

The future of flying - fourmii
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/dbd7f5d4-e3ad-11e4-9a82-00144feab7de.html#slide0

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transfire
The future of flying is _not_ flying? Some solution.

Let's try a future that is actually a bit more futuristic, shall we? Imagine,
small electric hybrid fuel cell planes that carry less than 50 passengers
flying point to point to municipal airports instead of just major hubs. Roomy
accommodations, coach is almost as nice a 1st class is today. And the cost is
half.

The problem with the future of flying is not environmental or technical. The
above is possible. The problem is regulatory (and greed).

~~~
exDM69
Call me a lunatic but:

Airships! I want to see airships, zeppelins, blimps come back. They can fly
passengers or cargo faster than seafaring ships or travelling on land, while
being able to take off and land in a smaller area than an airport runway. The
speeds of airships were around 120-200+ km/h, making it comparable with a slow
flying piston powered aircraft of the same era.

A flight on the Hindenburg was more luxurious than flying in an airplane has
ever been. There was a dining salon and a smoking lounge and plenty of room to
walk around. Airships were capable of transporting close to 100 passengers.
They can fly closer to a big city than an airplane can, reducing the total
time of travel when you don't need to go to the airport, far away from the
cities.

Anecdote: my home town has a futuristic art deco hotel built in the 1930s,
which has a mast that was designed as a mooring point for airships, right in
the middle of the city. Unfortunately that has never been used to my
knowledge.

Airships might also be (partially) powered by electricity and have very large
surface area that could be used for solar panels.

Unfortunately, I can't see this happening any time soon. There are some
ventures into building modern airships, with mixed success. I recon modern
people are too impatient to travel 4-5 times slower than what they're used to.
Transporting cargo overseas is so cheap that it's difficult to compete with.
And whether it makes any kind of economic sense is another question.

~~~
ghaff
>There are some ventures into building modern airships, with mixed success.

Where mixed ~= no. The luxury of pre-WW II zeppelin travel is something of a
red herring. To the degree there were a market for travel at the equivalent
cost of trans-Atlantic Zeppelin travel, you could pretty much have it in a
wide body aircraft. After all, Pan Am's original 747s had a first class lounge
upstairs which today is (universally, as far as I know) used for additional
business class seating. High-end seating on airlines like Emirates is pretty
luxurious today but the modern preference tends toward individual suites
rather than space given to common areas.

>I recon modern people are too impatient to travel 4-5 times slower than what
they're used to.

Well, even if the travel is relatively luxurious I don't have a burning desire
to spend a couple of days in a relatively confined space although your general
point is probably true. On the other hand, I'm sure lots of the people who
travelled by ocean liner or zeppelin would have jumped at the chance to go
from London or Berlin to New York in under 10 hours.

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melling
8 million people fly every day. I would think that number could easily triple
or quadruple over the next few decades as more people move out of poverty.
We're adding another 2.5 billion people by 2050 so the number could be much
larger.

~~~
bedhead
I disagree. Airports are already a bottleneck that will only get worse over
time. There has only been one major airport built in the US in the last 30
years. It's nearly impossible to expand many airports (both gates and runways)
for various reasons. There are only so many slots available.

I honestly don't think the US could handle a doubling of flyers, we will have
outgrown our current infrastructure yet it's almost impossible to expand it.
Like it or not, the price of airline tickets is probably going in one
direction for the foreseeable future.

~~~
steven777400
This doesn't have to be true. Many large airports have smaller regional
airports nearby that have the capacity to handle passenger traffic. For
example, I live in Olympia about 60 - 90 minutes south of Seattle (and about
30 minutes from Tacoma). The airport here is large enough to accommodate 737s,
and even did have passenger service for a few years with smaller turboprops,
but now doesn't. Efficiency desires are leading to larger, centralized
airports which then run into capacity problems while regional airports
languish.

~~~
bedhead
It doesn't have to be, but it probably will be. I'm in Chicago and even our
second airport, Midway, is showing signs of pressure. I can think of a handful
of other second tier airports in major cities in similar positions.

I think this is going to become a very heated topic over the next 25 years.
The general public has been groomed to believe that cheap airfare on a
several-hundred-million-dollar vehicle with incomprehensibly good safety
standards is a birthright, so when the cost of air travel starts going a lot
higher, people are going to freak out. We can make all sorts of tweaks to
alleviate the problem (load efficiency, bigger planes, more seats/plane,
longer hours of operation, etc) but at some point the inherent limits of a
fixed number of runways, gates, and slots is going to catch up to us, and
that's when the price of a ticket for many particular routes is going to go
vertical.

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Daviey
Skyfaring, the book referenced in the article is the current narrated book of
the week on BBC Radio 4.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05q0tw0/episodes/guide](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05q0tw0/episodes/guide)

~~~
mcqueen888
And the book's website: www.skyfaring.com

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EA
One day, to travel hundreds or thousands of miles across our planet's surface,
we'll be pulled upward to a router and then drop to a port near our desired
destination.

~~~
bojan
The problem with that is that once you get disassembled into particles, you're
dead. The guy that shows up on the other side can look, feel, think and have
the same memories as you, but won't be you.

~~~
MichaelGG
This is tiresome. It's no different than going to sleep. Or indeed, one moment
of consciousness to the next. You've no way to tell if your consciousness is
being paused, disassembled, and reassembled every second.

I know this won't persuade anyone that's already decided. This issue won't get
"settled" until we actually understand the mechanics of consciousness. AFAIK,
no one has any real good descriptions of what's going on. Hell, some are still
supporting dualist views.

------
amelius
Who needs to go on a holiday when you can just put on your VR goggles?

And who needs to go on a business trip if you can use the internet?

~~~
amyjess
This can't come soon enough.

I can't fly because I can't risk being groped by the TSA: I have deep issues
with my body, and I will not let anyone pat me down under any circumstances.
My biggest fear is that an employer will order me to fly somewhere, and I'll
have no choice but to get fired because I can't go through security and wind
up losing my house and living on the streets.

