

A world without planes - v4us
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8626000/8626927.stm

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akadruid
The travel times are unduly pessamistic. Australia is an edge case - the
reason that travelling London to Australia takes so long is largely due to
poor overland connections after you reach southeast Asia. You can travel by
train from London to e.g. Beijing in around 10-11 days.

London to Rome can be done comfortably and cheaply by train in under 24 hours.
Some people prefer this to flying.

The website seat61.com has a huge amount of info on travelling internationally
by rail.

Also I suspect rail travel would suddenly recieve a lot of investment should
air travel become impossible.

~~~
hugh3
Yes, in a true plane-free world you'd probably get from London to Sydney by
taking a train to Shanghai or Bangkok or something and then catching a ship to
take you the rest of the way.

Or with a bit of high-speed rail development, get a train to India, a boat
across the Indian Ocean to Perth, and then a two-day high-speed train across
Australia.

This actually sounds like fun the first time, but if you had to do it
regularly you'd be missing the 23 hour plane ride pretty quick.

~~~
thingie
Travel itself should be quite ok even regularly, it certainly wouldn't be just
siting in your seat for 2 days and looking out of the window, more like a
hotel on rails. But I'd very afraid of bureaucracy: entry visa, transit visa,
various railway companies and their mess of various offers and discounts… Land
trip across Asia means passing through countries like Iran, China or Russia.
And given how unkind seems rail travel even within EU's borders (where only
the last problems applies, and you can get all schedule informations you need
by just typing your destination at <http://oebb.at> or similar site) for many
people, and not because the length of the trip.

On the other hand, it would be wonderful business opportunity for travel
agencies. And much more interesting than just booking the right plane. I
almost want it to happen :-)

~~~
hugh3
Last December I flew SFO to Buenos Aires to SFO to Sydney to SFO in the space
of a month. If I'd done that via land and sea I would have spent the whole
month on a vehicle. (Actually it kinda felt that way anyway).

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ErrantX
Very eloquent.

The thing that has surprised me with all these Airplane groundings is the
number of companies who say they could go out of business. One of the smaller
firms has said they will be effectively bankrupt if they can't start flying on
Monday. I just heard Easyjet on the radio saying they need to fly at least 2
weeks in the next month to avoid "financial instability".

I know the aviation industry is struggling but didn't realise they were _that_
close to the wire.

~~~
nfnaaron
I hope we don't have a disaster because aviation authorities were pressured
into opening the skies too early.

~~~
ErrantX
That's what's concerning me too.

It's partly ironic; I expect if there had been a terror attack grounded planes
would be accepted, but people on the news last night seemed actually cross
this was affecting them....

One guy even said (and I swear this is a quote): "but it looks clear out
there, it's not at ground level is it?"

doh.

~~~
gaius
Most laypeople do think it's a problem with visibility and can't understand
why if planes can fly at night they can't fly through dust. That it will
destroy the engines (and won't show up on radar, so you can't just avoid it)
never occurs to them. I suppose it's nice to live in a world in which flight
is taken for granted.

~~~
rmundo
With all the media attention you would think the dangers of flying in this
would have been clearly explained to everyone by now.

~~~
ErrantX
BBC One had a fantastic news report the other night that explained it really
clearly. I was impressed.

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grellas
Flights were grounded _en masse_ at the turn of millennium and the bizarre
quiet of the skies over the San Francisco Peninsula gave me a sort of surreal
feeling that made me think, contrary to the elegiac vision of the author of
this piece, "what would it have been like to have been born, lived, and died
without planes, electricity, running water, and other modern conveniences and
probably fallen victim to some pestilent disease by the time I was 30, just
like my great-great-great grandparents did back in the villages of Greece from
which they never traveled more than 25 miles during their entire lifetimes?"

It made me kind of shudder to think that this had been the lot of most of
humanity throughout all the centuries and made me grateful for what we have
today.

Nicely written piece, though.

~~~
dschobel
The piece definitely has a quaint naivete to it.

Thinking that it's somehow the things we build which are ruining our lives
rather than we creators and our priorities in building them.

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tybris
> The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had
> only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and
> ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence
> next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would
> complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not
> quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.

That seems arrogant and ungrateful, but he left out that airplanes tortured 4
senses and merely teased the 5th. They did not in anyway make you feel human.

~~~
whatusername
But they let you _FLY_ through the _AIR_. Seriously - it's pretty awesome.

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spolsky
Alain de Botton is a beautiful writer... if you liked this, you'll love "A
week at the airport," a whole book full of this kind of stuff from Heathrow
Airport. (Currently not available in US, but you can order from Amazon UK with
your US account).

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ninguem2
Time to bring back the Zeppelin.

~~~
c1sc0
Yay! That would be a boon for my local economic region (Bodensee, home of the
Zeppelin!)

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jonp
I'm pleased he thinks that bees will survive.

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andr
Assuming that the ash layer remains at altitudes over 32,000 ft., would not
airlines eventually start flying at lower altitudes, albeit slower, with more
stopovers, and more costly?

~~~
v4us
IT is possible. but it will be twice slower and twice more expensive ... but
yes.

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jarek
High speed rail; high speed ships.

Once humanity is hooked on the fast, easy travel, I'm not convinced there's
going back.

(Of course, trains still make noise and there are those who think rail lines
are ugly, to say nothing of the seas of asphalt. We aren't going back to
nature anytime soon.)

~~~
dschobel
That fact that you think air travel fails to qualify as fast or easy shows how
spoiled we are and is kind of humorous.

~~~
jarek
No, I think it does qualify as fast, at least as far as actual travel is
concerned (let's not go into on the ground procedures right now). I meant that
high speed rail and ships would soon be created and improved if we really
didn't have the airspace anymore.

~~~
gaius
I don't think you realize just how fast planes are compared to ships. A decent
speed for a ship is 20kts. An airliner routinely makes 500kts. Hours become
days and days become weeks. Everyone's world becomes a _lot_ smaller unless
you want to spend your entire vacation traveling.

~~~
jarek
I actually do realize that.

(Nitpick: the 747-400, "among the fastest airliners in service", has a cruise
speed of 913 km/h or 493 knots, so I'd dispute the "routinely" -- but your
point definitely stands.)

That's why I made it a point to include the "created and improved". Right now,
it's much easier to barrel through low-resistance air. A ship twice or three
times as fast as your average passenger ship will still be an inferior choice
to an airplane on most (probably not all, but definitely most) routes. There
is therefore little incentive to try to improve ships. In most cases, it's
just not going to pay. The situation is similar for rail travel on longer
routes: there's little money in making the Trans-Siberian go faster.

 _If_ we can no longer barrel through air, whether worldwide or on a selection
of routes (European airports to Keflavík, for instance), suddenly making the
ship or the train go twice as fast is much, much more appealing. Return on
investment is much better, so investment is going to pick up.

The current airplane speeds actually help this argument. Once people are used
to trips taking days, not weeks, convincing them to pay premium for something
that feeds the speed addiction is easier.

I don't know what the technology will be, or how far it will go. It's very
likely that it won't go as fast as airplanes. But already, with the limited
reward, we have passengers ships that go over 40 knots (HSC Manannan). If I
had to guess, catamarans, hovercraft-like, and ekranoplan-like technologies
might play a role, but I really don't know where we'll end up. It will
undoubtedly be difficult, but engineers don't roll over just because water is
more viscous.

Similarly, conventional high-speed rail exceeded 300 knots in test runs.
There's probably room to go up, but little reward for investment because right
now you still have to compete with 400-500 knot airplanes. Once you don't, and
people are willing to pay for any extra speed... who knows what will happen.

(Can you tell I'm an idealistic engineering student?)

~~~
gaius
Boeing is quoting speed _through the air_ there. With a tailwind ground speed
will be higher - and airlines plot their courses to take advantage of it
wherever possible (e.g. the jetstream). That's why I say "routinely".

One of the reasons the Dutch are so eager to fly again is they are the world
centre of the flower business - but only if they have air freight.

~~~
jarek
Fair enough.

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xexers
Very relevant Louis CK standup bit: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-
Gk&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-
Gk&feature=player_embedded)

~~~
BrandonM
Here's a better link to that same clip:
<http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/video/item/56>

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cosmicray
Everything I've read talks about the potential for damage to jet engines. Does
that extend to turbo-prop engines ?

I know they fly slower, but in a real emergency, could smaller cargo aircraft
(e.g. C-130) still fly ?

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v4us
Turbo-prop is in the same danger (TURBO means they use turbine) Piston engines
looks to be in safter zone. And prolly we can use it.

~~~
stan_rogers
Piston engines are just as vulnerable, the only difference being that the
failure mode (scouring versus glassing) is slower, so there's a somewhat
better chance of survival.

As for the original question, current commercial and military cargo aircraft
don't use "jet" engines anymore, they use turbofans, where the vast majority
of the thrust comes from a ducted fan at the front of the engine rather than
from heated and accelerated exhaust gas. The main differences between
turboprop and turbofan configurations are (1) the duct, which allows far more
efficient high-speed airflow at the expense of low-speed (near-static) thrust,
and (2) the variable pitch and "eddy wall" (in which the turbulence of the
propeller wash creates a virtual surface behind the propeller, allowing
greater pressure to build up) of the propeller (as opposed to a fan), which
provide a huge advantage in short takeoff and landing.

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aw3c2
One thing for sure, even though the ash is probably not good for the
environment itself, having a severe cut down on aircraft flights is good for
nature.

~~~
antipaganda
When all aircraft were grounded over the USA after 9-11, the temperature over
the USA spiked 1.1 degrees above expected. It then fell back when flights
resumed.

It turns out that the contrails left by aircraft bounce some of the solar
radiation back into space before it reaches the ground, which stops it being
converted into infra-red and being trapped in the atmosphere.

So if global aviation ceased entirely, it would help global warming along
quite a bit. Of course, the emissions would be gone, but their effect is long-
term...

~~~
hugh3
Got a source on that? Any strong evidence that it was a true temperature spike
due to that effect rather than... y'know, the usual week-to-week fluctuations
of weather?

~~~
JeremyBanks
[http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.cl...](http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate/)

It has nothing to do with global warming, but it's a true story.

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gaius
This is how it ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.

~~~
mmastrac
I think the volcano itself makes more of a "bang" sound. :)

