Odd that you should mention rail in this context, since so few airports are downtown.
This is terribly misguided. No one is against technological improvements in aircraft technology. The central argument here is how you characterize “improvement”. What is “better”? As @Richard_Pearse correctly points out in post #38, the improvements in airliner design and technology over the past decades have been nothing short of astonishing. The fact that airliners look more or less the same to the casual glance of a layman obscures just how much has changed underneath in almost every important metric – efficiency, range, reduced noise, and an unparalleled level of safety.
I’m skeptical that any supersonic airliner can meet the kinds of hyped-up claims that we’re hearing about, and that far from being an “improvement” in air travel, it will be a step backward in most if not all of those metrics. The one and only benefit it will offer is to allow a privileged few to cut a few hours off their travel time, a dubious advantage which could easily be completely obliterated by airport delays. We are no longer living in a world in which we can afford to build relatively useless toys that are environmentally reckless. We should be investing that kind of money and research into developing a new generation of aircraft that are even more efficient than today’s, or powered electrically or with hydrogen.
The basis of my skepticism is that no matter what technologies one hypes, it takes much more energy to exceed the speed of sound than it would using the same technologies under the same conditions to travel subsonically. Everything else being equal, this has to translate into much higher fuel consumption, more noise, and more pollution than a similarly advanced airliner traveling below Mach 1. If this understanding is completely wrong, I’d be interested in having someone explain how supersonic can be more efficient than subsonic using similar tech.
Surely these must be objective criteria laid out in the contract, though? Are you just saying you don’t think they can achieve the targets? It’s not just that United have an arbitrary “out” if they want it.
Nor did I say anyone was.
I was saying that people were scoffing at the possibility of improving on supersonic aircraft, implying that it is not possible. That’s the thing that I was finding depressing.
Now, in terms of whether travel time should be more important vs efficiency, that’s a different point. If the context had been posters suggesting that reducing travel time is the wrong focus, I would not have posted anything.
Well I don’t know.
I don’t know where you are getting that degree of confidence that it will be a step backwards from.
Yeah I don’t mean to say that UAL are assuming it will fail, just that they aren’t taking a big risk here. If the end product meets their criteria then I’m sure they will be very happy, if it doesn’t, then they don’t have to buy any.
Not really. The underlying assumption is the actual travel goal is to get from one city center to the other. In the highly urbanized parts of the world, that’s where people live and businesses cluster: in the city centers. @bob_2 lives in the UK in IIRC greater London.
Given that assumption, one has two choices:
-
Take a high speed train straight from downtown A to downtown B.
-
Drive from Downtown A to A’s far suburban airport, fly to B’s far suburban airport, then drive to downtown B. Whether the driving is your personal car, a rental car, a taxi, a bus, Uber, etc., is immaterial.
As this relates to the supersonic airplanes thread topic, the punchline is that if a large fraction of the trip is by car in city and suburban highway traffic, even a supersonic airplane won’t beat a high speed train until the trip gets pretty long.
Note I’m not advocating for high speed trains. They suck in large spread-out countries like 90+% of the USA and they really suck at transoceanic travel. I’m just explaining @bob_2’s post.
Well, Boom have been offering to make a supersonic presidential plane…
I’m completely comfortable with the idea of trusting the safety of the POTUS to some startup company.
In related news, Aerion Supersonic went insolvent last month due to their cash stream drying up. Note they were pitching their planes to the private business crowd, but the meager Mach 1.3 speed (among other things) didn’t help matters. Now Boom has dropped the speed of their craft from 2.2 to 1.7, you say? I’d love to see a viable SST, understand, but to me that’s a rather big red flag, esp. given some of the hypersonic designs on the drawing board (yes, they might not ever see the light of day either).
I’ve gotten less comfortable with that idea in the past few months.
I was being sarcastic. I would be uncomfortable with the idea of the safety of any POTUS (even the former guy) being trusted to an unproven aircraft.
This argument is just as valid for air travel in general. The median person will never fly on a plane, and a majority air passenger-miles are consumed by the top 1%.
By your argument, should we allow air traffic at all?
Obviously it won’t be unproven by the time he (or she) is riding in it.
Supersonic requires a robust market for long-distance (>7000 miles) trips; shorter trips aren’t worth it (in fact propeller aircraft are still used for the shortest hops). With the development of the Pacific Rim and India there is probably more market for such trips now than there was previously.
Although I would wonder about the possibility that suborbital flight may end up upstaging supersonic flight for the longest truly antipodal trips.
There is a market for this type of service, albeit a niche one. Your average international traveler isn’t going to want to pay the cost of the ticket for this type of travel, but time is valuable. For many business discussions, there is no substitute for being in person. The target market for these types of flights are for senior executives whose time is short. Flying from LA to Tokyo in 6 hours vs. 11.5 hours or NY to London in 3 hours is extremely valuable.
Also, some people upthread mentioned that, since it can take an hour or more to check in, that the total door-to-door journey time is not reduced significantly.
However, right now business travelers and first class have priority check in and can arrive at the airport very close to departure.
So, if the supersonic tickets are pitched at that premium market, as seems most likely, then the reduction in flight time is a big decrease in the overall travel time.
If the tickets are not pitched at the premium market, and somehow the fanciful claims of cheap tickets actually materializes, then the objection is even more moot. Because if the ticket price for supersonic is comparable to a regular ticket, but it shaves off 4 hours or whatever, it would be an easy choice for most people. I already frequently pay more for a shorter flight.
These flights will only be used for international travel. Shaving 6 hours off of a flight to Tokyo that would normally take “all in” including arrival, security, check-in, and departure from the plane, of about 13 hours, is still a significant reduction.
If indeed these thigs are premium products, they can have dedicated securoty, dedicated check-in and all the rest. And with 40 or 60 pax, none of whom are infirm or idiots or haven’t traveled in 5 years and have 300 lb of carry-ons , it doesn’t take 45 minutes to board; it’ll take 15.
Most bizjets today are no faster than airliners. But the ability to have security and boarding arrangements sized for a dozen people on a charter, not 300, vastly streamlines the processes.
All of which greatly shortens the door to door time of the trip. Putting a faster airplane in the middle helps even more.
Umm … no. This mythical “median person” of yours who will never fly in a plane does not exist. In fact, according to Forbes, “as many as 13 percent [of Americans] say they have never flown in an airplane”. Which means more than 87% – a vast majority – have. Furthermore, digging deeper, the fact that never-flyers exist at all is mainly because they’re part of a cohort that doesn’t travel at all; many of these people have never even been out of the state they were born in. But virtually everyone who does travel any significant distance does so by scheduled airline.
What you’re describing is the sort of situation that existed in the 40s and 50s, when air travel was an unusual luxury, and which starting changing rapidly in the 60s. My old-fashioned parents were a good example, taking the train everywhere, even across the country, and managed to avoid flying for most of their lives. But when we went to visit my brother in California, on the other side of the country, they finally had to relent, as by that time passenger trains were being phased out and there was no other practical way to get there.
Supersonic air travel is in a completely different category. In my view, those who see it as a natural evolution of airliner technology may be just as misguided as those who used to predict flying cars in every suburban garage, or that scheduled passenger service to the moon was just around the corner. Just because something is imaginable and technologically possible doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful or a good idea.
You appear to have overlooked the rest of the world. It’s common for middle class Americans to think of themselves as “average” people, but we’re not. We’re fabulously wealthy compared to most humans.
A median US income puts you in the top 2% of earners worldwide.