
Drop the Supersonic Aircraft Ban - jackgavigan
http://www.wsj.com/articles/drop-the-supersonic-aircraft-ban-watch-business-boom-1465769638
======
fisherjeff
Given that supersonic travel has zero effect on time spent in the airport -
which is a large fraction of travel time when flying domestically - I just
don't think that the cost/benefit math comes even close to working out for
most people. Especially for the famously cost-conscious airline industry [0].

If the premise of this article were true, then lifting the ban would be a
major legislative priority for the airlines and likely already be lifted.

[0]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=7E-c6ni5MfYC&pg=PA107&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=7E-c6ni5MfYC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=Bob%20Crandall%20olive%20story&source=bl&ots=Say2jSbu--&sig=4xhyzJFpGt6fbW-
ZenVJHRqM5_s&hl=en&ei=tgNXTpC6E4fC0AHQnISQDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CFcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
barney54
With coast-to-coast travel, time spent in the airport is a much lower fraction
of travel time. That's why the coast-to-coast flights make sense for
supersonic travel.

We don't know if the cost/benefit math works out until people are able to try.

~~~
fisherjeff
Coast-to-coast is definitely the best case scenario. I recently flew SEA->ATL,
and it took 4.5 hours at mach ~0.7. So with airport time, let's say ~6 hours
total.

Even ignoring differences in sub/supersonic flight (i.e., being
unrealistically conservative), doubling my cruise speed to mach 1.5 would've
increased fuel consumption by 4x while bringing my total travel time down to
around 4 hours. So it'd be (probably significantly more than) 4x the cost just
to reduce my travel time by 30%. Again, that's for the "best case" of coast-
to-coast travel.

~~~
throwanem
> So with airport time, let's say ~6 hours total.

How'd you manage to spend (average) only 45 minutes in the airport on each
end? Even pre-TSA, I never managed to go from front door to jetway that fast.

~~~
bewaretheirs
Depended heavily on the airport layout and how close you want to cut it on the
departure side. Avoiding checked bags is a significant timesaver.

I missed a few flights doing this but pre-9/11 it was definitely possible (but
not advisable) to get to a smaller airport 30-45 minutes before departure and
make the flight.

On the arrival side, back in the good old days (mid to late 90's?) with no
checked luggage I could get from the arrival gate to Hertz #1 club gold rental
car pickup (when it was in the terminal A garage) at SJC without breaking
stride - probably 5 minutes max from the aircraft door to car door.

~~~
schoen
Post-9/11 it was often possible to make weekday morning flights at OAK
arriving only 20 minutes before. (I did it a number of times!) Self-print
Southwest boarding pass, almost no security line, everything is 3-4 minutes'
walk from everything else.

Nowadays OAK has been expanded and the security lines are longer (and they
have body scanners, which I opt out of, which also then takes longer).

------
BorgHunter
Even if the noise problem has been fixed, supersonic travel has another huge
problem: Fuel consumption. Concorde positively guzzled fuel compared to the
jets of its day, and this (among other things) made it uneconomical to
operate. The authors of this article never even touched this topic. Has it
improved considerably?

~~~
barisser
You're right; let's go nuclear:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-
powered_aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft)

~~~
baldfat
I actually would think that could be done "safely". No sarcasm. I am expecting
that if fusion ever becomes a reality we will go with electric motors which
will certainly always be sub-sonic.

~~~
snovv_crash
If you vary the inlet and outlet geometry of a ducted fan you can have your
fan running at subsonic, while the plane moves supersonic.

~~~
rrmm
You could also heat the airstream after the compressor.

------
Animats
The WSJ is probably thinking about the supersonic bizjets being proposed for
the 1%.[1] Bizjet passengers get to bypass the main TSA lines.

(Well, more like the 0.01%. Aereon's proposed price is $110 million for a 12
passenger supersonic aircraft. It's only Mach 1.6, while Concorde was over
Mach 2. If you have to ask about operating cost, you can't afford it.)

[1] [http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/](http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/)

~~~
blastrat
most "private jets" are "fractional" timeshares, so you don't have to pay the
full $110 million. See [http://NetJets.com/](http://NetJets.com/)

still, it's also "fractional" 1% anyway, 1% doesn't get you in a private
plane. Evidence that we live in the time of oligarchs, they call the fast
plane they want to get noise approval for _BOOM_

and BTW, for those thinking about it, even when you "own" it, the cost of
every flight is much more than 1st class tickets.

------
hristov
This is a really bad and superficial article.

They try to dismiss the idea of a sonic boom as a product of the imagination
of a crazy environmentalist. But the sonic boom is a well documented and
completely uncontroversial fact.

Then they try to set up a strawman by implying that the main concern is
architectural damage and therefore if there is no architectural damage
everything would be ok. But there is still the concern of health and quality
of life damage to humans. Imagine if you lived by a major airport and you had
to hear a sonic boom every couple of minutes.

Then the idea that modern materials and light-weighting would significantly
reduce the sonic boom is rather unlikely. A passenger plane will have a
limited benefit from lightweighting, because you cannot light-weight the
cargo. You will probably get much quieter sonic booms if you have small
business jet style planes, but it would still be there. Fighter planes are
entirely too small and too expensive to be business jets and they still create
quite a noticeable boom.

There has been a lot of research on how to minimize booms. It has not really
resulted in anything acceptable. But, hey, if someone makes a supersonic
passenger plane with a sonic boom that is too quiet to cause any issues, sure
we should change the law.

But to change the law based on stary-eyed belief that the magic of
lighweighting will make everything ok is just stupid.

------
Someone
Firstly, I wasn't aware there was a ban on supersonic flight. I thought
Concorde was banned simply because it was too noisy, not because of concerns
over sonic booms.

Secondly, reading
[https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ap...](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/apl/noise_emissions/supersonic_aircraft_noise/media/noise_policy_on_supersonics.pdf),
I have the impression that the FAA already is working towards lifting this
ban. Quote (2008):

 _We anticipate that any future Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued by the
FAA affecting the noise operating rules would propose that any future
supersonic airplane produce no greater noise impact on a community than a
subsonic airplane._

Given that, I expect that, if a manufacturer shows up with a supersonic plane
that fits that bill, the FAA almost has to allow it to fly over the US.

~~~
crististm
The noise of the engine is not that big of a problem as the sonic boom. This
one is loud and becomes annoying and distracting pretty fast. In fact this is
why Concorde routes were over the ocean: there was nobody to complain there
about the sonic boom.

~~~
dalke
Quoting from the link:

> Current research is dedicated toward reducing the impact of sonic booms
> before they reach the ground, in an effort to make overland flight
> acceptable. Recent research has produced promising results for low boom
> intensity, and has renewed interest in developing supersonic civil aircraft
> that could be considered environmentally acceptable for supersonic flight
> over land.

------
jacquesm
Drop the silly security theater and the need to be at the airport hours in
advance of the flight. That will do a lot more for speeding up airtravel than
enabling supersonic flight for the happy few and it will apply to _all_
flights.

~~~
alkonaut
People keep repeating this, it sounds terrible.

I'm at the airport 30 min before departure from a small domestic airport, 1h
before departure for a domestic flight from a large airport, and maybe 1.5h,
max, before departure for an international flight. For none of them do I
expect more than 5 minutes of security.

Unless I'm flying to the US in which case the security charade takes hours.

This is a TSA problem not a general problem with air travel.

~~~
jacquesm
It is a problem because the _actual_ checks take minutes but all the delays
turn those minutes into hours. And probably those hours translate into
opportunities to bypass the various checks.

~~~
alkonaut
By "5 minutes of security" I meant all the queuing for bag drops, security
checks etc, not just the actual check.

By delay you mean standing in line, waiting for the security check? From what
I hear the time in security has become worse in later years in the US, what is
the reason for that? Less staff at checkpoints? More thurough checks?

------
reidacdc
Several years ago, I read Erik Conway's "High Speed Dreams", and learned about
an important feedback loop that operates in the SST world.

What happens is, you design an SST, figure out the noise profile, and are
horrified. You pour a ton of research effort into making it quieter. The aero
engine industry adopts your awesome quieting technology across the board,
subsonic aircraft get much quieter, people's expectations adjust, and for all
your effort, your SST is still the noisiest bird in the sky. Because you're
this huge outlier, you get a lot of negative regulatory attention, which
manifests in the form of flight-path and operating-hour restrictions.

You can make SSTs quieter, but they'll never be the quietest.

This isn't about sonic booms directly, but it's absolutely relevant, SSTs
still have to take off and land, and you can't use engines with those giant
fans on the front and hope to perform.

The technical solution, if it exists, is to come up with an engine-quieting
technology that somehow _only_ works for high-thrust low-bypass SST engines.
That will break you out of the loop. AFAIK, no such technology exists.

------
gambiting
I thought another problem was that there is no market for shorter flights if
they are still too long to do in a single day?

To give an example - Concorde's 3h flight time from London to New York was
perfect, because there were people actually interested in going to US/UK for a
day for business and coming back the same night. But Concorde wasn't very
popular on longer routes, because if you were going to spend 6 hours on a
plane you might as well spend 12 and fly overnight, getting some good sleep,
and saving yourself a tonne of money.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Agreed, and this is why it makes sense to allow the Concorde to (noisily) zoom
over the Atlantic while not necessarily subjecting flyover state Americans to
sonic booms from New York to LA.

As for the longer flights, the 16 hour Los Angeles->Sydney experience is
hellish. Depending on the price, I would certainly shell out to get there
quicker.

~~~
ghaff
In business or first, I wouldn't describe trans-Pacific flights as "hellish."
More like long and boring. But you almost certainly get into range issues with
supersonic on those routes. A longer non-stop flight in a premium class is
probably going to be preferable to a flight that has to stop in, say,
Anchorage to refuel.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I wouldn't be complaining if I didn't fly coach.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
So you'd be willing to pay more for a faster flight but you aren't willing to
pay more for a better class of seats?

~~~
njloof
Yes.

I can live with a cramped seat for 4 hours, plus I get an extra day at home on
each end in place of travel time. And I don't end up at a hotel at 10AM
waiting for my room to be ready.

~~~
ghaff
>plus I get an extra day at home on each end in place of travel time.

That seems optimistic. East coast US to western Europe (which is the 3-4 hr
scenario you mention for supersonic flight) you're cutting a get-in-late
flight (or a redeye) to an SST leaving in the morning to arrive in the
evening. Which isn't gaining a day.

Returning, you can already get a direct flight from Europe that leaves in the
AM and arrives early PM. An SST still isn't gaining you a day.

Theoretical long haul routes over the Pacific potentially gain you more but
now you're potentially sitting in seats for 8+ hours and it's pretty much a
guarantee that no carrier is going to offer that sort of flight with cramped
seats.

------
Roboprog
I'm guessing that the people wanting this are going to charter smaller planes,
where you walk into a small airport, the clerk at the desk says "Good morning,
Mr Warbucks", and you walk out the back 2 minutes later onto your chartered
plane.

Things like the cost and TSA don't apply to these people, they just want to
get across the country and back in a single day, and still have time to check
on how their minions are operating their interests outside of the NYC - DC
region.

At least, that's what I would want if I could affort it :-)

~~~
Roboprog
I got to ride the company plane once at my previous job, and that's pretty
much exactly what the scene was, other than having to show my work badge since
the clerk of course didn't know a minion like me.

That plane (a turboprop) "only" went about 300 MPH or so (on a longer trip),
rather than Mach +, but to get from the Sacramento area to the east bay, you
make pretty good time - about 15 to 20 minutes in the air.

------
kw71
The US military uses the river that runs behind my rural property as kind of a
track for some kind of supersonic flight.

I've heard them for years, with periods of daily activity, but never seen one,
for by the time I hear the sonic boom they are gone from view.

I don't understand why the military is allowed to do this but nobody else.

~~~
colejohnson66
Because it's the military, obviously /s

------
rando444
There is a Concorde that is being returned to service, although not in the US.
So I guess we'll be able to see with first hand evidence whether or not
business will actually "boom".

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/18/supersonic-
bre...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/18/supersonic-breakthrough-
concorde-could-fly-again-within-four-years)

~~~
gsnedders
As far as I'm aware, Airbus have shown no interest in paying for the type
certificate to be reinstated (they withdrew it after AF/BA withdrew them).
Without that, there's no question about it flying.

------
frenchman_in_ny
Where's the team on Boom[0] on this?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11346947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11346947)

------
lujim
The cost of speed rises exponentially while the returns are linear. This is
true even in subsonic flight, but above mach 1 the penalties are prohibitive.
No gas turbine, jet fuel powered aircraft will ever make this commercially
viable without being subsidized.

~~~
sokoloff
Most of the components of the cost are at most cubic with speed, not
exponential. Fuel consumption is quadratic with speed and power required is
cubic (roughly).

------
rando444
For those that need to get around the paywall

[https://www.google.dk/search?q=Drop+the+Supersonic+Aircraft+...](https://www.google.dk/search?q=Drop+the+Supersonic+Aircraft+Ban%2C+Watch+Business+Boom)

~~~
jackgavigan
Or you could click on the "web" link at the top of this page...

~~~
LeonM
Or, when using chrome, prefix the URL with a '?'

------
batbomb
Growing up near a few Air Force bases (Holloman/White Sands and Kirtland)
you'd occasionally hear sonic booms. They'd do quite a number on sliding glass
doors with tons of visible wobble.

------
keithly
This first part of this talk is relevant-- about the viability of SST and
subsonic commercial flight actually being "good enough":
[http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm)

------
lujim
Another factor is that with advances in global communication is that it may be
hard to justify the need to physically go from JFK to LAX at mach 2 just to
conduct business.

~~~
Loughla
>is that it may be hard to justify the need to physically go from JFK to LAX
at mach 2 just to conduct business

My experience is that these types of trips are less about business, and more
about glad-handing and greasing wheels.

Those are two things which are difficult to do on Skype.

------
hx87
In terms of regulation, wouldn't it make more economic and comfort sense to
enable sleeper-only flights where everyone lies down, ala Japanese capsule
hotels? Tight spaces are much more comfortable when I'm lying down than when
I'm sitting.

~~~
ulfw
These used to exist (and still do on some flights). I flew on Singapore
Airlines from LAX to SIN when they still had their Airbus A340-500 flying
nonstop in about 18 hours between Singapore and Newark or Los Angeles. The
whole plane was just 100 seats, business, lie-flat only. Frankly with the odd
wide seating they have, you could have easily put 140-150 in there.

------
blobbers
My old car was a humble Honda, but the fact that it had their F1 Technology
filtering down into the engine made it a really great car (9000 RPM redline +
VTEC cam switching). I could see a modernization of cross atlantic/pacific
flights from military technologies filtering down into private/passenger jets.

Yes, you have to pay more but at my stage in life I am willing to trade money
for more time.

I'd rather pay double for a flight for a doubling in speed (business speed)
than a doubling in comfort (business class.)

A 5 hour flight from NYC to Asia would be amazing!

------
ubersync
Please don't. Think about the environment. Let the industry focus on fuel
efficiency rather than speed. If the ban is lifted, a lot of R&D money will go
into speed.

~~~
felipesabino
It seems that industry has already been focused on fuel efficiency and
consequently speed has decreased significantly in the last decades [1]

[1]
[https://slice.mit.edu/2014/03/19/airtravel/](https://slice.mit.edu/2014/03/19/airtravel/)

~~~
barney54
The slower speeds waste a non-renewable resource--time. Extra time spent
travelling is time that we can't get back.

~~~
onion2k
That's only true if you can't make any use of the time while you're at the
airport or in the air. You absolutely can, even if you're 'only' reading a
physical document.

------
jheriko
i can't be arsed to circumvent the need to sign up or subscribe... but ban?!?!
are we misremembering what happened somehow?

what happened was a total stagnation in that direction due to lack of demand.
they already had to charge a premium for concorde...

------
shraken
I remember hearing the boom from the STS117 space shuttle in San Diego when it
was landing at Edwards back in the summer of the 2007. Shit's loud, even at
100 miles.

------
barisser
This is Peter Thiel's hypothesis in action: that the world of things sees
little progress due largely to regulation.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Peter Thiel has a lot of hypotheses tho
[https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/09/paypal-co-
fou...](https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/09/paypal-co-founder-
peter-thiel-address-white-nationalist-friendly-“property-and-freedom)

~~~
stuaxo
Wow, the ending - with friends like Milo, who needs enemies?

------
JoshTriplett
I wonder if this is a sign of initial efforts by Boom
([http://boom.aero/](http://boom.aero/)) to turn public interest and policy in
favor of supersonic?

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I feel like this is one of those things we can afford to let China get ahead
of us on, and if it works good, if not, it didn't cost us anything.

------
ivoras
Since when was "Concorde regulated out of existence"?

Wikipedia says it's simply because of economical reason it was retired:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Retirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Retirement)

Not every failure is an anti-free-market conspiracy.

~~~
jessriedel
I have no love for this article, but everyone should be able to agree on a
couple of points: (1) Cutting the size of the potential market by an order of
magnitude can be the difference between economical and uneconomical. (2)
Limitations on negative noise externalities should be implemented based on
actual noise produced (dB, or whatever), not on whether the aircraft is
supersonic per se.

------
jgalt212
> if fusion ever becomes a reality

The whole world changes. No more wars over oil.

~~~
baldfat
Wars are over ideology.... :(

~~~
PeterisP
I can't recall even a single war in the last hundred years that was over
ideology.

Almost all wars used a lot of ideology in the propaganda to motivate the
soldiers and workers, but the actual reasons for starting them pretty much
always come down to gaining or ensuring control over resources, or realpolitik
- incite a conflict that we get some advantage in the global game, so that
some strategic oil line doesn't get built, or overthrow their government so
that their trade policies are the way we want.

~~~
baldfat
1) ISIS Taliban (Religious Ideology Iraq and Afghanistan) (We haven't gone to
war with other Oil Rich Countries and Afghanistan doesn't have oil)

2) Vietnam (Cold War Communism) don't see an oil attachment))

3) Korea (Cold War Communism) don't see an oil attachment))

4) I would argue WW2 Japan and Hitler was an ideology more then a grab for
oil. Killing of Polish, Homosexuals, Jews and Russians was not for oil

5) WW1 -
[http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/causeww1.htm](http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/causeww1.htm)
Too long to comment on this but it was certainly not about oil

I find the wars for oil in the conspiracy realm. People will say the American
Revolution and Civil War was over commodities but I HIGHLY disagree i.e.
French Revolution happened over the same ideology.

War fought specifically around oil (Iraq Kuwait) I fail to see other examples.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/nine-wars-that-were-fought-
ov...](http://www.businessinsider.com/nine-wars-that-were-fought-over-
commodities-2012-8?op=1)

~~~
tanderson92
To your point (4), I would counter that while WW2 Hitler was certainly
ideology, WW2 Japan may indeed have been oil. Remember that the UK & US were
squeezing Japan's oil access (90% of oil came from US imports which we
blocked) and their only option was to assert themselves militarily and conquer
the East Indies for oil. The rest is escalation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II#Competi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II#Competition_for_resources_and_markets)

~~~
WalterBright
> WW2 Hitler was certainly ideology

Lebensraum?

~~~
baldfat
Definition

Lebensraum (German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm] ( listen), "living space")
refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected
with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One
variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.

------
bogomipz
I wish HN would ban or at least officially frown upon posting links that are
behind a pay wall. How can you reasonably discuss an article you can't read?

~~~
DanBC
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

~~~
bogomipz
Mea culpa, thanks.

