[HN Gopher] Singapore Airlines Concorde
___________________________________________________________________
Singapore Airlines Concorde
Author : qsi
Score : 179 points
Date : 2024-03-04 10:21 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mainlymiles.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mainlymiles.com)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Concorde's failure makes me very sad. I understand that the
| economics didn't stack up but it feels like we've given up trying
| to reach for the space age style future envisaged 70 years ago
| and instead are settling for "the same but a fraction nicer or a
| bit cheaper" in many areas.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The phenomenon that ultimately put down the Concorde is
| actually seen all the time everywhere in everyday life:
| Bleeding edge performance and tech is almost never economically
| practical, it's always the stuff well within the margins with
| room to spare that ultimately define the space.
|
| See for other examples: The 500 Kei Shinkansen, literally every
| Intel Core i9 and AMD Ryzen 9 CPU, sports and luxury cars,
| Boeing 747 "Queen of the Skies" Jumbo and Airbus A380, the
| Space Shuttle, the F-22 Raptor, and more.
|
| All very impressive pieces of tech and their achievements
| shouldn't be discounted, but all ultimately an interesting
| footnote in history as significantly more inferior and
| practical pieces of tech dominate.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Not forgetting the Apollo program.
| pavlov wrote:
| The 747 was manufactured for 50 years and over 1,500 of them
| were made. It's difficult to put it in the same category with
| Concorde and the Space Shuttle.
| noarchy wrote:
| The 747 still has demand as a cargo plane. I bet we see
| them flown for a long time to come, with most remaining
| passenger configs gradually being converted to cargo.
| hef19898 wrote:
| They do get replaced by (converted) B777s and cargo A350s
| so. The 747 still will have a place, especially for long
| and heavy loads so.
| haunter wrote:
| > literally every Intel Core i9
|
| But today's i9 is tomorrow's i7 and the i5 the day after
| tomorrow. So it has its place in the story
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Given they are sold every generation, they must be
| practical to enough people. There are quite a lot of
| multithreaded tasks that can use so many cores.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I haven't been keeping track lately, but these used to be
| "the i7, but squeeze out an extra 500MHz by adding another
| hundred watts", usually; has this changed?
| haunter wrote:
| Yeah pretty much that. They usually have the same amount
| of performance cores but there are more efficient cores
| and hence threads and on top of that they run on higher
| frequency too
|
| i7-14700K: 20 cores (8 performance, 12 efficient) 28
| threads 5.6 Ghz
|
| i9-14900K: 24 cores (8 performance, 16 efficient) 32
| threads 6 Ghz
|
| It's like ~10% performance difference
| aredox wrote:
| It was not just not economically practical: it wasn't
| practical.
|
| Yes, the flights were shorter, but between 9 hours cramped in
| a tight fuselage with little entertainment and 12 hours in a
| comfortable chair with headroom and entertainment, I would
| have taken the latter. There's a sweet spot abive the even
| more comfortable but vastly slower passenger liners, but
| Concorde was too extreme - and I guess the suborbital flights
| imagined by Musk are too far too.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| It is incredibly cramped inside. I stepped into one in
| Duxford museum and especially the windows are tiny, the
| looking at the curvature of the earth thing would have been
| pretty hard.
|
| https://external-preview.redd.it/K5Z9Kd7AkxJz-
| eQm5I97pZYIDTa...
| ghaff wrote:
| My dad traveled to the UK all the time through JFK. He got
| upgraded to the Concorde once and his reaction was that he
| actually preferred first class on a 747--and that was at a
| time with less comfortable seating than exists today. Very
| few people really benefit from the faster flight time,
| especially if it doesn't have the range to do trans-
| Pacific.
|
| As you say, ocean liners are mostly too slow for anyone who
| is working but I was surprised to learn recently that
| they're not necessarily much more expensive than a business
| class flight.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Comparing chips in this context doesn't work, especially with
| Ryzen, where, due to chiplets, the effect of yields on price
| is mitigated significantly.
|
| They're higher margin products, not products that cost so
| much to make that they'd have to be priced so high.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Concorde is in the "faster horse" category. It's a fair bit
| faster then regular planes at substantially increased cost, and
| it couldn't do long distances (max range 4143 miles), kind of
| removing the speed advantage where it would have really helped,
| i.e. very long trips.
|
| Suborbital spaceflight would be the ultimate: UK to Australia
| in an hour.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > UK to Australia in an hour.
|
| That would be an improvement, I guess, but Amdahl's law still
| says you're going to spend at least a day on the trip.
|
| Couple of hours to get to the airport, arriving to the
| airport three to four hours in advance to account for the
| variance in check-in, security, and immigration times and to
| get through the overpriced mall itself, then anywhere between
| ten minutes and over an hour for immigration and customs
| depending on what flights arrive at the same time, then
| something like half an hour waiting for your luggage unless
| you're very lucky, then again a couple of hours to get from
| the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
|
| I've seen very few efforts to reduce any of this over the
| last two decades, and basically none as far as the things
| happening inside the airport are concerned. (Well, OK,
| automated immigration checks are a thing, but if you are one
| of a flight of people ineligible for them, fuck you, here are
| one or two border control officers that every one of you will
| be funnelled through.)
|
| So while I can appreciate the idea of less miserable long-
| haul flights, I don't think "in an hour" is worth anything
| but a sad chuckle. And I haven't even accounted for the time
| you'll need to spend searching for prices and rearranging
| your schedule to work around the price discrimination
| machine. Air travel just sucks, and I don't think neat
| aerospace engineering alone can get around that.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Depends on where you are, but there are numerous attempts
| to reduce these things in Canada ,where I live, and the US
| has similar schemes.
|
| Check-in is now online, bag drop is automated, security is
| a breeze with Verified Traveller or PreCheck, immigration
| and customs are simplified with NEXUS/Global Entry/APEC,
| and airline status can get you priority baggage. I am often
| in the airport lounge within 15 minutes of arriving at the
| airport, with that all completed. Same with immigration.
| Plenty of countries offer concierge immigration schemes if
| you pay between $50 and $300.
|
| > Couple of hours to get to the airport
|
| You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the
| case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a
| city.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be
| the case,
|
| Nope, unless you mean "You have to be in a pretty sparse
| area for it to be that low".
|
| From North London, you should plan on more than 90
| minutes to get to Heathrow, regardless of which transport
| mode you choose. It's not because of sparseness or "far
| from a city" of the parts in-between, quite the opposite.
|
| Gatwick is worse.
|
| Stansted is slightly is better, but I'm seldom going
| somewhere that flies from Stansted.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| If you really need to get there quicker, there are a few
| companies offering motorcycle taxi services (where they
| ride and you ride pillion), which can make a big
| difference at times of busy traffic (though it does limit
| the amount of luggage you can bring).
| stephenr wrote:
| Probably also increases the need for a change of
| underwear in the carry on bag you now can't take with
| you.
| llm_trw wrote:
| The thing is that in the 90s it used to be 30 to 90
| minutes for getting on board an international flight.
| Much like Concord we decided that slower is better for
| some reason.
| ghaff wrote:
| 90 minutes is probably still comfortable time for an
| international flight in the US if you have Pre-Check. I
| don't like rushing so I'd probably give it a bit more
| time but usually things go pretty fast.
|
| That said, I agree with the basic point that
| transatlantic tends to be an all-day thing (or a red-eye)
| and shaving some hours off the flight itself doesn't
| really change that. (And even if it made it easier to get
| to continental Europe on a daytime flight from eastern
| US, that matters less with modern lie-flat seating.)
| logifail wrote:
| > immigration and customs are simplified
|
| If you're eligible, there are plenty of us who aren't.
|
| I waited well over two hours at JFK last month.
|
| > security is a breeze
|
| I never did work out why it's OK for aircraft to fly _in
| to_ US airspace with non-PreCheck passengers who 've not
| had to remove their shoes at security.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It's not OK to just fly in. Coming to the US you have to
| go through the special US pre-clearance zone that has
| extra security. You may not have to take off your shoes,
| but you often don't have to in the US either. Really
| depends on local screening requirements which are wildly
| inconsistent.
| ghaff wrote:
| That is not true in general. You pre-clear at certain
| airports but you typically just go through standard
| airport security.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yes, it depends on if the standard airport security meets
| US regulations for security. Many European and all
| Canadian airports do.
| logifail wrote:
| > Many European and all Canadian airports do
|
| Despite shoes not needing to be routinely removed at most
| (all?) European airports' security checkpoints?
| ghaff wrote:
| That's the main discrepancy which the US basically
| overlooks for non-US security procedures. (Though there's
| some seemingly arbitrary variance in electronics
| screening as well.)
| adastra22 wrote:
| Shoes being removed isn't required in the US either. I
| haven't had to do that in years. It's a per-airport
| thing.
| ghaff wrote:
| I thought that was still pretty normal. But I have pre-
| check so don't actually know.
| logifail wrote:
| > Coming to the US you have to go through the special US
| pre-clearance zone that has extra security
|
| This may once have been true but I don't believe it's the
| case any more, at least not at the major European hubs
| I've been to.
|
| There is no additional security screening if you fly
| British Airways to the USA out of LHR. This was no
| additional security at Frankfurt last month either.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It was the case just a year ago when I flew out of LHR.
| US flights were out of terminal 5 and a special pre
| clearance zone. I've been through Frankfurt's pre
| clearance as well. Maybe things have changed very
| recently? It flew under the radar if that's the case.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe? I've flown out of Europe to the US many many times
| and never encountered any special security measures.
| Certainly not LHR (Terminal 2 usually I think) and not
| Frankfurt just a few months ago.
| hef19898 wrote:
| If I take two extreme, Munich Airport Terminal 3 and the
| small local airport nearby, we have:
|
| MUC:
|
| - 10-20 minutes from parking to baggage drop off,
| depending on where ypu park, can be almost 30 minutes for
| the parking you ise for vacation (and not the close by
| ones you can put in your travell expenses)
|
| - 10 minutes, if you are unlucky a lot more, from baggage
| drop off until you pass security
|
| - another 10-15 minutes to get fr security to your gate
| at Terminal 3
|
| So, at the very least 30, in praxis more like 45 minutes,
| at the airport alone. And MUC is pretty well built and
| organized in that regard.
|
| The local airport so, which has no real commercial
| flihhts anymore, is at max. 15 minutes from parking to
| gate, all included.
| bombcar wrote:
| "Travel time to the airport, door to door" is often much
| more than just "driving over there" though that can often
| be the fastest - drive to the airport, park on the
| closest ramp, walk in.
|
| If you park at the discount ramps, you're usually adding
| at _least_ 15 minutes if not more. Transit adds
| _significantly_ more for most people, unless you have a
| train to the gate right outside your door.
|
| > Most people live a reasonable distance from a decent-
| sized airport. Half the people in the United States live
| within 17 miles of a decent-sized airport, and ninety
| percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an
| hours drive). Twenty-five percent of the population lives
| pretty darn close: less than 9 miles.
|
| From https://www.mark-pearson.com/airport-distances/ - he
| used any airport with more than 100k passengers a year,
| so it's not counting rinky-dinky commuter airports.
| ghaff wrote:
| >ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles
| (about an hours drive)
|
| An hour's drive :-) I'm closer than that to Logan in
| Boston and planning for 2 hours in the morning is not
| unreasonable at all. (And basically the car company I use
| won't let me plan for a lot less than that because they
| don't want to be on the hook if I miss my flight.)
| bombcar wrote:
| It's very interest the dynamics - the time and cost of
| almost _all_ options available to me, end up being quite
| close.
|
| Easiest for me is "drive myself and park at the closest
| ramp" but that's the most expensive _after a certain
| number of days_.
| ghaff wrote:
| Parking at Boston Logan is expensive even with Economy
| Parking (which I joke is in Canada); the airport is very
| close-in to the city. In my current job, no one has ever
| pushed back on me using a private car service and, if I'm
| traveling on my own, it's usually for long enough that
| the car service is at least breakeven relative to
| driving/parking.
|
| After a couple issues, e.g. arriving on a cold 10pm night
| to a flat tire I couldn't get off, I mostly just won't
| drive in any longer.
|
| There are a couple bus services from the burbs but I
| haven't really been motivated to check them out for
| years.
| bombcar wrote:
| Car service is almost always the way to go, I'm just
| outside normal "uber" range so if I want a ride _to_ the
| airport, car service it is.
|
| Bus is hell, especially with luggage.
|
| Abusing friendships is also a perfectly viable one,
| harder to get the company to reimburse ;)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be
| the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far
| from a city.
|
| Speaking from the center of Shanghai, it does indeed take
| a couple of hours to get to the airport by subway, though
| a taxi is more like one hour.
|
| Airports don't get sited in dense locations - they make a
| lot of noise - so I can't quite follow your logic. If you
| live in a city, it's going to take you a while to get to
| the airport.
| twic wrote:
| Pan-Amdahl's law?
| Arch-TK wrote:
| My usual experience flying between the UK and Europe and in
| three cases China was that 2 hours has always been
| sufficient before departure and that 1 hour is about the
| limit after landing.
| Horffupolde wrote:
| It's not about the mode but the max.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Why would it be about max? There are always going to be
| outliers in people's travel plans that make some aspect
| take longer than usual.
|
| If I decided that from now on, I'm only walking to and
| from airports rather than driving or taking transit, does
| my multi hour walk to the airport make it so that
| airplanes are now as slow as driving places and therefore
| not worth it for any domestic flying? No, that would of
| course be a ridiculous conclusion.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's really mode plus some standard deviation. Stuff can
| _always_ happen. And sometimes the flight could just be
| canceled. If I expect it to be 90 minutes to get to the
| airport, I 'm not going to assume it will take 4 hours
| because whatever even if if I'll miss one flight in my
| lifetime.
| Horffupolde wrote:
| Because not boarding the plane is much worse than waiting
| at the airport.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| I fly Texas to Florida pretty regularly for leisure with my
| kids. We all have clear/global entry. Our normal procedure
| is to pick 6-7AM flights with carryon only. This means
| leaving for the airport around 4 or 5. With a 2.5 hr flight
| that typically puts us out of the airport by 11 and
| generally starting our day by noon.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the way to go - and you can reduce luggage even
| further by "preshipping" via UPS or whatever, or if you
| travel to the same area often store stuff with
| friends/relatives/small storage unit.
|
| The other huge advantage with picking the early flights -
| if something goes wrong you'll get there later on a later
| flight almost always, so you can cut the times a bit
| closer and not be terribly worried.
|
| If you're on the last flight out that day, missing it is
| bad news.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That's an internal flight.
|
| Add some time for people + luggage to leave the UK, and
| to enter Australia. (There is time for both countries to
| inspect luggage even if we don't see them doing it.)
|
| Then add some more because the flight is much less
| regular and costs PS1000 rather than PS100, so missing it
| has a worse outcome.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| UK to Australia would be a huge improvement and would mean
| I am significantly more likely to go there. I already
| happily fly 2-3 hours across Europe without it taking up an
| entire day of travel (30 minutes to the airport arrive 2
| hours before, 2-3 on the plane and then 10 minutes from
| plane to taxi/train at the other end) vs the same + 20
| hours of flying and likely a stop over.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| > Amdahl's law still says you're going to spend at least a
| day on the trip.
|
| Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not flown from
| Sweden to the Netherlands for about 4 years now but used
| trains instead. The actual flight takes anywhere from 1.5
| hours to ~5 hours depending on the route taken (which in
| turn depends on pricing at the moment of booking). Getting
| to the airport from the farm takes more time, having to
| arrive there at least 1 but preferably 2 hours in advance
| to partake in the security theatre adds to that. Regular
| public transport does not stop at the airport although
| there are plenty of routes which pass it by at some
| distance, instead there is a specific airport bus which
| costs about 3 times what the normal bus costs. This is
| added to the normal public transport costs because that bus
| only starts from central station. Then there is the flight
| itself where they're trying their utmost best to nickel and
| dime passengers on everything from breathing space to the
| privilege of taking more than a change of underwear.
| Arriving in the Netherlands the trip from the airport to my
| final destination is a bit better arranged since there is a
| train station right underneath Schiphol Airport. But...
| going back via Schiphol has become quite tedious since they
| seem to have problems with their security theatre show,
| somehow the actors need a lot of time to play their parts
| which often leads to hour-long delays. Back in Sweden there
| is that whole special-bus-thing again to get to the place
| where I can take a train which brings me to the station
| from where it is a 3 km walk home. Total time taken ends up
| somewhere around 5 to 10 hours depending on flight time.
|
| The trip by train takes anywhere from ~13 hours to ~21
| hours, depending on schedule, route and (ever-present)
| delays in Germany. I leave early in the morning to walk to
| the station, take a train, move to the next one, repeat
| that 4-5 times and I'm at my destination. I can take as
| much luggage with me as I can carry which is a lot, if I
| feel like filling my backpack with Shukirkens or lethal
| nail clippers or $deity forbid more than 1 litre of liquids
| there is nobody bothering me, I get to have actual leg room
| and room to move those legs if I feel like it - you can
| walk quite a distance in some trains - plus a table and an
| outlet so I can hack away while going in more or less the
| right direction. There tends to be network connectivity in
| trains as well and if I end up on one where this does not
| work - which happens regularly - I can use my phone to get
| online. There's restaurants for those who want but I tend
| to bring my own. Delays sometimes mess up my schedule and I
| have spent hours in damp and dank tunnels under German
| stations during the hours of night when everything is
| closed and the only company to be had is the drunks who
| keep on coming by to beg for a euro 'to call their sick
| mother' but this, fortunately, is the exception rather than
| the rule. In short things are not perfect but...
|
| Traveling by train is like going on a journey while air
| travel has been turned into a chore. It might save me half
| a day but it gains me the same in time to
| work/relax/read/talk to other travellers/do nothing.
| NamTaf wrote:
| In my experience, your numbers are out for this particular
| example. It'd reduce it to _at most_ a day. You 're right
| that there's a few hours of faff at either end, though I
| don't believe it's nearly as long as you're cumulatively
| adding up. However, those things are dwarfed by the _24
| hours_ of in-air time it currently takes (sure, 17.5 if you
| want to go to Perth). That time in the plane is death for
| me, as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off
| extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold.
|
| I agree completely with you that the faff at either end
| needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time
| sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for
| those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting
| better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to
| pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be
| a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the
| UK and AU _most_ of the time. Combining a few things
| together - BA 's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids
| limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way
| to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-
| air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think
| it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying
| east-coast to west-coast AU.
|
| What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing
| a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No
| idea, honestly.
| ghaff wrote:
| >as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off
| extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-
| fold.
|
| Well, you can pay for lie-flat seating but obviously it's
| a big premium.
| bombcar wrote:
| If people really cared about it, there'd be long distance
| airlines that looked like submarine bunks -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVe_KaTGg8
|
| I'm not saying I'd _not_ take it as an option ...
| ghaff wrote:
| There are more luxurious options out there but something
| like United's Polaris seating is comfortable enough. Not
| saying I'd do trans-Pacific flights like that for the
| recreation but it's not painful in the way that economy
| (even with extra legroom) is. Mostly sitting/laying down
| for the better part of 24 hours is going to be a bit
| painful/boring however you slice it though.
|
| Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type
| arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I
| took something not that different from Beijing to
| Shanghai a number of years back.)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Getting tossed around in an airplane capsule during
| turbulence is not my idea of fun.
| leoedin wrote:
| Every time I sit through a hellish long distance flight I
| wonder the same thing. The closest anyone's got is Air
| New Zealand's Sky couch - which is a minor improvement on
| the status quo rather than a reimagining of it.
|
| There's been so much innovation in business class, but
| relatively little in economy over the last few decades.
| Is it because airlines are afraid of cannibalising their
| business seats? Or regulatory issues regarding non-
| standard seats?
|
| If anyone can figure out how to give me a lie flat bunk
| for the same weight and volume per passenger as economy
| (or even premium economy) they've got my business for
| eternity. Sitting down for 11 hours would feel like
| torture in comparison.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think the trick is it has to be able to "sit up" during
| takeoff, landing, etc.
|
| So they'd have to design something really complicated, or
| get the governments to change the rules.
| djbusby wrote:
| Plus, in SEA you can find the Business Fish in the
| walkway art of B-gates. Fun!
| KoftaBob wrote:
| > Couple of hours to get to the airport
|
| Since when does it take a couple of hours to get to the
| airport for the average traveler? That would only be the
| case for someone who lives in a very rural area far away
| from the nearest major airport.
|
| > arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance
|
| 3 hours is what's recommended for international flights,
| but even then thats a conservative recommendation to be
| safe. "3 to 4 hours" is quite excessive.
|
| > a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you
| actually want to be.
|
| Again, the average traveler is not traveling for a couple
| of hours to get from their destination airport to their
| final destination. I can't find the stats, but if I had to
| guess, the majority of travelers final destination is
| within an hour of the airport they land at.
|
| I definitely agree with you that all of these aspects of
| air travel need to be made much more efficient, but
| inflating these times just paints an inaccurate picture of
| the travel time benefits that supersonic travel brings.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Sounds like you don't hold TSA precheck/global entry. You
| might want to fix that.
| stephenr wrote:
| How exactly do you imagine TSA precheck will help on a
| flight between UK and Australia?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Suborbital spaceflight : UK to Australia in an hour
|
| Wait until the safety and security people do risk and threat
| assessments on that. Worst case is fairly close to a
| suborbital kinetic impact missile, aimed at the region of a
| major city from halfway around the globe, with less than an
| hour's notice.
| emchammer wrote:
| Somebody on here recently described Concorde as "peak boomer"
| which was a comment that changed my opinion about it. Yes, it
| hit some local maximum for what can be accomplished with
| protractors and a three-person crew on the flight deck. Sure,
| it brought Phil Collins to the US to perform a concert
| "before" his UK concert on the same day. It also rattled a
| lot of windows in its flight path. Right now, everybody else
| is wondering if they will be boarding a 737-"fuck it, we'll
| fix it in a software update"-MAX.
|
| If there are any decadent flights I'd like to take from
| seeing YouTube videos, it would be one on Etihad's "The
| Residence", but even that doesn't exist any longer.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Etihad's "The Residence", but even that doesn't exist any
| longer.
|
| This still exists. It is flown from London and New York to
| Abu Dhabi.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| "peak boomer" is a very effing nice pun on its sonic boom.
| mad props.
| logifail wrote:
| > UK to Australia in an hour
|
| Q: How much more would customers pay for this compared with -
| say - business class on the same route?
| komali2 wrote:
| If suborbital flight could be achieved via some combination
| of space elevators making it sustainable, sure, or some form
| of propulsion that doesn't consume one million pounds of
| fuel. Otherwise it's unsustainable, like most things about
| air travel today.
|
| So IMO the ultimate would be something more along the lines
| of zeppelins. A week from Taiwan to California isn't so bad
| if I get to spend the time relaxing in a way similar to how I
| do on a sleeper train. Plus, _airships_.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The marginal net energetic cost for two-stage rocket based
| suborbital transport (e.g. Starship) is about 4x a modern
| airplane. So about on par with the Concorde and within
| reach of first-class ticket pricing.
|
| If this is surprising, keep in mind that the rocket is only
| on for 8 minutes, and most of the flight is experiencing
| zero drag from being above the atmosphere.
| ghaff wrote:
| A week on an ocean liner is one thing. A week on the
| equivalent of a sleeper train with no real scenery seems
| like something else. That doesn't really feel like a it's
| the journey not the destination thing after the first day
| or two.
| loudmax wrote:
| YouTube channel Real Engineering released a video recently on
| aviation startup Hermeus, which is developing a ramjet
| ultimately intended for commercial air travel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyKtxsdI0z8
|
| The thumbnail is a bit click-bait, but the video itself has a
| lot of depth. They give Hermeus space to present itself in a
| very positive light. As a non-expert having watched the video,
| it does seem at least plausible that this company may yet
| succeed.
|
| They mention fuel costs in passing, but they don't talk about
| carbon emissions. That's probably fair, since carbon is a much
| broader issue than just aviation. It's probably more productive
| to focus on shutting down coal plants than stifling innovation
| in air travel. But it's worth bearing in mind that positive
| things like hypersonic air travel do have a cost.
| hef19898 wrote:
| What people _always_ underestimate is the amount of time, and
| money, it takes to get anything developed, built and
| certified in aerospace. And that is for even small
| modifications done on existing design by the major players.
| Starting from scratch, already a new design is hard enough
| not to talk about a new company, is even harder. Just
| timeline wise, realistically you talk about around 5 years
| for something new, start to finish. That 's millions upon
| millions for _existing_ companies, _if_ everything goes well.
| And hardly ever goes well, delays and tecjnical issues are
| common. Again, for proven tech don eby established companies.
|
| Something like a commercial ramjet engine developed by a
| start-up is not even the same solar system: there we talk,
| realistically, billions and closer to a decade, _if_ it works
| technically. And then you need a market for that engine,
| which means demand (doubtfull, but who knows) and more
| importantly, an _aircraft_. And the last bit again is aroubd
| a decade and another couple of billions.
|
| Engine and aircraft development can, and has, been done in
| parallel. It still takes longer so, as both development
| projects depend on each other, the A400M would be a recent
| example of that approach. If Hermeus doesn't have a
| development partner for the airframe, realistically, if
| everything (!) goes well, we talk about _at least_ 15-20
| years from now. Not sure if VC funding is the right model for
| stuff like this.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 5 years is pretty sort. Looking at A220, which I think took
| closer to 10 years. Which I think is realistic timeline for
| new modern design, not just modernising old one. A350 and
| 777X also show similar timelines... That is from planning
| to deliveries. And these are the players with experience
| building to specific segment of market...
|
| Throw in enough novel ideas and it might double...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Easily. And aerospace began to move _fast_ again since
| the A380, B777, B787, A350 and such. The decades before
| were a lot slower. At least now ypu don 't have to mix
| people pulled back from retirement with new grads to get
| a team that has the collective experience of a programm
| start to finish anymore.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Real Engineering always gets access to companies because he
| presents everybody in an overly positive light. He never
| actually does the negative stuff, except for company he
| doesn't get invited into.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > it feels like we've given up trying to reach for the space
| age style future envisaged 70 years ago
|
| We forget now that Concorde was a politically-motivated attempt
| to demonstrate that the UK and France were still relevant in
| the aerospace industry and the project itself was plagued with
| costly development inefficiencies due to the desire to split
| the work between the UK and French participants. E.g. working
| in both metric and imperial units. Building parts in multiple
| factories.
|
| The Soviet equivalent (Tu-144) crashed and burned at the Paris
| air show and never had any economic justification. The Boeing
| 2707 was cancelled before it even flew because of cost overruns
| following the failure of an abortive swing-wing design.
| Concorde itself only became profitable to operate when the govt
| wrote off the development costs in 1983 in a deal described as
| "among the most disastrous conducted by a government minister"
| [0].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#British_Airways_buys_...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Concorde was ine of the precusers of modern day Airbus so. As
| an aircraft, despite being gorgeous and an engineering
| marvel, it was kind of pointless, I agree.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Also, it only existed via extreme subsidizes. So working
| class French and UK people were subsidizing rich people
| farting in 1st class seats going mach 2.
|
| Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types when it
| was just a welfare flight for those who thought themselves
| too self-important to fly a few more hours between major far-
| away cities.
|
| 113 people died in 2000. It wasn't exactly the safest plane
| out there either.
|
| With teleconferencing and modern technology, the need for the
| business class to show up to far-away places should go down.
| But a lot of it is entitlement, that is to say, show up for a
| meeting then enjoy a free vacation while "working."
|
| Everything about the Concorde was corrupt if not classist. It
| was a mistake even if the engineering was impressive. Imagine
| if that money would instead have gone to public
| transportation. We'd have the Chunnel in the 70s instead of
| the 90s.
| ghaff wrote:
| Concorde was at least partly a remnant of people flying to
| London to close a deal over lunch and getting back to New
| York in time to tuck the kids in. I assume that sort of
| things is at least less common today.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| JFK-LHR is still one billion dollars in revenue for
| British Airways alone.
|
| The innovation that killed Concorde was the lie flat
| business seat. You could be cramped in the Concorde's
| leather bus seat for three hours, or you could save money
| and get a sleep in for six hours.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's still a huge route but it's also something you can
| do on a day flight. Heck, from Boston, I can fly to EWR
| and still be in London for a late dinner. I don't even
| need a lie-flat seat.
|
| The extra $4K or so in your pocket pays for a lot of
| reduced comfort for 10 or so hours.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Sure, but an economy seat is pretty irrelevant vs a
| business seat for someone who was in the market to drop
| above $10,000 on a Concorde seat anyways.
| switch007 wrote:
| Was there ever a timetable that permitted that kind of
| day trip, as they took off and landed in pretty civilized
| hours?
|
| A schedule I found was:
|
| BA002 dep JFK 08:30 -> arr LHR 17:15
|
| BA003 dep LHR 18.25 -> arr JFK 17:00
|
| Still, certainly allowed "oh crap, need to get to london
| to do some very important same day business (and return
| the next day)"
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types
|
| Not sure what 'free market' types you are talking about.
| Most 'free market' types I know were and are not in pro of
| such projects.
|
| > Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public
| transportation.
|
| I totally agree with you that money invested in high speed
| trains all over Europe would have been a far better
| investment. And you can support just as many jobs and you
| can do just as much research if you really want to.
|
| Britain at the time actually decided between Concrode and
| more practical single isle plane more like the 737. A
| workhorse type plan that you could at least make an
| argument about beyond creating jobs.
| mopsi wrote:
| The money DID go to public transportation. The cost of the
| Concorde program is peanuts compared to how much value was
| gained from it. Concorde brought many innovations such as
| its electric control system, which was developed further
| for the Airbus A300, and then reached its pinnacle in the
| Airbus A320. This tech tree is one of the cornerstones of
| unprecedented safety that modern airliners have brought to
| air travel, flying hundreds of millions of people every
| year without causing the loss of a single life, regardless
| of whether one is a self-important elitist or a regular
| schmuck on a 20 EUR flight to Ibiza.
|
| You can't just go out and buy such innovation. It's the
| natural by-product of relentless pursuit of borderline
| impossible goals.
| notahacker wrote:
| Most of Concorde's engineering innovations were tech tree
| dead ends though.
|
| The Concorde project was certainly good at fostering
| Anglo French cooperation in aerospace but it's difficult
| to imagine the counterfactual scenario where the
| cooperation is doomed to failure because the debut
| product is a commercially viable subsonic aircraft rather
| than a technically impressive aircraft that doesn't sell.
| Similarly, whilst some of the R&D investment in control
| systems did find it's way into the A300, the A320's
| digital fly by wire is a completely different system, and
| it's difficult to imagine the scenario where a nascent
| Airbus project doesn't consider fly by wire because they
| hadn't figured out delta wings or droop noses yet
| meekaaku wrote:
| But a lot of big technological developments hve political
| motivations, because governments are the first and biggest
| customer. Nuclear energy, internet, space race etc, have all
| been politically motivated, funded and supported.
| bell-cot wrote:
| True - but the actual development of complex and expensive
| technologies tends to happen far faster, cheaper, and more
| reliably when a government feels a burning need for Actual
| Working Technology ASAP. Vs. when the whole thing is some
| combination of political showboating and spreading pork to
| everyone who wants "their share" of government money.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Those aren't fair comparisons. Everything you listed was
| genuinely new and potentially revolutionary. The Concorde
| was 2x as fast as existing planes.
| dtagames wrote:
| Even more than a supersonic jet, Concorde was a successful
| attempt to create a homegrown European airspace industry. The
| aircraft itself was a pioneer in fly-by-wire technologies,
| which Airbus (the current name of the consortium that build
| Concorde) later commercialized, also at an initial loss. In
| this way, the entire business was kickstarted by the
| governments of Britain and France.
|
| The net result was a company that now outsells Boeing,
| especially in light of the latter's quality issues. Even
| though Concorde never made money (and never really could make
| money w/ the supersonic restrictions it had), I think it was
| still a win for the companies and countries involved.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > I think it was still a win for the companies and
| countries involved
|
| Agree, although I'd love to know how many of Concorde's
| backers were considering this long-game effect. I suspect
| that the Airbus of today would be seen as even more
| fantastic than a supersonic aircraft.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It was pretty fundamental. At the time commercial
| aviation was a different two horse race between Boeing
| and McDonnell-Douglass. The aviation industry in Europe
| was not doing well and those industries and their
| suppliers represented millions of jobs.
| panick21_ wrote:
| This kind of ignores the alternative reality. The idea that
| well if not Concorde then nothing else would have existed
| and whatever would have existed wouldn't have been
| 'European'.
|
| This isn't really true. If you look at the British case for
| example, there were alternative planes in development that
| asked for British funding. While those projects were
| British lead, they had specifically designed them to have
| suppliers all over Europe, including France.
|
| Now that plane could have been a failure or a success, we
| wont know. Looking at the design, it seems to have some
| potential.
|
| The French on the other hand might have invested their
| money in another kind of plane primarily from France but
| with supply chains outside of France as well.
|
| You could see something like Airbus emerging out of that
| too. Or maybe something that wasn't Airbus but like Airbus.
| Or a you could see a British lead company that has success
| in the narrow body world and later a French plane with
| success in the Wide-body world. Those could eventually
| merge.
|
| History could have gone many ways, and could have failed
| many ways. That we have Airbus now does track back to
| Concord, but is not true that its clear that without
| Concord we wouldn't have something Airbus like.
| switch007 wrote:
| > but is not true that its clear that without Concord we
| wouldn't have something Airbus like.
|
| Did the parent claim that? Bit of a strawman if not.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| Many politically motivated undertaking leave us better off.
| Modern day rocket engineers are literally working to get us
| to click on adverts. No I am not saying let's encourage
| politically motivated initiatives but not everything that
| costs a lot of money and doesn't necessarily workout is a bad
| thing. Look at how much was spent on Covid vaccine mandates.
| Now that was a waste of money and resources.
| eru wrote:
| The 'space age' was ahead of its time. And I don't mean that in
| a positive way: 'putting a clown on the moon' (to quote Tom
| Lehrer) was an enormously expensive project with 1960s
| technology for at best questionable utility. (Apart from
| winning a pissing contest with the Soviets.)
|
| Similar for the Concorde.
|
| Nowadays, we would be much better placed to put people in
| space. But fortunately we are perhaps wiser (or perhaps forced
| to be wiser against our own impulses), and are still not lining
| up to re-ignite manned space flight.
|
| I'm all for space exploration, but manned space exploration
| does not (yet?) make sense, and neither does space tourism so
| far.
| emchammer wrote:
| I disagree with that cynicism, though. I saw Apollo 11 three
| times when it came out, and I still get excited when I see
| the sense of purpose and detail in everybody involved. It was
| a singular event that occurred at this conflux of technology
| and hubris, like Christopher Columbus' landing. It took so
| long for everybody to sort out their feelings on what this
| meant, that _an entire subculture sprung up based on the idea
| that it was all faked by a contemporaneous sci-fi director_.
| It 's okay to appreciate those kinds of wins from time to
| time. And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to
| give to the Soviets.
| zabzonk wrote:
| not sure what this means - perhaps 13 rather than 11?
| emchammer wrote:
| No, Apollo 11 is a thrilling big-screen documentary about
| the successful moon landing, all original film without
| narration.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I kind of disagree. Yes the person on the moon wasn't that
| important but all the technology outside of the moonlander
| itself had nice utility.
|
| Its just that the US kind of messed up its space investment
| strategy. Instead of leveraging all the parts of Apollo it
| was systematically killed.
|
| Had the doubled down on Apollo and simply continued investing
| in the technology they could have done impressive things.
|
| The could have built a Saturn 1C as a workhorse rocket for
| the military and commercial. And then have the Saturn V as
| your super heavy for the occasional deep space probe, huge
| telescope or space station.
|
| The Apollo capsule could incrementally be made reusable and
| could continue to be used for LEO or occasional moon
| missions.
|
| During Apollo they were already deep in development on second
| generation version of the different components.
|
| This was not actually finically unsustainable, it was just
| financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle.
| And because a Saturn 1C wasn't considered, the military built
| itself up with Titan rockets instead.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Saturn 1B looks vaguely like Falcon 9 if you squint
| appropriately. The H-1 engine is in the same thrust class
| as the Merlin 1D (it just weighs twice as much).
|
| So, one can imagine the S1B evolving over the years into
| something like a F9, with the first stage being recovered.
|
| The idea of designing boosters to minimize cost rather than
| maximize performance also goes back to the late 60s. The
| biggest problem is government contractors have different
| incentive structures than SpaceX does.
| panick21_ wrote:
| It would really be the government driving to a unified
| architecture, making the apart commodity and create
| enough demand. It would need actual long term strategy.
| paxys wrote:
| It is more than "a bit" cheaper. Air travel would have
| continued to be reserved for the elite had there not been a
| decades-long effort to reduce costs. You can get a
| transcontinental round trip today for <$500 vs $10K minimum in
| the 70s.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure the differences are quite that stark--especially
| if you control for other factors. But I won't disagree that
| air travel is much more democratized today.
| zabzonk wrote:
| i loved concorde. i can remember them flying over my flat in
| south east london on their approach to heathrow in the early
| 1980s. beautiful.
| moystard wrote:
| I love the Concorde but it had the reputation of being noisy.
|
| Living in SE London, I find already some planes incredibly
| noisy, so cannot imagine what it must have been.
| zabzonk wrote:
| it was landing, so it wasn't much noisier than say a 747, but
| a bit noisier. or perhaps i was just used to it - my dad was
| an RAF vulcan captain (same olympus engines as concorde,
| minus reheat) and if you had a squadron of them taking off on
| QRA you learned the real meaning of noise!
| postexitus wrote:
| Had the honour of seeing Vulcan on its last flight. A
| majestic beast. All the respect to your dad and colleagues.
| martinclayton wrote:
| We used to live under the flightpath for the departures
| from Heathrow to the US, not far from Reading. The evening
| flights would go over, which you could feel in your body,
| then moments later catch the light of the setting sun as
| they headed west. It was quite inspiring.
|
| The Vulcan is (or was!) my favourite plane sound, beating
| out the Merlin-engined stuff and even Concorde. Four
| Olympus engines, plus the howl. Can't be bettered!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ARSE8jEHQ
| zabzonk wrote:
| glad you enjoyed the howl, but, sorry, it didn't have
| afterburner (reheat). i still probably prefer merlins -
| the BoB flight Lancaster flies over me here in Lincoln
| occasionally. and also the Red Arrows!
| martinclayton wrote:
| Doh! Indeed - edited. Nice of the 'arrows to not move far
| when they left Scampton.
| lucozade wrote:
| They flew over my house share in west London in the late 80s.
| Very pretty, bloody noisy.
| laborcontract wrote:
| This should be labeled (2021), as evidenced by the comments. This
| blog is doing a weird thing where it's re-dating old posts to
| today, presumably to try to trick Google into thinking that it's
| fresh content, for SEO purposes.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > Flight times between Singapore and London would be cut from 18
| hours on conventional aircraft at the time to just 10 hours.
|
| This is very interesting, because current Singapore-Heathrow
| direct flights are around 13 hours. I wouldn't pay first-class++
| fares for a 3-hour flight time reduction in a tiny, cramped cabin
| with worse pressurisation and ventilation than first class on
| modern A380s, B777s and A350s that currently ply the route.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Currently there are aircraft able to fly that distance without
| stopovers. That wasn't the case in 70s, including Concorde.
| Modern version of Concorde that would have the necessary range
| for that flight would do Heathrow to Singapore in 5-6 h.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Routing in the 1970s (and until at least 1992) would also
| likely have been far longer, with most Soviet and Eastern
| European airspace closed to Western flights.
|
| Whether the lack of non-stop service was on account of
| routing and range or of lack of sufficient travel demand I
| don't know.
|
| Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine, Russia,
| Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could see much
| of that not being advisable in the 1970s.
|
| <https://www.airportia.com/flight-img/7760680/sq308-sin-
| lhr-s...>
| eigenket wrote:
| Plenty of that isn't advisable now. I flew Frankfurt to
| Singapore at the end of 2022 and we flew over the south
| side of the Black Sea to avoid Ukrainian and Russian
| airspace. We also avoided Afghanistan and flew over Iran
| instead which slightly surprised me.
|
| Looks like London-Singapore flights do the same
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/sq305#3437e32f
| lxgr wrote:
| It's less the airlines being cautious (like they finally
| started being over Ukraine, but not until MH17): Russia
| has just closed their airspace to most Western airlines
| (and vice versa).
|
| This leads to sometimes quite extreme differences in
| travel times between two cities depending on whether a
| Western or e.g. Chinese airline are conducting the flight
| (e.g. London-Shanghai), since Chinese airlines can still
| overfly both Europe and Russia.
| eigenket wrote:
| Singapore Airlines (who I flew with) wasn't barred from
| Russian airspace but they have decided to voluntarily
| avoid it.
| eastbound wrote:
| Another thing into play are the airspace fees. It's a
| substantial income for Russia. It's possible that some
| airlines estimate that they are too high, just out of
| economic factors and not political factors.
|
| https://simpleflying.com/russia-overflight-charge-hike/
|
| They skyrocketed (pun intended) by 20% just in 2023,
| amount to $1.7bn and are justified by the radar and route
| operators, and by the ...security provided by the Russian
| army.
|
| After downing the MH317, many airlines avoided the
| Ukrainian airspace... in profit of the (unavoidable?)
| Russian one, further benefiting Russia for this horrible
| crime. Killing those people may even have provided more
| revenue to Russia.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Oh yes, a while ago the Chinese airline Air China wanted
| to fly from New York to Beijing over Russian airspace
| (the shortest path does involve Russian airspace) but the
| U.S. government prohibited them from doing that as a
| matter of fairness. The end result is that the Chinese
| airline had to operate a domestic flight from New York to
| Los Angeles in order to fly to Beijing.
| https://viewfromthewing.com/air-china-has-filed-to-fly-
| new-y...
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The end result is that the Chinese airline had to
| operate a domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles in
| order to fly to Beijing.
|
| This isn't unheard-of. Qantas does (or used to) do this
| as well, running SYD-LAX-JFK, for efficiency reasons.
|
| Cabotage laws prohibit 081/CCA from carrying any
| passengers on the domestic leg of that route except the
| ones that are booked on the international leg of the
| journey as well. So it's not like you can just book a
| flight with them domestically.
| lxgr wrote:
| This concept is called "freedoms of the air" in case
| anyone is curious about learning more:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air
| khuey wrote:
| That's clearly not the actual route aircraft are taking
| since it flies directly over the warzone in eastern
| Ukraine.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "Appears" is doing some heavy lifting in my comment, and
| was there for a reason.
|
| If you know of a more representational route I'd
| appreciate your sharing it. My previous link was based on
| a search for London-Singapore air routes.
|
| Hrm ... I suppose FlightAware or FlightRadar24 might show
| this, and yes, it does.
|
| BA21 seems to fly over Russia per FlightAware:
|
| <https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW21>
|
| SIA308 flies a more southerly route, crossing the Black
| Sea and Turkey rather than overlying Ukraine, and
| conspicuously avoiding Afghan airspace:
|
| <https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SIA308>
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > BA21 seems to fly over Russia per FlightAware:
|
| "ARRIVED OVER 11 YEARS AGO"
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Good call, I was relying on a search for flights and
| didn't check to see if that was current.
|
| BA11 seems to be among British Airways _current_ LHR-
| >SIN offerings. Here's yesterday's flight path, which
| largely resembles Singapore Airways. Flight time 13h15m.
|
| <https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW11/history/20
| 2403...>
| diggan wrote:
| > Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine,
| Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could
| see much of that not being advisable in the 1970s.
|
| When I flew from Helsinki, Finland to Hong Kong this
| summer, the plane avoided flying through Russian airspace,
| so not sure it's much better now than in the 70s, for some
| routes at least.
|
| "Avoiding Russian airspace: From a shortcut to a detour" -
| https://www.finnair.com/en/bluewings/world-of-
| finnair/avoidi...
|
| > On Monday 28 February 2022 Russia closed its airspace as
| a countermeasure to EU airspace closure. This meant many
| changes to Finnair's Asian services, as most of Finnair's
| flights between Europe and Asia have used the shortest,
| fastest, and most environmentally sound route over Russia.
| rixrax wrote:
| Given russias current trajectory with their war of genocide
| against Ukraine[0], it is not foreseeable that any western
| commercial airlines would be able to fly in their airspace
| for years to come[1].
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_
| inva...
| [1]https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1162659715/russian-53rd-
| anti-...
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's just marketing image some graphic designer made.
|
| For the actual current route, check the flight tracking
| services like this: https://planefinder.net/data/flight/SQ3
| 05/history/4-48720917
|
| So, it's UK->Belgium->Germany->Czechia->Austria->Hungary->R
| omania->Bulgaria->Turkey->Iran->Pakistan->India->Malaysia->
| Singapore
| ponector wrote:
| But Concorde was able to fly fast only over the uninhabited
| surface like ocean. And on the route from London to Singapore
| how much of that? A third?
| elevaet wrote:
| Only a small portion of the direct route flies over the
| Indian ocean, the rest is basically over land:
|
| https://www.airportia.com/flight-img/7760680/sq308-sin-
| lhr-s...
| amelius wrote:
| Is it more economical to carry all that weight in fuel versus
| having stopovers?
|
| Or is this a tradeoff of time versus climate, where time won?
| MR4D wrote:
| Refueling is very wasteful - that's why so many flights are
| direct today - because it's much cheaper.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm sure that's true although I don't know how the
| numbers pencil out. That said, people also much prefer
| non-stop flights because of time, hassle, and reduced
| likelihood of something going wrong.
| cycomanic wrote:
| That's not quite true AFAIK at least a couple of years
| ago the super long routes (18+h) were served in business
| class only because not enough customers wanted to do such
| a long flight in economy.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's mostly not true as far as I've seen because most
| trans-pacific flyers are not willing/able to spend
| thousands of additional $ to fly in business class.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's also riskier to do fuel stops en route. Most
| accidents happen on takeoff or landing.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Accidents, and maintenance - much maintenance is
| predicated on cycle times, i.e. how many take offs and
| landings (and others are based on operational hours).
| bombcar wrote:
| That becomes the main issue, the Concorde as it was had
| 26,400 gallons <=> 95,680 kgs of fuel, and would need
| _more_ than double that (likely) to do the flight in one go
| (bar major improvements to efficiency, and counting that
| more weight at takeoff needs more weight of fuel to fly
| that extra weight).
|
| A quick search says about 40 minutes to refuel a jet, so a
| stopover is going to add at _least_ an hour, probably more
| because they have to come out of supersonic, etc.
| amelius wrote:
| And how are these numbers in subsonic flights?
|
| A flight from London to Singapore. How much fuel would it
| need without stops, versus how much fuel in the least-
| fuel case (but more-stops case)?
| izacus wrote:
| One thing to take into account is that landing and taking
| off is very wasteful with fuel - jet engines use
| significantly more fuel when running in dense air and
| that doesn't include increased power for climbing.
|
| I'm sure there's someone who can plug in numbers into a
| flight planner here, I'm interested in actual numbers.
| amanda99 wrote:
| OK, sure, I plugged this into a sim flight planner
| (http://onlineflightplanner.org/). This is on a
| Dreamliner. Heathrow - Changi: 63933
| kgs Heathrow - Tehran: 26957 kgs
| Tehran - Changi: 39580 kgs
|
| So at least based on this it's not too much of a
| difference, only 4% more with a stop. (Tehran looked to
| be roughly in the middle on the flight plan between
| London and Singapore.)
| izacus wrote:
| Interesting, I'd expect it to be a larger difference
| considering how much the carriers avoid stopovers.
|
| Maybe the fees and organization of refueling tips the
| balance?
| bombcar wrote:
| Carriers don't want to do a stop unless they're
| offloading and onboarding passengers, so they'd rather
| run one flight to the intermediary, and another direct.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Is this also assuming the "modern Concorde" wouldn't do a
| sonic boom and could therefore fly supersonic over land?
| mbauman wrote:
| What _was_ the routing and speed? That was my very first
| question and the blog post doesn't really answer it. How much
| of the flight was supersonic? They talk about avoiding India
| for the BAH-SIN leg, and trouble over Saudi Arabia, but there's
| a lotta populated land between BAH-LHR. The flight listing says
| this: SIN-BAH: 3698 miles, 4 hrs 6 mins,
| Mach 2.02 cruising speed BAH-LHR: 3120 miles, 4 hrs 21
| mins, Mach 2.02 cruising speed
|
| Those numbers just don't make sense. That's 130 miles short of
| the great circle distance from SIN-BAH of 3935 miles. And then
| they talked about adding another 200 miles to go around India.
| So assuming the flight time itself is accurate, that leg should
| be: SIN-BAH: 4135 miles, 4 hrs 6 mins, Mach
| 1.3 average speed
|
| But how much of that time _could_ be spent at the listed
| cruising speed? Mach 2 will travel 4135 in miles in just over
| 2.5 hours! So we're looking at less than half the flight spent
| in supersonic -- and this is the leg that's mostly over the
| Indian Ocean.
|
| The BAH-LHR leg is even trickier.
|
| Anyhow, it's little wonder that a direct non-stop is near the
| Concorde's time with these restrictions and the refueling stop.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Those numbers just don't make sense. That's 130 miles short
| of the great circle distance from SIN-BAH of 3935 miles.
|
| In an aviation context, those are most likely nautical miles
| (equivalent to 1 minute of a degree in north-south direction,
| which is why 10,000 km (initially defined as the distance
| from the equator to the pole) is basically 5,400 NM (90
| degrees from the equator to the pole, times 60
| minutes/degree)) rather than statute miles, which are some
| certain number of yards and feet in that quaint customary
| system used still used by some people in the USA, Liberia,
| and Myanmar.
|
| Indeed, according to the interweb, the distance between
| Singapore (Singapore Changi Airport) and Manama (Bahrain
| International Airport) is 3935 miles / 6333 kilometers / 3420
| nautical miles.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah but you're talking about an aircraft that first flew 55
| years ago (almost to the day).
| hef19898 wrote:
| The cabin cross section wouldn't change so if the Concorde
| was designed today.
| gumby wrote:
| I was surprised that SQ was the only third party airline to have
| its livery on Concorde, as I saw plenty of pictures of Concordes
| with Braniff livery on on side.
|
| Well, I did remember correctly that the service operated from
| Dallas (to NY or Washington). Subsonic only, and with lots of
| crazy adaptation to fit the crazy laws, like changing the
| aircraft registration number on each flight.
|
| But all those pictures I saw were advertising drawings:
| https://www.heritageconcorde.com/braniff-airways-concorde-op...
| buildsjets wrote:
| Fly the carbonated airways:
| http://www.concordesst.com/history/events/pepsi.html
| gumby wrote:
| Wow! I don't remember that at all.
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| This page has some great stuff in it. Today I think about
| commercial airlines being so _optimized_ for efficiency in
| everything, I just can't imagine a US airline flying a Concorde
| overland at subsonic speeds. Assuming they flew Mach 0.95 then
| that's about at 25% speedup compared to today's subsonic cruise
| (0.78, although you might get faster than this if you're a big
| plane going a long distance, up in the low 0.80s). Also, the
| ticket prices they quote for that flight:
|
| > 1979 Feb - May one way - $154 - $169 /Sept - Oct one way -
| $194
|
| > 1980 Feb - one way - $227
|
| so more than $900 today to fly one way on a flight that today
| you can have for $40 one way on a budget carrier! I guess I
| don't mind the extra hour it takes on a 737 or A321.
|
| Although the more fair comparison would be to the competing
| prices at the time, not today's prices - any ticket was quite a
| bit more expensive in 1979-80, so that factors in.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I was surprised that SQ was the only third party airline to
| have its livery on Concorde, as I saw plenty of pictures of
| Concordes with Braniff livery on on side.
|
| "Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington
| Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit
| and cabin crews. During the domestic flights, the Braniff's
| registration numbers were affixed to the fuselage with
| temporary adhesive vinyl stickers. At Washington Dulles, the
| cockpit and cabin crews were replaced by ones from Air France
| and British Airways for the continued flight to Europe, and the
| temporary Braniff registration stickers were removed. This
| process was reversed after alighting in Washington Dulles from
| Europe for the domestic flights to Dallas-Fort Worth."
| ta1243 wrote:
| > Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington
| Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit
| and cabin crews
|
| Presumably own cockpit crew, but I had an instant vision of a
| replaceable cockpit module that was swapped out at Dulles.
|
| Operating as an American owned airline between Dallas and
| Washington allowed them to take Dallas-Washington passengers,
| rather than only Dallas-Europe passengers. This was essential
| for the economics of the flight to work. At the time BA and
| AF had 3rd and 4th freedoms, and possibly 5th, but were not
| allowed to fly passengers on solely domestic itineraries -- a
| process called "Cabotage".
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| How fast would Boom aero do LDN-Singapore?
| hef19898 wrote:
| If you start measuring today, now? Maybe, if they are extremely
| lucky, 15+ years?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-04 23:00 UTC)