

In 2050, Flight Time From Europe to Australia Will Be 90 Minutes - dmoney67
http://mashable.com/2013/01/24/hypersonic-spaceliner/

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TamDenholm
Aren't we supposed to have hoverboards and jetpacks by now? All we have is a
million photosharing apps...

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fmsf
Isn't it commonly accepted that when R&D say "10 years" they actually mean
"hopefully", "20 years" they mean "we don't know how to do it, but we might
discover it" while "30+ years" means science fiction?

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koyote
Relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/678/>

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yk
> But he suggested the project could make enough progress to begin attracting
> private funding in another 10 years and aim for full operations by 2050.

So private enterprise will finance some project for 30 years before it starts
to become operational? Considering that rocket scientists are usually not
idiots, it seems that there could be an actually interesting story behind the
"90 Minutes" headline.

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tobiasu
[http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10663/115...](http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10663/1150_read-4515/)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceLiner>

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symmetricsaurus
What is new here? Rocket powered aircraft concepts have been around at least
since World War II. This seems to build on proven technology so why should we
need to wait until 2050?

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arethuza
The Germans "considered" a sub-orbital bomber for attacking the US in WW2:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel>

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peteretep
Brilliant, I'll be able to dock with it from my flying car :-/

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nraynaud
you know that the 4h Paris-NY has been killed 10 years ago after more than 20
years of service right ? And what killed it is not technology but economy.

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anonymouz
In 2013, Mashable is writing ridiculous headlines.

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islon
Sounds extremely inefficient, not to say it's a rocket. I can't even imagine
how hard it would be to land this thing.

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perlgeek
or maybe in 2050 only the super rich can afford to fly, because kerosine got
so expensive? Who knows?

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hnwh
great.. in 2050 I'll be dead..

