
NY to SF in 10 Minutes - nicoslepicos
https://medium.com/@nicolaerusan/ny-to-sf-in-10-minutes-13edeab7132a#.acvl6wq3s
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ksec
44 Min between NY and SF?!!! Interesting note is the distance between it is
much greater then i thought, 4100 Km! Considering some part of Asia like
HongKong to London is only 9600Km. For what i think is an inland distance
flight this is very far apart.

I also wonder how much more speed can we get? 5000 Miles per hour possible?
Making Anywhere around the world possibly within 2 hours flight.

Also wonder on the bottleneck being inland transport and Check in.

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Someone
_" so we all hopped a ride down to Rio where we spent the rest of the day at
the beach"_

I'm not sure I would like that hypothetical world, because that beach would be
crowded beyond what one can imagine, or, alternatively, controls would be
implemented to manage crowding. For example, if people now are willing to
spend $500 to travel to Rio, and the price drops to $5, one could easily
require non-locals to buy beach permits for $100 a day or $250 a week. The
best beaches could even go higher and aim for the jet set as, for example,
Monaco already does to some extent, and China and Nepal do for Mount Everest.

So far, things seem sort-of OK, but of course, people would flock to other
places as well. Millions would want to visit the poles for a few hours, see
total solar eclipses at the most remote places, and the trek of the wildebeest
would be dwarfed by the trek of the tourists. We would need lots of new rules
to protect natural habitats that now partly are protected because that are so
remote.

~~~
nicoslepicos
Definitely agree, fast, cheap travel also makes more apparent the issue of
scarcity in high-demand areas (e.g. the beach in Rio). Interesting to consider
if those areas are actually less crowded because you can get to more
alternatives easily, and fewer people actually live there permanently because
they could live in the remote country side and just go there for the day.

Not sure how things shake out as these transportation trends evolve: do you
still have a tendency to crowded areas, or do you actually end up getting more
diffusion. Suburbs were the city planner's utopia for a long time, but traffic
and feelings of lack of community ended up making them less appealing than
originally imagined. Maybe the suburb approach becomes more compelling again
if problems of traffic & lack of community are addressed.

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PhilWright
I am all in favour of imaging a utopian future but basic economics do not
suddenly disappear in the future.

Even if we ignore the ridiculous cost of $5 for the travel itself, what about
the cost of travelling to and from airports? Uber, trams, trains, car and
hyperloop all will cost money.

Are we going to have an airport in every suburb? I thought not, so that adds
quite some travel time. If not using your own car then you have to wait for
the Uber, tram, train, hyperloop to arrive as well.

I guess the plane will carry no baggage so that travellers can get straight on
and off without any delays. Just hand luggage everyone!

~~~
nicoslepicos
One strategy for imagining possible designs is to think in extremes in order
to stimulate the imagination. I'm not suggesting this type of trip would be
feasible for $5 in the next decade, maybe not the next 50 years, maybe not the
next 150 years, maybe it'll never be possible - but as a thought exercise it's
interesting to consider what _would_ need to happen to reduce the cost &
friction to that point.

Let's consider what some of the things that would need to happen are to
address the problems you bring up:

Cheap, virtually free sources of energy would need to play a part. To solve
the issues of airports, maybe it's that we have personal flying crafts capable
of vertical takeoff instead of relying on centralized airports. Maybe there's
a way to get picked up by an airplane at your house (not saying I have any
idea what that might look like, but it gets you to start imagining approaches
around the constraints). What would possible solutions to the baggage issue
you brought up be?

This thought exercise prompts is meant to prompt ideas around what things
could look like in the extreme, so that we can then consider what might need
to happen to get to something like that. For sure there's lots of hurdles, and
some of them may actually be fundamental limits - though I'm not sure that
such limits exist here.

Last point I'll make is that economic assumptions do change over time
substantially. Until the industrial revolution in the 18th century, economics
looked very different than it does today - GDP per capita did not increase as
any increase in GDP was met by a proportional increase in population
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap)).
The assumptions we have about how our economy functions today could
dramatically shift over time as technological advances shift the dynamics of
the system. Abundant food, energy & energy storage, along with automated
skilled robotic labor, could challenge many of our current economic ideas.

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spyspy
As far as I was aware, plane development has pretty much plateaued as
engineers have eked ever diminishing returns from materials and aerospace
engineering. Commercial airliners today don't look much different than planes
manufactured in the 70s. Supersonic airliners are the next logical step, but
they aren't anywhere near the author's dreams laid out at the beginning.

