofer the same distance.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| It was never all about the noise, SST/Concorde failed on cost.
|
| Sure it would be cool to fly across the continent in 1/2 the
| time, but not at the expense of tens of millions of people having
| to know about it
| shpx wrote:
| > He was briefly startled but went back to fishing in under one
| second.
|
| This was laugh-out-loud funny to me, something a character on the
| Silicon Valley show would say.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Well I am old enough to remember the Sonic Booms. We would get a
| warning in the local newspaper (sometimes) and as kids we will
| watch outside waiting for the boom and try and find the plane. We
| lived fairly close to a base that would test these planes.
|
| But, some people's windows would crack and some would break due
| to the boom, which they had to pay for. So, if this limit is
| changed, will the aircraft owners pay people for their broken
| windows.
|
| Back then seeing a plane at any speed was not common event. Now
| you look up at just about any time of day and the chances are
| very good (like 90%+) you can find a plane.
| tpmx wrote:
| Can I ask; roughly speaking, how old are you? (Or rather: when
| was this?)
| [deleted]
| smolder wrote:
| This is pretty easy to deduce given GP was a kid in the time
| leading up to the 1973 rule.
| lambdaba wrote:
| GPT-4:
|
| > It is difficult to pinpoint the exact age of the person,
| but we can make an educated guess. The individual is
| discussing sonic booms and mentions that, as a child, they
| lived near a base where planes were being tested.
| Supersonic flight testing and sonic booms were more common
| during the 1960s and 1970s. If the person was a child
| during that time, they could be in their 50s or 60s, or
| possibly older. However, without more specific information,
| it is not possible to determine their precise age.
|
| Nothing extraordinary, probably because we've gotten so
| used to it so quickly ;).
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| Oof. I really hope we aren't moving towards a world where
| people start to copy/paste verbose AI-generated
| paragraphs without checking the results. Especially not
| to answer simple questions like, "about how old is
| someone who was a child 50+ years ago?"
|
| The AI's guess is off by about a decade. If GP remembers
| multiple booms, they were probably at least 10 by the
| 1973 ban. Most people can't recall memories back to the
| moment of their birth, but LLMs often ignore nuanced
| contextual facts like that. Or maybe this is another case
| of the model living a few years in the past, since
| there's a lag in being trained on new data.
|
| Who knows, but I am troubled that its incorrect answer
| was so readily accepted. This is not an important
| question, but it would have been easy to double-check.
| This comment may be a grim portent of things to come, if
| people continue to trust these models so implicitly.
| jmclnx wrote:
| As someone said I am a "sonic boomer" :)
| tpmx wrote:
| Thanks! :)
| Y_Y wrote:
| Ok, sonic boomer
| davidw wrote:
| I don't really care much one way or the other, but the article
| does address this.
|
| The actual externality is the noise/pressure wave, not the
| speed. It makes sense to regulate as close to externalities as
| possible, rather than banning sort of related upstream things.
|
| In other words, if they can do supersonic without booms that
| cause problems, go for it. If they're unable to, well, then
| they keep flying so as to not produce them.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I saw that, I find that hard to believe unless they are
| flying extremely high. I think height was also mentioned.
|
| But doesn't flying that high damage the ozone or something ?
| I thought that was one of the many reasons the concord was
| stopped (Yes, I know the real reason was financial). If so,
| many planes flying that high could cause other issues.
|
| But some people will see if this happens.
| Y_Y wrote:
| What an unusually sane point.
| wrigby wrote:
| I can only assume you're being downvoted because folks are
| thinking that you can't go supersonic without making a boom.
| While this may be true, it doesn't change the fact that you
| make a good point - regulation should be made as close to
| externalities as possible. If it makes the upstream thing
| impossible, then fine, but let's actually regulate what we
| want to regulate.
| wingspar wrote:
| Yes. Experienced numerous Space Shuttle sonic booms. For me
| they weren't problematic like broken windows. But would wake
| you up. I also remember waiting for the sonic boom from
| Columbia, which never came..
| brycewray wrote:
| Am in north Texas. That morning, I was watching NASA TV's
| coverage of what should've been the mission's safe ending,
| and heard multiple sonic booms, closely spaced. This was soon
| after Houston had lost comms with Columbia following the
| warnings about weird sensor readings, and I said to myself,
| "That's weird. That sounds like what a shuttle does when
| it's--" . . . and then I stopped, as I slowly began to
| realize there might be a terrible reason _why_ Houston had
| lost contact.
| Procrastes wrote:
| My wife used to live on Edward's Air Force Base which has been
| a reserved sonic boom corridor all along. Just some learnings
| for that lifestyle. Don't keep fragile things on narrow shelves
| and you have to glue the bottom of every picture to the wall.
| Don't have dogs or get them a xanax prescription. Cat's don't
| care. It's not (always) an earthquake when the glass rattles.
| And you get used to all of it.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| if that restriction is lifted then the sonic boom is going to be
| the next status symbol of the top .1%ers.
|
| also - can someone give a tl;dr why that guy is so passionate
| about that to begin with?
|
| > I'm struck by the fact that American economic growth went off
| the rails in 1973, the same year the overland ban on supersonic
| flight came into force.
|
| seems like is onto something ...
|
| > The speed limit cannot be responsible for the entirety of the
| Great Stagnation, of course.
|
| oh, really, no kidding?
| verandaguy wrote:
| This article comes off as _very_ optimistic, to the point of
| making some really bad assumptions and misrepresenting data.
|
| The bit about sitting in a sonic boom simulator chamber is just
| silly -- the author's subjective opinion about the loudness of a
| sonic boom has no bearing on reality, and fails to factor in that
| sonic booms during e.g. Bongo II (1964) shattered windows not
| because of the sheer volume of the sonic booms, but because this
| pressure wave would strike the large surface area of a window
| nearly all at once, putting a fair amount of energy into it in
| doing so.
|
| Almost as silly is the line extrapolating speed trends in
| commercial aviation over time; it reads like xkcd#605. It
| completely ignores the different regimes of high-speed flight and
| the limitations posed by it. 2,500mph is roughly Mach 3.2 at sea
| level, or nearly 3.8 at 60,000ft. At Mach 2, you need to start
| seriously considering thermal issues caused by friction related
| to parasitic drag and the paint/coating of the aircraft; at Mach
| 3, these become primary design constraints, and active cooling
| systems have to be deeply integrated into the airframe. This is
| to say nothing of the exotic engine design decisions that have to
| be made in these regimes.
|
| Much north of Mach 4, transporting any useful load becomes
| borderline impractical in-atmosphere with current technology.
|
| Ignoring fuel economy issues since I brought this up in a
| separate comment: since the introduction of the Concorde, the
| major focuses of aviation development have been on safety,
| reliability, and automation (all of which are strongly linked).
| "We live in the safest era of aviation in history" is an
| evergreen statement thanks to those advancements, and aviation
| incidents -- while tragic and unfortunately not completely
| eliminated yet -- claim fewer lives with each passing year (as a
| proportion of passenger-miles travelled).
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