[HN Gopher] Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
___________________________________________________________________
Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
Author : noleary
Score : 84 points
Date : 2026-01-06 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com)
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I just don't see any pressing need for supersonic jet travel now
| that in-flight Wi-Fi, hi-res HMDs for your laptop and the
| Nintendo Switch all exist. And I think that trying to justify it
| in terms of "we have to end the stagnation and go back to a
| regime where plane speeds increase YoY" is silly: either it
| provides a compelling service for its high cost (there's no
| getting around that air drag and fuel consumption increases
| quadratically with speed) or it doesn't, and personally I don't
| think it will.
| bombcar wrote:
| There is such a huge market of ways to improve flights that are
| between "what we have now" and "high price supersonic" that
| aren't currently being done; indicating that there's not a
| terribly large market for it.
|
| Those who could easily afford supersonic can already afford
| other luxuries; the only one it gives is time; but if time is
| of the essence you can save it elsewhere by chartering your own
| jet.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > chartering your own jet
|
| Honestly, this seems like _the_ place to start with
| supersonic technology. The very wealthy are price-insensitive
| and would be ok paying 3-4x as much to get somewhere 2x
| faster. A good place to prove the technology, infrastructure,
| and market opportunity before cost-optimizing to try to get
| interest from mass-market travellers.
| jsrozner wrote:
| a good reason to tax the wealthy so hard that they can't
| own private jets <3
| bombcar wrote:
| The thing is, if you can charter your own jet, you can make
| it travel on _your_ schedule and suddenly cutting travel
| time in half isn 't quite as important (even rich people
| sleep sometime).
|
| It's a weird niche that is unlikely to be filled for
| awhile, if ever - partially because the era of the
| supersonic jet was _before_ the Internet, which now gives
| even normies telepresence that is "good enough" if not
| perfect.
| kibwen wrote:
| There's a powerful and outspoken modern cult that worships
| technological progress, but only for values of "progress" that
| meet a certain wow-factor/"shininess" threshold.
|
| The idea that such progress could ever falter is anathema to
| such a cohort (which, in their defense, have lived their whole
| lives in the most technologically anomalous period of the
| entirety of human history), making them susceptible to scams
| like Boom.
|
| Instead, I'd implore people to consider that true progress is
| the ability to do more with less, and not merely the ability to
| do more with more.
| andrepd wrote:
| Would expect nothing less from someone self-styling as
| "rational optimist".
| mlinhares wrote:
| Because these are not solutions, they're just fluff. If they
| were actual solutions these people would kill them because
| they'd diminish the power their real overlords have.
|
| Just look at the whole circus around the hyperloop instead of
| just building high speed trains.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Instead, I 'd implore people to consider that true
| progress is the ability to do more with less, and not merely
| the ability to do more with more._
|
| Being able to do more with less is equivalent to being able
| to do much more with only little more.
| melling wrote:
| " Blake's pitch to airlines is enticing: "You're already flying
| this route with a 300-seat plane where 80+ people in business
| class generate most of your profit. Give those passengers a
| supersonic plane, cut the flight time in half, and charge the
| same price."
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| It's been a while since I've flown. Are ~20% of seats really
| business class?
| jsrozner wrote:
| Look at a 777-300 on [United](https://www.united.com/en/us/
| fly/company/aircraft/boeing-777...) - 60/290 biz/econ
| (~20%), but the biz seats take up probably 40% of the
| plane.
|
| Estimate 4k for one-way biz ticket and 500 for economy,
| then that's about 240k from the front and 145k from the
| back. Actually, I'd expect them to optimize based on space,
| so if 40% of the plane is biz, then 40% of revenue should
| come from biz. Perhaps the most profitable routes with this
| config are 60% revenue from biz; other routes might be more
| like 2.5k-3k one-way biz.
| VLM wrote:
| Also by no longer providing service to non-business class
| customers they save a lot of money on personnel, services,
| logistics.
|
| Of course the disadvantage, is no more air service for non-
| business class customers (that being most of us).
| rtkwe wrote:
| The math doesn't scan out on that, it sounds good for pitches
| and articles but is kind of nonsense once you think about it
| imo. It's going to cost way more than just 2x to run the
| supersonic jet along the same route per flight just in fuel
| and maintenance and you're cutting out all the low fare
| passengers they cram in the back so they need to make up even
| more money than just the fuel costs and running additional
| flights per day doesn't address the issue because the cost
| per trip is increasing so running more trips just keeps
| incurring those same costs.
| avidiax wrote:
| It won't change the economics of the current class of
| aircraft. They will still need to have business class seats
| to pay for the economy cabin.
|
| You will probably end up with 5 or 6 tiers of service
| instead:
|
| Supersonic: Business + First
|
| Subsonic: Economy + Eco+ + Business + First
|
| Supersonic First will be a Veblen good that has a high
| price floor (like $30k). Business for time sensitive
| business passengers, and it's actually an Economy Plus seat
| for ~$15k.
|
| It's very hard to resist marketing some service
| differences, particularly when you have two classes of
| users with different needs (speed vs. prestige).
| rtkwe wrote:
| The pitch from the post I was responding to essentially
| said it was going to siphon all the business class fliers
| from normal flights: "Give those passengers a supersonic
| plane, cut the flight time in half, and charge the same
| price." There's no way businesss travellers would choose
| subsonic travel if supersonice was the same price for
| half the time.
|
| We agree there wouldn't be a similar price between the
| sub and supersonic travel options.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| > Give those passengers a supersonic plane
|
| Meaning a big price increase for us normal passengers?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Even with those conveniences IMO that only dulls the tedium of
| the flight and no matter how comfy the travel is I'm still
| losing about a whole day at least of just flying across the
| Atlantic going from the US to Europe and back for a vacation
| which is pretty valuable with US leave allowances. At the very
| least there's the market for business travel where workers
| don't lose whole days to travel.
| strange_quark wrote:
| In the age of ubiquitous video conferencing, does it really
| make sense for business travel?
| rtkwe wrote:
| My work just did a big moderately disruptive shuffling of
| all the teams to try to localize as many members of each
| squad as possible in one location and the trend since COVID
| stopped being as deadly has been a massive wave of RTO so
| management seems to believe there's benefit in in person
| meetings or at least professes and acts like they do. I
| can't assign all of the huge RTO pushes to just management
| justifying and propping up their office real estate
| portfolios.
| strange_quark wrote:
| Sure, business travel is definitely still a thing. But
| every company I've ever worked at has sort of accepted
| that travel days are lost anyways because people come in
| from all over the country, get in at different times,
| have delayed flights, etc. My point being that I'm
| skeptical that companies are going to start paying 2x,
| 3x, 4x the cost so that their employees can get there a
| few hours faster, especially when, at least in my
| experience, it's hard to get them to even pay for seats
| with extra legroom.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| And also the negative externalities. Plane noise is irritating,
| sonic booms are far worse and spread farther.
| randerson wrote:
| IMHO digital entertainment doesn't make up for being stuck in a
| cramped cabin for up to 19 hours (the longest international
| flight) around people (with varying levels of considerateness,
| contagiousness, and personal hygiene). Not to mention the
| increased risks of DVT and radiation exposure.
|
| I travel each year to see family abroad, a minimum 2-leg trip
| totaling at least 27 hours. I can't sleep on planes so I arrive
| exhausted and am useless and cranky for the first 2 days after
| this trip. I would happily pay 2x the fare to cut that trip in
| half.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Deep Vein Thrombosis?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| If you're flying half-way around the world, sleeping on the
| plane or a shorter flight isn't going to help much. I've done
| it twice and the jet lag is killer for the first 2-3 days
| regardless of how well you sleep on the plane (I usually
| sleep very well).
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| If you can afford supersonic travel, then you could also
| afford first class. And supersonic travel will probably be
| like flying economy. The concord was pretty crammed compared
| to today's first class.
| eleventyseven wrote:
| > I
|
| You are not the only consumer of air travel. Supersonic is not
| for you, it is for elites willing to spend 4x the ticket price
| for half the flight time. Concorde tickets were $6000 for D.C.
| to London in the mid 1990s, so about $12,500 today, and that
| was for an economy-style seat. It was very popular among a
| certain segment.
|
| East Coast US to Europe in 3-4 hours versus 7-8, West Coast US
| to Asia in 5-6 hours versus 10-12.... makes it more like a
| domestic flight.
| ghaff wrote:
| My dad got upgraded to a Concorde once (for reasons I don't
| know) from First Class on (I assume) Pan Am. His reaction was
| basically meh. Got into London at rush hour and he really
| wasn't that impressed.
| cromulent wrote:
| > "Supersonic 2.0," where anyone can catch a quick, affordable
| supersonic flight almost anywhere on earth.
|
| There is a proven middle ground, where you can pay the current
| price or x the price for 2x the speed.
| mrec wrote:
| This was the bit that caught my eye:
|
| > Blake's pitch to airlines is enticing: "You're already flying
| this route with a 300-seat plane where 80+ people in business
| class generate most of your profit. Give those passengers a
| supersonic plane, cut the flight time in half, and charge the
| same price."
|
| And now most of the profit for the 300-seater is gone. What
| does this do to flight pricing for those who were flying
| economy?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Yup, it's a bad pitch. Let's say the economy airplane without
| the business seats can now accommodate 400 economy seats. You
| now need two air crews and twice as much maintenance (or
| more) to transport 480 people (~60% increase) with a smaller
| percentage of those passengers being business class fares.
|
| What really kills this though is the value proposition for
| the business class passengers. I think I'd rather pay extra
| to sit in a comfortable seat for 16 hours, where wifi is now
| a standard feature, than cram into a smaller (likely noisier)
| seat for 8 hours. The cases where that 8 hours matters -
| especially when you can work _from the seat_ if you have to -
| are fleetingly few. In the 70s, you couldn 't do much in an
| airplane seat so it was wasted time. This is no longer the
| case and is steadily getting better.
| fragmede wrote:
| Depends on how well the wifi actually works. I flew
| Lufthansa from Europe to the US and paid for wifi that
| didn't actually work of most of the flight. If I could have
| just gotten there quicker, I would have paid for that
| instead.
| fragmede wrote:
| Standing room only flights.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Which one, the "strapped to an upright stretcher" variant,
| or just hold on to a handle or a metal pole like in a bus?
| dlisboa wrote:
| _Most_ being the operating word here. Economy class tickets
| still make a profit if the airline wants it, just see the
| vast majority of regional flights which have zero business
| class seats. Southwest for instance has single-class layouts.
|
| Some airlines "take" the marginal economy seat loss on larger
| planes because those are the ones they can fill with business
| class seats and make an even larger profit.
|
| Even then it's a complex math on whether economy is hurting
| those flights' profit margins since those people buy things
| in-flight such as Wi-Fi and extra bags. Base fare is not the
| only way airlines make money.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| The Russian Tu-144 first went supersonic on 5 June 1969, four
| months before Concorde, and on 26 May 1970 became the world's
| first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| In 1973, it became the first supersonic passenger transport to
| crash into a town during an airshow.
| ricw wrote:
| Went down a minor rabbit hole and Claude gave me this
| interesting tidbit:
|
| The Tu-144 had several significant design and engineering
| problems that contributed to its troubled history:
|
| Aerodynamic Compromises
|
| The Tu-144 was rushed into development partly to beat Concorde,
| and this showed in its design. The aircraft required
| retractable canard wings near the nose just to maintain
| stability at low speeds during takeoff and landing--a
| workaround that added weight and complexity. Its delta wing
| design was less refined than Concorde's, resulting in higher
| drag and worse fuel efficiency.
|
| Engine Problems
|
| The Kuznetsov NK-144 engines were underpowered and inefficient
| compared to Concorde's Olympus engines. They couldn't sustain
| supersonic cruise without afterburners, which consumed enormous
| amounts of fuel and drastically limited range. The engines were
| also unreliable and ran hot, creating maintenance nightmares.
|
| Structural and Systems Issues
|
| The airframe experienced fatigue problems, the hydraulic
| systems were prone to failures, and the flight control systems
| lacked the redundancy of Western designs. Cabin noise levels
| were so extreme that passengers reportedly couldn't hold
| conversations.
|
| The 1973 Paris Crash
|
| The crash at the Paris Air Show killed all six crew and eight
| people on the ground. The exact cause remains somewhat
| disputed, but the investigation pointed to the crew making an
| abrupt evasive maneuver (possibly to avoid a French Mirage jet
| that was filming nearby without their knowledge), followed by
| an overly aggressive recovery that overstressed the airframe. A
| canard retraction issue or engine failure may have also played
| a role. The aircraft broke apart in flight.
|
| The Tu-144 was ultimately retired from passenger service after
| just 55 scheduled flights--a testament to how many compromises
| were made to achieve a political goal.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Pasting LLM output is against HM guidelines.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Absolutely no one cares what Claude has to say about
| anything. Are you completely incapable of forming and sharing
| an independent idea?
| nluken wrote:
| > Concorde burned 52% of its fuel just taxiing and taking off
|
| and later in the article:
|
| > Remember, Concorde burned 52% of its fuel just taxiing down the
| runway.
|
| Setting aside that these are completely different claims, the
| author does not cite this claim at all and it fails my personal
| gut check. Where is this information coming from?
| vablings wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24283386
|
| They did burn a crazy amount of fuel on getting up to
| supersonic speeds though.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It used about half of its fuel for taxiing, takeoff, climb, and
| acceleration to cruising speed. Maybe that's where the number
| came from originally and it got mangled in translation.
| saalweachter wrote:
| When I looked into this in another context (not supersonic
| jets), while "a lot" of fuel was used just getting the jet up
| to speed going down the runway, "most" of the fuel was going
| from 1 foot off the ground to N0,000 feet.
|
| (I was curious if there was any opportunity for some sort of
| system to power take-off from the ground, be it catapults
| like on air craft carriers or just power-transmission for
| electric planes, and the numbers I found were that while a
| surprising amount of fuel was used by the time the plane
| lifted off, it was more like 5% than 50%.)
| masklinn wrote:
| Yes, it sounds like the repetition of a mangled version of the
| SR71 stories. Burning 45 tonnes of fuel on the runway would be
| completely insane.
|
| Checking various links on taxiing burn yields about 2 tonnes
| which is a lot more realistic and reasonable (a previous HN
| comment indicates the 767 burns about a tonne taxiing:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24283386 concorde burning
| twice that sounds fair)
|
| The OP might have gotten confused reading articles like
| https://simpleflying.com/concorde-fuel-consumption/ stating
| concorde burned half its tank from the gate _to cruise_ (mach 2
| at FL600)
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"the 767 burns about a tonne taxiing"_
|
| This seems incredibly inefficient. Is there a future for
| hybrid aircraft, which would feature both traditional
| turbofans and large batteries for energy storage?
|
| Batteries would eliminate the need for an APU and power the
| aircraft during taxi, allowing the engines to be started just
| before actual takeoff, and shut down immediately after
| landing.
|
| Either the batteries could power wheel motors directly during
| taxi, or the aircraft could mix turbofans with e-fans (which
| could also allow energy recovery during descent and help
| power the aircraft during cruise, reducing fuel consumption
| further).
| kamarg wrote:
| > This seems incredibly inefficient. Is there a future for
| hybrid aircraft, which would feature both traditional
| turbofans and large batteries for energy storage?
|
| I would assume the extra weight would make it not really
| worth the added cost and complexity.
| elmomle wrote:
| Honestly it sounds like the "right" way to do it would be
| electric ground vehicles pulling the planes into
| position, as with tugboats in water. Plane never need
| carry batteries into the sky and saves a literal ton of
| fuel.
| masklinn wrote:
| IIRC towing to and from the runway has two major issues:
|
| - standard towing tractors are _really slow_ when towing,
| nowhere near taxiing speed, so you need a fleet of
| heavier duty "fast tow", possibly dedicated (depending
| on price)
|
| - more traffic around the runway, which creates more
| airport complexity
|
| Taxibot does exist tho, and is certified, and used in a
| few airports. Though I think it's only hybrid not
| electric.
| TylerE wrote:
| Bigger issue is that the engines need to be idled for a
| while anyway to get up to proper temps, etc. you don't
| want to start the engines and jam them into full takeoff
| thrust 5 seconds later.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The software in modern engines wouldn't let you do that
| anyway. The engine startup process can be quite long -
| several minutes in a 737 MAX - while the engine's ECU
| brings things to proper temperatures etc.
|
| But with e-taxi, the startup cycle could be performed
| _while_ taxiing, potentially saving airlines time on
| pushback as well as fuel /maintenance cost savings.
| masklinn wrote:
| True, the engines need to be warmed up and the hydraulics
| need to be pressurised, but given e.g. airbus recommends
| single engine taxi without APU (SETWA) warming up the
| engines probably doesn't take that long in the grand
| scheme of things. Definitely not the 15~25mn of taxi.
| From the sources I can find, "normal" warmup takes 2~5mn
| depending how long ago the engine was shut down, unless
| outside temps are exceptionally low, and you can do that
| while reaching the end of your taxi.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| > but given e.g. airbus recommends single engine taxi
| without APU
|
| This is wrong, unless you have a source for it
| fragmede wrote:
| Because jet engines are notoriously simple devices to
| begin with.
| masklinn wrote:
| Electric taxiing (on APU) has been in development for over
| a decade, but it's mostly intended for single aisles (the
| shorter the flight the more the taxi overhead), and the
| relatively low fuel prices has led to these projects mostly
| dying off: L3 shuttered their effort in 2013, Honeywell and
| Safran's EGTS joint venture was dissolved in 2016, and
| wheeltug... apparently still lives (with no support from
| either boeing or airbus), though it was initially supposed
| to enter service in 2018.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Fuel saving would be only one of the benefits.
|
| Airlines would also significantly reduce engine operating
| hours, reducing engine wear and thus maintenance costs.
| I've been on flights out of Heathrow that seem to spend
| almost as much time taxiing as they do in the air (due to
| weather or ATC delays or whatever), so for short-haul
| operations this seems really significant.
|
| Local air quality is also a concern for airports: the air
| in the neighbourhoods around Heathrow often _stinks_ of
| jet exhaust, sometimes you can smell it from miles away.
| Presumably, much of those emissions come from taxiing
| aircraft.
| toast0 wrote:
| Airport tugs might be a better fit to improve ground
| operations efficiency?
| tim333 wrote:
| I think they've looked at that kind of thing but not found
| if practical so far. One innovation has been airbus jets
| taxiing with just one engine which cuts fuel use a lot as
| it mostly goes to just spinning the engines.
| jelder wrote:
| eTAXI is just one such solution
|
| https://www.safran-group.com/videos/e-taxi-safran-unveils-
| it...
| tetromino_ wrote:
| > This seems incredibly inefficient.
|
| Very inefficient but good for safety: if an engine is
| failing, you hopefully might discover that while taxiing
| rather than when you are in the death zone 25 meters up in
| the air.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Not an expert, but intuition suggests this probably isn't
| true.
|
| If an engine is going to fail spontaneously it's almost
| certainly going to happen at high thrust, not while at
| idle or very low thrust values during taxi.
| dwroberts wrote:
| American coverage of the Concorde has to try and make out that
| it was technically bad, otherwise they would have to face up to
| the fact that their country squashed the possibility of
| supersonic travel, through political bullying and protectionism
| of their own aircraft industry
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| And also through supersonic travel being annoying as hell and
| super expensive.
| fragmede wrote:
| Though, given the investment into the Concorde led to Airbus
| and all of their planes, disrupting Boeings dominance of that
| industry, I think they might have gotten the last laugh.
| pixelesque wrote:
| Roughly that figure (45%) was used to get to Mach 2.0 at 60,000
| feet, about 45 minutes after takeoff from LHR (normally over
| the Bristol channel) to JFK.
|
| Takeoff and climb / accel to Mach 1.7 was done with re-heat
| (afterburners), which did use a lot of fuel. After that, normal
| power (no re-heat) was used to get to Mach 2.0 and cruising
| (supercruise).
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| The article is just generally sloppy.
|
| > .. my recent trip from Abu Dhabi to LA. 24 hours door-to-
| door. We have the technology to reduce that to under 10.
|
| The direct flight (by Emirates) takes 16h15 mins, so that
| leaves 7h45 mins not in flight. If we want to bring that down
| to 10 hours just by making the flight supersonic then that
| would require a flight time of 2h15, corresponding to a
| (ridiculous) speed well over Mach 4.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Not ridiculous if you're flying above the atmosphere. SpaceX
| has proposed point-to-point rocket-powered hypersonic flights
| that connect New York to Paris in around 30 minutes.
|
| Obviously the real problem with this idea is environmental:
| emissions would be substantial and nobody wants an extremely
| noisy rocket port near their city.
| ghaff wrote:
| Musk has proposed lots of things.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| How do you imagine that? First thing coming to mind is the
| loudness of rocket starts and powered landings. Even for
| airports that would be too loud. At least with current
| regulations. So you'd probably waste time getting to some
| dedicated facility, far out in the midst of nowhere to care
| about, and getting out of a similar hole on the other side
| of the trip. And again regulations regarding the closure of
| airspaces and seas for starts and landings, as it's
| currently done. Which seems rather incompatible with the
| current system of commercial flight ops, as it's currently
| done. Other relevant regulations coming to mind are
| evacution procedures/general survivability provisions for
| conventional commercial flights, which are mandatory by
| law.
|
| However I turn that idea, no matter from which point I'm
| looking at it, I'm not seeing it going anywhere.
| jrjeksjd8d wrote:
| Whenever I hear people talk about rocket flights I think of
| the Stephen King short story "The Jaunt". Humans develop
| near-instant transportation but you have to be unconscious
| while travelling. A kid avoids being sedated and is driven
| insane by whatever interdimensional stuff he sees in
| transit.
|
| Likewise for every fit 20-something being launched at Mach
| 5 you'd have 10 octogenarians dying of cardiovascular
| complications.
| general1465 wrote:
| And furthermore you would be able to start only in good
| weather window for takeoff and landing and Gs on Gemini
| flights (which were doing the same thing) weren't
| comfortable either.
| notahacker wrote:
| In fairness, Astro Mechanica and Hermeus _claim_ to have a
| pathway to Mach 5. Not saying I expect to see it,
| particularly not for regular people flights to the Middle
| East, but believing in it is kind of the premise of the
| article.
|
| (I must admit I was more curious about Astro Mechanica's
| engine tech before they also threw in the intention to
| operate Uber for business jets...)
| kens wrote:
| The claim in the article, "Concorde burned 52% of its fuel just
| taxiing down the runway", is completely wrong and kind of ruins
| my confidence in the article. A Concorde used less than 1% of
| its fuel taxiing down the runway, not 52%.
|
| Source: Air France Flight 4590 Accident Report states that the
| plane had 95 t of fuel on board when the aircraft started out
| and used 800 kilos of fuel during taxiing (page 17) and 200
| kilos after taxiing before takeoff (page 159).
| https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-11/Concorde_Acc...
|
| (Since there's a bunch of discussion about how to reduce
| taxiing consumption, I'll point out that one tonne of aviation
| fuel is about $700, so there's not much money to be saved by
| creating battery-powered tugs or whatnot.)
|
| As far as takeoff, "at the start of cruise 20% of the total
| fuel burnoff will have been consumed while only 9% of the total
| distance will have been covered." From "Operation Experience on
| Concorde", a paper by the Design Director. While 20% is a lot,
| it is much less than 52%.
| https://www.icas.org/icas_archive/ICAS1976/Page%20563.pdf
| elbci wrote:
| We need supersonic airports, not planes. Spending 2h to board a
| plane for a 1h flight is just wrong
| andrepd wrote:
| 1h flights are just wrong period. Just build a train.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| Does your opinion change if the flight speed is 2500km/hour
| for most of the flight?
| andrepd wrote:
| ? No, because (1) the distance is still short and (2)
| 2500km/h flight is uneconomical so it's never going to
| happen anyway.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I used to take the train from Orlando down to Miami (well...
| Ft Lauderdale) and it was about 3 hours, vs a simple 1 hour
| flight, or a 3 hour drive. The train ride was worse on
| holidays though, sometimes it took 6 hours or even way
| longer. I think I'd much rather be on the plane overall.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| good train > plane > bad train
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Driving is cheaper than all of those options when its
| more than one person, at least here in Florida. The more
| people involved in your travel, the cheaper driving
| starts to get.
| melling wrote:
| Some pretty bad traffic in Miami. Last month it took me
| an hour to go 10 miles on a Thursday afternoon.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Hehe, my wife is from there, for the first few years she
| lived in Orlando I would crack jokes about how bad it is
| down there, noticed she was getting offended so I pulled
| back, but the last three times we've gone down there she
| swears up and down Miami drivers are the worst. Of course
| Orlando has I-4 as well, which is, its own special place.
| tazjin wrote:
| I regularly take the train between Moscow and Kazan. It's
| 12 hours, you can get on in the evening, have dinner on the
| train and then get a decent 8 hours of sleep before getting
| up, having some coffee and arriving.
|
| It's much longer than the equivalent flight, but also
| _much_ more comfortable. There 's something annoying about
| airports - with the train I can get to the station 15-20
| minutes before departure and it's fine.
|
| Once the train rides get much longer than 12 hours it
| shifts, but there's a sweet spot right around there.
| melling wrote:
| Correct, you weren't riding a bullet train.
|
| There are these really fast trains that exist in a dozen
| countries.
|
| China has 30,000 miles of high-speed rail.
| andrepd wrote:
| Well duh x) because the "train" is dogshit, that's exactly
| my point. If instead of a 28 lane highway there was a dirt
| road, or instead of an intl airport and jets there was a
| grassy field and biplanes, nobody would drive or fly
| respectively, either x)
| Flavius wrote:
| Sometimes it's not that easy or cheap to build a railway. You
| have mountains, seas, wetlands etc. But I agree that high-
| speed trains should be the default option.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Even if you don't, you have property owners whom you'll
| need to either convince to sell or you'll have to get
| eminent domain to cross their land. Across multiple
| jurisdictions depending on distance covered, any one of
| which could delay your project by months or years with
| procedural objections or hearings. You'll need
| environmental impact studies and accomodations for the
| entire route. And for high-speed rail you'll need to build
| underpasses/overpasses at every road crossing. And once you
| build a rail line you're pretty committed to that route.
| Air travel avoids all of that.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| It seems like there's not enough interrogation of how much time
| supersonic could actually save you. 3 hours of flying from LA to
| Seattle, 2.5 with climb and approach removed. If you cut it in
| half, 1h15m saved. On the flip side, how long does it take to get
| to the airport, park, though security, board, deboard, massive
| buffer time because flights are expensive and you don't know what
| might delay you, god forbid you have baggage to check and pick
| up. Flying at twice the speed might reduce the time to fly by
| less than 20%. Taking small on-demand supersonic flights from
| regional airports as suggested is definitely not a solution btw,
| because it's a pipe dream.
| melling wrote:
| He used 24 hour LA to Dubai as an example?
|
| Why would you pick a 3 hour flight?
| pixelesque wrote:
| LA to Dubai is just over 16 hours flight time, so either way,
| he's not comparing realistic flight times anyway.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| 1. The in-flight time from LA to Dubai is not 24 hours. A
| direct flight between the two cities is more like 15. If he
| was on a "24 hour flight", it was a flight with a stopover,
| which just goes to show the point about air travel time being
| bloated by non-flight time.
|
| 2. Concorde rather infamously could barely make the
| transatlantic trip from New York to London, because
| supersonic flight is _expensive_. Boom 's currently
| nonexistent aircraft is planned to have about the same range.
| Neither could make the flight from LA to Dubai, which is a
| distance close to double their maximum ranges.
| ghaff wrote:
| And NY to London really isn't bad. I have to do Zero Dark
| Thirty for London flights with a change in Newark but EWR-
| LHR itself isn't really much different from when I fly from
| BOS to SFO.
|
| At a minimum, I'd want to be able to fly from the East
| Coast to continental Europe to avoid a red-eye but the
| biggest win would be trans-Pacific.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Yeah, in my opinion the point that "wouldn't it be nice
| if this was faster?" becomes a real issue is the point
| that you would feasibly need to get your day's sleep en
| route with today's airliners, because it's difficult to
| sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch on a flight
| even with business class conveniences (and that's before
| getting into the degraded quality of sleep). If I could
| catch a flight that's fast enough to let me hold off on
| sleep altogether until I get to my destination, then
| that's worth paying a premium even for economy seats.
| Unfortunately, that's also the point that a supersonic
| airliner becomes unworkable for airlines, because the
| fuel-to-passenger ratio just stops making sense. You
| _can_ try to make it work with refuelling stops along the
| way, but that really eats up the theoretical time savings
| and adds its own operational overhead too.
|
| I think we need an energy breakthrough with a denser and
| still cost-effective fuel before _really_ getting into
| the era of supersonic transport. Maybe at some point
| someone will dust off the nuclear-powered aircraft
| designs of yore...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| RE 1. - the example still stands. Travel time is best
| understood as falling into buckets. Roughly:
|
| - < 1h - can go there for lunch, or as part of running some
| errands;
|
| - 2-3 hours - can fly over, have a full day of work at
| remote location (or sight-seeing), and get back home for
| supper;
|
| - 4-8 hours - can fly over, do something useful, fly back
| overnight or next morning;
|
| - > 8 hours - definitely a multi-day trip.
|
| (There are more buckets still, if you consider long-
| distance travel by sea or land, and then more when
| considering how people perceived travel in historical
| times.)
|
| As long as the travel time stays in the same bucket,
| reducing (or increasing) it doesn't matter much to the
| travelers. However, going up or down a bucket is a _huge_
| qualitative change, and one people - especially the
| business travelers - are more than happy to pay premium
| for.
|
| So back to our supersonic planes, cutting down the LA-
| Seattle travel time from 3 hours to 1.5 hours (and
| accounting for airport overhead), doesn't affect the kind
| of trips people take. Cutting down travel from LA to Dubai
| from your 15 hours to 5 hours means it suddenly makes sense
| for corporate executives to fly over in person for single-
| day meetings, where previously it wouldn't.
|
| This is also why it's the business customers that are
| always the target for such ideas - regular people are much
| more price sensitive than corporations, and are fine with
| long and hard flights if it means they can afford them.
| Meanwhile, paying an extra $10k to get the executive on an
| important meeting might actually be worth it for a large
| company.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Replying to point 1 (especially with _this_ argument)
| while completely ignoring point 2 makes very little sense
| to me.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Even with airport overhead, there's plenty of routes a
| supersonic plane could drop from 4-8h bucket to 2-3h
| bucket, and that is still something business flyers would
| pay for.
| pixl97 wrote:
| No one is flying supersonic over land at least in the US. Going
| over the oceans is where it would happen.
| nomel wrote:
| That's because there was a dumb ban in place, with an
| executive order [1] and bill that just cleared to lift it
| [2]. The ban was "dumb" because it's _indirect_ , trying to
| control loudness by limiting speed, which is an incorrect [3]
| assumption based on old tech of the time.
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/06/lead...
|
| [2] https://www.govtech.com/transportation/bill-authorizing-
| supe...
|
| [3] https://boomsupersonic.com/boomless-cruise
| seszett wrote:
| The ban was specifically to hinder the Concorde, so it made
| sense to base it on supersonic flight rather than noise in
| case the Concorde would have managed to mitigate its noise
| level one way or another.
| nomel wrote:
| Reference? There was an "Anti-Cordorde Project" [1] but
| its purpose was to ban all supersonic flight, for
| environmental reasons. Concorde being _the only in
| regular service_ , thus the targeted name.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Concorde_Project
| gosub100 wrote:
| I don't trust it. They will get approval and then when
| sonic booms disrupt nature from coast to coast they will
| say "it's just because the weather/it only affects a small
| number of people/the 3rd party contractor who supplied the
| data was wrong, they are gone now/the benefits outweigh the
| downside/think of all the jobs". Basically they'll say
| anything other than "oopsie we were wrong, no transonic
| flight for you".
| plorg wrote:
| The author of this slop seems to believe Boom's pitch deck
| that they can use AI to only boom into space and thus do
| supersonic overland. The only thing his article suggests
| though is that you could do it under certain atmospheric
| conditions, and more likely this is just cover for "do it all
| the time and blame the computer when we rattle peoples'
| windows".
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Saying it requires or uses AI seems to be just... modern
| marketing bullshit. But the technique itself seems sound
| enough. NASA studied the phenomenon already: https://ntrs.n
| asa.gov/api/citations/20160007348/downloads/20...
| elicash wrote:
| Being on the actual plane is the most uncomfortable part of the
| entire experience, for me at least.
|
| Others may disagree, but I'd rather cut an hour from the flight
| than the entire commute/parking/security/airport waiting.
| (Assuming conditions on the actual plane were the same.)
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Funny, for me it's the opposite. It's uniquely relaxing to be
| locked in with nothing but a book or some movies (I purposely
| avoid connecting to the internet during a flight.)
|
| My biggest dilemma is whether to sit in the aisle or window.
| The former you can get up whenever you want but are bumped by
| passers by and neighbors exiting the row. Versus being the
| one doing the disturbing.
|
| And if you can afford business class - where supersonic would
| be priced - then I mean... The meals are restaurant quality
| and the full recline?! I hardly want to disembark! The
| biggest discomfort is the dry sinuses.
|
| But in getting to/from the plane you are cattle moving
| through a logistical labyrinth with countless possibilities
| for something to go wrong.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't _love_ being on a plane for a very long stretch,
| even in business class. And IMO food is very mid-tier
| restaurant. But I don 't necessarily disagree with your
| comment. Even with transport and airport conveniences that
| a relatively modest amount of money can buy, there's plenty
| that can go wrong and you can avoid all the other people to
| only a certain degree.
| hbosch wrote:
| >And if you can afford business class [...] The meals are
| restaurant quality and the full recline?! I hardly want to
| disembark!
|
| Let's settle down. This kind of biz class experience is
| almost certainly unique to international travel. Flying
| "business class" from ATL to SFO might get you a plate of
| microwave slop and an extra 15deg of incline on almost all
| domestic jets. Once in a blue moon you'll get a modern
| plane with the diagonal seats. One less person in the row,
| though.
|
| Paying for business class domestically is almost always a
| sham by my experience.
| zamadatix wrote:
| ATL to SFO would almost certainly top out at first class,
| not business class. This is true of most all domestic
| routes. First class on international also just gets you
| the 15 degrees and 1 or 2 fewer chairs per row, it's
| business that gets you the lie downs and such.
|
| The food will probably still be worse than a first class
| international flight though. Not as many people paying as
| much and not enough air time to really force all of them
| to want to eat airplane food in the first place.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > First class on international also just gets you the 15
| degrees and 1 or 2 fewer chairs per row, it's business
| that gets you the lie downs and such.
|
| This is not my experience at all. First class is better
| than business class on international (and domestic, of
| course, though relatively few domestic routes have true
| three cabin service [counting all the slightly different
| economy levels as one cabin]).
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I was specifically thinking of my experience flying
| Emirates to the UAE :)
|
| Other threads are discussing what range is actually
| practical or worthwhile. The article is very optimistic
| saying Australia can be a weekend trip. For me it's much
| more beneficial to cut a 16 hour flight in half than a 6
| hour one. I don't really mind an itinerary 9 hrs or less,
| which includes all US domestic travel. But of course it
| will be different for a business commuter vs the
| occasional getaway.
| ghaff wrote:
| Unless you pay the sort of money (or more) that supersonic
| flight would realistically cost. Even without going private,
| business/first seating (along with expedited service through
| security, airport clubs, and arranged private car to your
| hotel) deal with a lot of the issues that many economy
| travelers have with air travel.
| kakacik wrote:
| Nah, its quite opposite for me. It becomes real chore with
| small kids on non-short flights, but the thing is - I travel
| normally only for vacations. Time spent in airports is
| literally vacation wasted on bureaucracy without even moving,
| since in ideal situation I would spend 1 minute giving them
| big luggage, if at all, and stepping in the plane just about
| to take off. Flying is actually moving me towards the goal,
| feels more acceptable.
|
| Overall when I started traveling I loved all of it, exciting,
| new. Now I hate this part as a whole, necessary evil of
| wasted life to get what I actually want where I actually
| want.
| elicash wrote:
| I expected that others would have opposing experiences and
| tried to reflect that in my comment. People are different
| sizes, flying different class, frequenting different
| airports, traveling with families or solo, for longer or
| shorter periods of time, more or less luggage, etc. So of
| course it won't be universal.
|
| My main point is that all time is not created equal, that
| it matters WHERE you shave the minutes/hours off, not just
| what percent of overall travel time is removed. And while
| we disagree on how to apply this, we seem to agree on that
| main point.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I try to find absurd humor in counting the different steps
| that I had to go through from leaving my house to getting
| on the plane. Or analyzing the legibility & usability of
| the systems. Or just being proud of myself for being able
| to be so patient and let it all go. Sometimes you can even
| strike up a good conversation with a stranger. But with
| kids, oof, yeah... :-)
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| being on the plane is the easy part. put bags up top -- and
| check the big ones so this is a simple process -- and then
| buckle-up and snooze.
|
| it's the everything-else part of air travel that is fucking
| awful.
|
| 40+ minutes of security theater even with NEXUS and other
| fast-passes, lost bags, massive PITA airports, delays, and
| the hoards of dumb fuckin rubes who have no idea how to
| travel and need to haul their comically huge carry ons that
| somehow got through sizing + emotional support chihuahua -- a
| far cry from even the worst subways I've been on.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I feel the need to praise the (relatively) new SFO terminal
| 1 somewhere. The design is a breath of fresh air.
|
| Always my smoothest airport experience by far. No checked
| bag, Clear + Pre Check, fill your water bottle after
| security, get a coffee at Ritual, buy a banh mi for the
| plane, use a pretty clean bathroom, sit in one of those
| swivel chairs, get on the plane.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| The whole experience nowadays is horrible. The airplane is a
| bus, the airport is a shopping mall. Passengers are just
| cattle.
| nine_k wrote:
| When you can fly e.g. London to Barcelona for something
| like $59 (if you time your ticket purchase right), it _is_
| a bus, for the price of a long-range bus ticket.
|
| (There is even a big aircraft company named "Air Bus", or
| something, did you hear about them?)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Seattle to Beijing is like 12+ hours now that Russian airspace
| is closed. There is a lot of time to save.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The one note about Astro Mechanica towards the middle is
| referring to long haul flights from smaller airfields because
| they'll have a smaller private jet sized plane. It was not
| referring to short haul flights, nor was the rest of the
| article.
|
| I don't believe the economics for that will at all work out the
| way they are pitching, but it has no relation to how much
| supersonic makes sense for a domestic short haul.
| nine_k wrote:
| LA to Seattle is not worth it. The real gains are in London to
| NYC, or Tokyo to LA, or maybe Rio de Janeiro to Miami.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Left unstated is that the Concorde was designed at a time when
| aviation gas EDIT jet fuel ENDEDIT was priced at pennies per
| gallon.
|
| That said, it might still be flying if its recertification flight
| hadn't happened on 9/11.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I'm relatively certain that neither Concorde nor any passenger
| jets burn aviation gas. It may be physically possible, but
| would be extremely ill advised given the lead additive
| rounce wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they weren't referring to 100LL, but either
| way even back in the 90s Jet-A was around USD 0.50 per
| gallon, in the 60s it was nearly 1/5th of even that.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Fair. Edited my comment to note that both sorts of fuels were
| in that price range, but didn't look up the specific fuel
| specification used by the Concorde.
| fragmede wrote:
| Some version of Aviation Turbine Fuel (the other ATF) is used
| in passenger jets, which is either Jet A or Jet A-1 for
| colder, non-American flights. It is a kerosene-based fuel
| which does not contain any lead.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel
| wat10000 wrote:
| I'd guess not. It was aging, maintenance was getting ever more
| expensive, Airbus didn't really want to support it anymore, and
| it faced ever more competition from better first-class
| amenities on regular planes, and from the internet reducing the
| need for fast business travel. It was modestly profitable in
| its heyday once the capital costs were written off, but it
| didn't have a lot of headroom.
|
| Jet fuel cost about $1/gallon when Concorde retired. Five years
| later, it would hit $3/gallon. I have to imagine that would
| have ended it if nothing else had by that point.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Notably Boom's big pivot a month ago was to start selling their
| supersonic designed engines to data centers for power.
|
| I struggle to imagine this is a very efficient design, that
| something designed for going mach 1.something breathing
| significant air is ideally suited for being at sea level not
| moving running a generator. Just feels like the stupid timeline
| having it laughs at us all again.
| https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/boom-supersonic-to-...
|
| Update: also, I was surprised in the first place because I
| thought the big challenge for boom was they were trying & failing
| to get engines. They eventually got Kratos to sign up but I
| thought it'd mostly be a Kratos engine...
| https://ir.kratosdefense.com/news-releases/news-release-deta...
| positron26 wrote:
| That is not a pivot I would have expected. Aviation turbines
| are not good utility turbines. If you just need to beef up your
| turbine engineering, drone turbines are probably the place to
| go. Less competition from GE etc.
| fragmede wrote:
| I don't think they expected it either, but it's building
| expertise in that general area, the question is if that
| expertise will transfer back over to supersonic jet engines,
| or if they're different enough that they can't.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's a VC fundraising oriented pivot I think.
| juujian wrote:
| > Three reasons: noise, regulation and cost.
|
| So the environmental impact isn't even worth mentioning?
| nomel wrote:
| The environmental impact won't prevent their use unless
| something like a carbon tax is present, where environmental
| impact directly results in cost. People "need" to travel, in a
| convenient way, regardless. Same with ICE cars. They'll go away
| when they're superseded by both cost and convenience. The
| environment doesn't really matter to the mass population that
| travels.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I believe that fits under "regulation" from the perspective of
| people building these things.
| _petronius wrote:
| Equating speed of travel with innovation is lame: a lot of work
| has been done in recent decades on making airplane engines more
| efficient, which makes air travel more economical both in terms
| of cost as well as C02e emissions per passenger (the Jevons
| paradox implications of that can be taken as read).
|
| The whole post comes off a bit as someone who doesn't really
| understand the passenger air travel industry very well, and isn't
| particularly interested in changing that.
| notahacker wrote:
| tbf whilst the lower cost travel we've got accurately
| represents what the market wants, it isn't exactly unusual to
| find industry insiders that want flight to be faster (they're
| just a little less likely to gush about how startups are "
| _cleverly_ " working with regulators or describe Douglas as the
| last successful US airframer...)
| b3lm0nt wrote:
| Necessary link to Maciej Ceglowski's talk "Web Design: The First
| 100 Years:"
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230210133927/https://idlewords...
|
| _Because the technologies we had were good enough. It turned out
| that very few people needed to cross an ocean in three hours
| instead of six hours. On my way to this conference, I flew from
| Switzerland to San Francisco. It took eleven hours and cost me
| around a thousand dollars. It was a long flight and kind of
| uncomfortable and boring. But I crossed the planet in half a
| day!_
|
| _Being able to get anywhere in the world in a day is really good
| enough. We complain about air travel but consider that for a
| couple of thousand dollars, you can go anywhere, overnight._
|
| _The people designing the planes of tomorrow got so caught up in
| the technology that they forgot to ask the very important
| question, "what are we building this for?"_
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont know i agree. Trans-antlantic flights kind of suck. If i
| was doing tourist things (and the cost point was right) i would
| definitely prefer a 3 hour flight. Not sure i would pay double
| for it, but i do think there is a market for this.
| ghaff wrote:
| You'll pay double (or more) for it. You can have a much
| better experience today if you fly business.
| bawolff wrote:
| Well that's the question right? What is the price point.
| All products have a price where people won't buy it.
|
| But i suspect even if its double, that would still be
| enough to attract business class peeps, which might make it
| economically viable.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Except the title, a large part of this article seems to have been
| written by an LLM.
| riversflow wrote:
| Crazy that you are the only comment that noticed this. I
| stopped reading at,
|
| > Translation: Building airplane engines is hard
|
| There are many hints previous to that, but that gave it away
| for me. If I want LLM output I'll request it from the model
| myself, thanks.
| jelder wrote:
| > You're already flying this route with a 300-seat plane where
| 80+ people in business class generate most of your profit. Give
| those passengers a supersonic plane, cut the flight time in half,
| and charge the same price.
|
| What does that end up doing to the cost of a seat in coach?
| zaxioms wrote:
| > Blake embodies the "bits to atoms" shift underway in America.
| Before founding Boom, he was designing internet coupons for
| Groupon.
|
| What is this? I can't find easily the meaning of "bits to atoms."
| Is this meaning that US is going away from digital "exports"?
| Towaway69 wrote:
| From virtual goods to physical goods I assume.
|
| Never heard before either so you're not alone.
|
| EDIT: the reference to America is, again I assume, the trend to
| bring manufacturing back to the US from mainly China.
| skrebbel wrote:
| No the meaning is that there's a wave of hardware innovators
| who started as software innovators. Musk (Paypal) is the most
| obvious example. The Boom CEO featured here is another. There's
| a fair bunch more, I agree with the author that a weirdly high
| % of founders of cool hardware / deeptech companies have a
| software engineering background. Like, you'd expect that space
| to be dominated by mechanical engineers, electrical engineers
| and physicists etc but somehow it isn't.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Because people who led software companies (which have
| insanely high margins) have access to the vast capital needed
| for serious heavy hardware development. They then hire the
| engineers they need to succeed.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yep. I suspect they're also better at getting warm intros
| to and selling their vision to Silicon Valley CEOs than
| your average aerospace engineer with a dream.
| voxleone wrote:
| Regarding the "supersonic is now viable because LNG" argument,
| but for a different reason than usual.
|
| Even if supersonic flight becomes cheaper via new fuels or
| propulsion, that doesn't reset the baseline. The same advances
| (materials, engines, fuel handling, manufacturing) will also
| apply to subsonic aircraft, where the physics are already far
| more energy-efficient. So if supersonic gets "cheap," traditional
| jets will get _much cheaper_. Airlines will always arbitrage
| toward the lowest energy-per-seat-km for most routes, and
| supersonic flight is structurally disadvantaged there (drag,
| noise, routing constraints).
|
| Historically, faster transport doesn't replace slower transport
| wholesale; it creates a premium tier while pushing the mass
| market down to a lower cost/energy equilibrium. Concorde didn't
| kill widebodies, widebodies got cheaper. My intuition: supersonic
| may of course exist as a niche (time-sensitive, premium), but its
| biggest impact would be indirect, accelerating efficiency gains
| that make conventional aviation even more dominant and cheaper.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| And even then, it is only so premium. As you could have a
| speedy economy seat on the Concorde or a lie flat bed on a
| widebody by the time Concorde left service. The speed benefit
| largely goes away if I can travel while sleeping.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Halving travel times would be really good, the problem is
| that supersonic never had the range to make the difference
| meaningful.
|
| JFK-London in 3 hours vs 6 is pretty tolerable if you're more
| comfortable for the 6 hours. SFO to Shanghai in 7 hours vs 14
| would be a lot more compelling but Concorde could not do
| transpacific range.
| thesumofall wrote:
| I actually prefer a 10+ hrs business class flight over a
| 6-7 hrs flight. At least you can get a full night of sleep
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Depends on the time zone change. From Europe to with
| Africa sure a 12 hour figggt is great. If I travel
| business London to singapore i get far worse jet lag than
| if I fly via the Middle East and break my journey for a
| few hours.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| That's the just flight time, but you've also got travel
| to/from the airport, parking, maybe shuttle bus/monorail,
| and checking/security/wait time at the airport as well.
|
| So, add an hour for door-door travel to airport, and 2-hr
| before flight check-in, and now the comparison isn't 3 vs
| 6hr but 9 vs 12hr, which doesn't sound so worthwhile,
| although no doubt there are customers for it.
|
| For longer flights it'd be much more attractive, but this
| is never going to be an affordable service for the masses.
| Animats wrote:
| A service where your limo drives out to the aircraft,
| with all searches and paperwork pre-done, would have
| about the same time gain as going Mach 1.7 vs. Mach 0.85.
| notahacker wrote:
| And probably fewer regulatory hurdles (and I don't mean
| that because they wouldn't be considerable...)
| pinko wrote:
| Underrated observation. The low-hanging fruit is all in
| the office/home-to-takeoff and touchdown-to-office/home
| blocks on each end, not the time in the air. The commute,
| checkin, security, airport transit, boarding, and taxiing
| are the time-sinks worth optimizing.
| ekelsen wrote:
| private jets already solve these problems.
| Animats wrote:
| That's a real service. Some airports, including LAX and
| London Heathrow, allow a "tarmac transfer", where the
| limo goes directly to the plane. [1][2] Cost is $200 to
| $1000. That could save an hour or more at each end.
|
| _VIP Terminal Access: Skip the standard queues and enter
| exclusive VIP terminals where you'll receive expedited
| passport control, security checks, and personalized
| services, all while enjoying luxury amenities. Avoid long
| security lines with expedited security processing,
| ensuring you spend minimal time in the airport._
|
| [1] https://limossist.com/tarmac-transfers/
|
| [2] https://airssist.com/airport-tarmac-transfer-service/
| ekelsen wrote:
| But for the private jet market, the reduction would be
| huge. They're already paying a premium to save time. The
| top end will pay an even larger premium to save even more
| time.
|
| I agree with you that for commercial, anything other than
| super long haul (which is technically very hard), the
| time saving advantages are much less compelling.
| XorNot wrote:
| Cutting 22 hours Sydney to London to 12 would make a big
| difference though.
|
| There's no real way to make that much time on a plane
| bearable even if you had a lie flat bed: that's just a ton of
| time in the air.
|
| Australian international travel would be the premier market
| if you wanted to travel supersonic (also our coastal cities
| mean most departures could accelerate immediately).
| kibwen wrote:
| The irony is that supersonic jets don't have the range to
| realize the time savings over such long routes.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Highly depends on the person. Over 6 feet tall with screws
| and rods holding my spine together, even a lie flat is not
| very comfortable, and not having to spend my first day or two
| at my destination decompressing before I actually enjoy the
| trip would be pretty valuable to me. The only way to achieve
| that is less travel time, but even so I'm not sure reducing
| the time in air would be enough when you add in travel to and
| from the airport, plus taxi time on the runway. It wouldn't
| be nothing, though, and I'd definitely pay for it if it made
| a difference.
|
| Problem is broad market trends don't care about me
| personally. There have to be a lot of people like me with
| both sufficient injuries and sufficient money and there
| probably are not.
| b112 wrote:
| Some planes used to have lounges and bars and such.
|
| Would maybe have helped? I know I'd pay more for that.
| masklinn wrote:
| Some planes still do e.g. Emirates A380 has a bar,
| Qantas' has a lounge (though apparently it's not very
| good).
| foota wrote:
| Hm... I don't know that I buy your argument, since just as you
| point out, traditional jets are already very optimized. One
| would assume there's less slack to pick up.
| api wrote:
| Fuel is a huge component of the cost of operating an airline,
| sometimes the largest component. LNG is a much cheaper fuel,
| so I can see it being adopted for mainstream aviation
| eventually. Existing jets could technically be converted,
| though the conservative nature of aviation would demand many
| years of testing before use on commercial flights.
|
| It's also a pathway to incremental decarbonizing of aviation.
| LNG releases less CO2 per unit energy than oil, and methane
| can be produced biologically or synthetically which offers a
| path to total (net) decarbonization.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Even if fossil LNG is used, it releases less CO2 per unit
| energy.
|
| However released methane has a significantly worse
| greenhouse effect than CO2 (80x over 20 years, 28 over 100,
| 8 over 500 -- this decreases because methane has an
| atmospheric lifetime of 12 years and decays to CO2). So
| leakage in the LNG chain is a massive problem.
| paganholiday wrote:
| Traditional jets have a long inventory and regulation cycle
| but for example retrofitting a A320 to LNG appears to save
| 20%:
|
| https://repository.tudelft.nl/record/uuid:63b89022-ac68-426d.
| ..
|
| Which still puts it behind the 787 let alone the generation
| that comes next.. But you aren't going to succeed at making
| any new inventory without every possible efficiency
| improvement to drive sales and retirement of older inventory.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Aeronautical engineering isn't that linear. A technology suited
| to one application may not be helpful in another. It's one of
| those "hardware is hard" fields.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Airlines will always arbitrage toward the lowest energy-per-
| seat-km for most routes
|
| That's a second order effect from fuel being the primary cost,
| and thus the primary lever to either make more profit or
| improve competitivity.
|
| If airlines could triple their profits by doubling their fuel
| burn they'd happily do that.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| I agree with your market analysis. Private jets are often
| referred to as "time machines" given how much time HNW / exec
| travelers can save. There's a market segment that's willing to
| pay a high premium for reduced travel time.
| atoav wrote:
| Want to reduce the time it takes to get somewhere? Reduce the
| security circus at airports. This will cut off way more of the
| travel time for the majority of flights, wothout the downsides
| of supersonic planes.
| fooker wrote:
| You are missing an important factor in the baseline here, the
| cost of time.
|
| Right now, a cheap 7 hour each way round trip between NYC and
| London is ~500$.
|
| Halve it to 3.5 hours each way with a supersonic plane, saving
| a total of 7 hours.
|
| Now, the real question is then, what's one hour of your time
| worth to you or whoever is paying for your flight?
|
| If improvements to subsonic aircrafts bring down the price to
| 200$ instead of $500, people would still be willing to pay 200$
| + 7 * $HOURLY for a faster flight.
|
| Even with a low-ish estimate of $HOURLY = 50, it would make
| sense to take the supersonic fight if the price was $500, which
| it could conceivably be brought down to, and the market has
| already validated to be willing to pay.
| kibwen wrote:
| Business passengers aren't out here paying for their own
| tickets. Their employers are paying for those tickets, so the
| question is whether or not companies care about the time
| their salaried employees spend in the air, when those
| employees can be just as productive on the business-class
| wifi.
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming they're even micro-managing employee productivity
| to the degree that they really care about working on a
| plane. Personally, I never purchased plane wi-fi even when
| I could have expensed it.
| j1elo wrote:
| That's a reasonable argument for businesspeople, but it
| doesn't apply for the greater public. Because chances are
| that except in a minority of situations, they are on holidays
| and during that saved time they wouldn't be working at all
| anyways.
|
| People who could perfecty afford a $2,000 plane ticket still
| fly with $400 ones (as long as they are within reasonable
| standards), for example because they have a desired budget
| for a given trip, and the expensive option would blow it
| away, so they don't mind the extra time.
| foota wrote:
| At first I thought this was a reference to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
| slackfan wrote:
| "The last successful US airplane manufacturer was Douglas
| Aircraft, founded in 1921."
|
| Nice (misleading) buried lede re: Boeing I suppose.
| nenadg wrote:
| >no flying cars
|
| >no back to the future hoverboard
|
| >no concorde
|
| millennials bros we've been tricked
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| The technology of air travel may seem counter intuitive when your
| frame of reference is the Moore's Law.
|
| But in practice, what happened with semiconductors is the
| exception, not the rule.
|
| We are still often making wild predictions about the future of
| technology based on some kind of exponential take-off, it may
| turn out to be a lot more constrained by physics and energy
| density.
|
| Supersonic commercial air transport is one such technology,
| possible and proven, yet not viable.
|
| Mars colonies or interstellar travel could be in a similar
| bucket.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| _It's already booked 130 orders._
|
| I really don't believe this. Even the Boom website says that most
| of these are "options" to purchase, but I'm guessing the "firm"
| orders are basically just non-binding letters of intent that
| effectively say "Sure, if you build it with these specs, we'll
| buy some at price X. Unless we change our mind."
|
| And I'm further guessing that the terms include dates that Boom
| has zero chance of hitting. The author estimates that these won't
| be in commercial service before 2033, but I think that's still
| optimistic. My understanding (could be wrong, not an expert) is
| that new regular airliners take many billions and 10+ years to
| design, build, and certify, and that's without the complications
| of supersonic and brand new engine designs.
|
| The Boom stories have been circulating on HN for a decade now
| [1], and they originally were claiming _two years_ to have a
| manned prototype, which was obviously untrue. I guess they are
| like the Tesla of the sky in that regard.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329286
| notahacker wrote:
| tbf United and JAL did put in a non-trivial deposit, but yeah,
| the orders won't be binding on them (I remember having an
| exchange on here with one of their investors on here about
| that). Frankly I think they've done well to get where they are,
| but where they are is a basic demonstration of their supersonic
| boom suppresion technology on a small testbed aircraft (a few
| years behind schedule!), and having to design their own engine
| because they can't get one of the major OEMs to work with them.
| obblekk wrote:
| One big reason supersonic can be economic now is the increase in
| wealth in Asia since the 80s.
|
| Transpacific flights from California have no sonic boom
| population issues for 90% of the flight, and there's already a
| large market of people spending $10k on business travel.
|
| Reducing travel time from 12hrs to 4hrs would be a product with a
| lot more demand than 7hrs to 3hrs to Europe.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I'm excited for progress in supersonic flight because fast things
| can be qualitatively different. I first remember hearing this
| idea from Linus Torvalds, talking about developing Git. He said
| he works differently, not just faster, when merges are instant
| and easy.
|
| Since hearing that, I see the effect in other areas of life, and
| transportation is one. I travel differently when the flight is 3
| hours as opposed to 7 or more. Shorter trips, less luggage, less
| advance planning, less exhaustion, etc.
|
| At first it will be available only at a premium, but that's how
| innovation usually goes. When the market finds something people
| love, capital seeks opportunities to lower the cost and increase
| the quantity. The real price of travel by aviation has declined
| dramatically over the last 50 years, for example.
|
| I've got friends and family all over the world... I would for
| sure go visit more often if it wasn't so darn long just to get
| there and back.
| pacifi30 wrote:
| Why are we not focussing on rocket based travel so we can finally
| do 90 mins from Seattle to London :)
|
| Spacex and blue origin has already demonstrated heavy payload
| transport, why can we just move to this than work on supersonic
| joelthelion wrote:
| Not a word on the environmental impact. We need to be flying
| less, not faster.
|
| And yes, I know flying only makes roughly 5% of world emissions.
| It also turns out that these are some of the most avoidable
| emissions. We should be cutting them first.
| koops wrote:
| We're all of us speeding towards a cliff that ends in
| environmental disaster.
|
| And if you point that out, you get downvoted to invisibility on
| Hacker News and elsewhere.
| class3shock wrote:
| Boom
|
| I swear boom spends more on puff pieces than any other aerospace
| company. They continuously make claims they will do things by
| certain dates that are unrealistic.
|
| They claim they will be delivering airplanes to United that would
| be in service in 2029:
|
| https://boomsupersonic.com/united
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/03/united-will-buy-15-ultrafast...
|
| However new aircraft take 5-9 years to certify and they have not
| yet even built one! Not to mention new engines take a similar
| amount of time and they are supposedly building their own brand
| new engine, which is a substantially harder task.
|
| Now they are claiming the first "test" flight will be in 3 years
| despite the fact that they still don't have a plane or an engine
| built. I hope someone over their let United know they are going
| to be a little late. Their website hasn't amended to article to
| say they were wrong.
|
| I wonder if we can look to history to see how long it takes
| between when they say they will fly something and when it
| actually flies? Oh right, we can!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_XB-1
|
| "The original design was unveiled at Centennial Airport in Dove
| Valley, near Denver, Colorado, on November 15, 2016,[6] and it
| was initially intended to make its first subsonic flight in late
| 2017"
|
| "The XB-1 performed its first flight test on March 22, 2024,
| flown by test pilot Bill Shoemaker from Mojave Air and Space
| Port.[1]"
|
| They were only 7 years off but we all make mistakes.
|
| Astro Mechanica
|
| - LNG isn't used because weight needed for fuel tanks that will
| keep it cold enough to stay liquid cancels out any benefits. For
| anyone interested in a famous failure of a similar idea:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_CL-400_Suntan - I don't
| know what analysis they are doing that makes them think reducing
| the number of passengers and going to supersonic is possible
| while maintaining current ticket prices... but it's not. - Engine
| and plane makers are not allowed to run airlines. Anyone
| unfamiliar with the field can look up United Aircraft. - Their
| engine does sound like it's trying to do some cool things. I
| kinda suspect it's just a fun way to pass the time on the
| governments dime given all the other unrealistic stuff they are
| talking about though.
|
| Hermeus
|
| These folks are legit. Don't know if they will be successful but
| outsourcing the jet engine and focusing their work on the ramjet
| and the integration of the two makes alot of sense.
| CivBase wrote:
| > using AI software to measure atmospheric conditions
|
| What is this even supposed to mean?
|
| To me this comes across as "I'm not sure if you'll be impressed
| by a supersonic jet that can surpress sonic booms, so I
| shoehorned AI into the description to jazz it up." It makes me
| wonder why the author doesn't think the former is impressive
| enough on its own.
| dzonga wrote:
| just for sake of clarity - people need to remember it took about
| 2 years to get the finest plane ever built i.e SR-71 (Blackbird)
| in the air.
|
| there's thing we lost we i.e skills, grit, creativity we might
| never recover from
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