Prohibitively expensive cost would probably be the reason for “not”. Though for business class and luxury travel, I suppose it could be feasible, ignoring ethical dilemmas of using a lot of energy to indulge the rich. But as a society, we ignore that. So that’s all sorted.
Airlines in general started as an object for business class and "luxury" travel (despite looking really, really not luxury today). Took almost 100 years to get to today's point of being completely accessible for everyone.
No. The sonic boom is not something that only happens once, it happens continuously as the airplane forces its way forwards through the still moving air in front of it. This is why supersonic flight has been held back. Transcontinental flights are banned in the US (since 1973) and Europe because they would cause a boom all along their flight path.
Ah actually the Wikipedia page explains better - from the perception of someone on the ground it’s a single boom, because the sound is caused by the wave front of the shockwave cone. But the cone is continuous along the path.
In what way does it not exist? We let exorbitantly rich people live in extreme luxury while extremely poor people literally starve to death. It's certainly not a new ethical dilemma but it definitely exists.
That assumes that one's need is automatically a claim on a third party's life, which is not the case. For there to be a claim there needs to be direct harm shown, otherwise there is no claim, there is only the possibility of willing, unforced charity from the third party if they choose to provide it.
In the alleged ethical dilemma I was responding to there is clearly no claim that would bar fast passenger travel per se. There is possibly a claim in a round about way if the externalities of carbon output are not taxed at their marginal cost via a carbon tax, but that is not a reason an ethical dilemma to be considered for fast travel, it is an ethical dilemma of improperly priced externalities and would again not be a reason to bar fast passenger travel.
What this article is missing is any indication whatsoever that these people have somehow overcome (or even have a theoretical plan to overcome) the myriad issues that make hypersonic flight very very very difficult.
Anyone can toss out a series A, a high mach number, and some renders. Why do these people have an article? What is the story here?
Over the time the overland ban has been in place, commercial airline speeds have stagnated and even regressed. Before the ban, speeds kept increasing. From the Boeing 314 Clipper to Concorde was only 37 years. Now that Concorde has retired, we are flying slower than the cruise speed of the Boeing 707 in 1958.
(1) The linear extrapolation of maximum speed over time--a trend that is driven almost entirely by the Concorde--to 2,500 miles per hour today is ludicrous. I thought this was a joke when I first read it but the author seemed to take it seriously.
(2) The decrease in speed (which is slight, ignoring the Concorde) has more to do with deregulation and airlines competing on price post-1978 than with the speed limit. Flying somewhat slower is more fuel efficient, and when customers choose flights based on cost being fuel efficient means being competitive. The author makes no mention of this factor.
It may be reasonable to remove the speed limit, but it would almost certainly not result in a broad renaissance of supersonic commercial flight. As a niche for the rich, like the Concorde was, maybe. But the majority of travelers are still going to select cheaper subsonic flights, and PR pressure to fly more fuel efficient planes will also bolster subsonic flight.
At subsonic speeds, airlines have been slowing planes down to save fuel. There have been significant investments in data collection at all phases of flight resulting in models of the most fuel efficient way to fly. For example, Rolls Royce has a case study with Microsoft where they used AI models to teach pilots how to fly in a way that would save more fuel.
>Over the time the overland ban has been in place, commercial airline speeds have stagnated and even regressed. Before the ban, speeds kept increasing.
This is such a horseshit motivated reasoning claim. The speeds had nothing to do the sonic boom ban. Before the ban, the jet airliners maxed out around Mach .90. Nowadays, jet airliners max out around Mach .90. The supersonic airliners were a commercial failure. The 747 can cruise at Mach .92. Newer airlines forgo that because even the 747 never flies at that speed, because it is fuel inefficient.
Spacex also has plans for hypersonic flight through space. A rocket goes up and then goes horizontal and then lands at destination. Price point is close to business class on a 20 hour flight.
How much do things change? Flights halfway around the world won't be exhausting anymore. And to be rational, there should ONLY be flights that go ONLY halfway around the world. Otherwise, it is more economically disruptive and less resource friendly.
So that means, Beijing--New York, London--San Francisco, Dubai--Hawaii, South Africa --Tokyo, etc.
Flights halfway around the world won't be exhausting anymore.
I find the main exhausting part about transcontinental travel is first of all the jet lag, and secondly all the other steps that don't involve sitting in the plane. This doesn't really solve either of those problems. The actual sitting on an airplane part I find pretty relaxing.
> The actual sitting on an airplane part I find pretty relaxing.
Man I wish I felt that way. Every second I'm on a plane is torture to me. The tiny seat, that smell, the noise, the other people, my knees locked in position for hours and hours. I hate it so much.
All of your issues are solved by flying first class.
I mean, first class travel is not within my means either but if we're talking about rockets flying half way around the world we're not talking economy seats, not for a long time. If the prices were similar I imagine a lot of people would take an extremely comfortable long flight over a short cramped, g-force intense rocket trip.
That is true for the most part but in order for the rocket to be a successful, business, you only need a few passengers per day. The time savings makes a difference for the high earners
His E2E Starhip idea is so completely unviable and unrealistic that is is hard to even pick which argument should be used first :) . Everything about this idea is so wrong.
1. Price. Not viable, even using fantasy calculation of 2mil/flight (I suspect it will be at least 5-10 times more). You get 20000$ per ticket assuming full utilisation of 100 passengers. That's first class ticket price, or a seat at the shared business jet. So only rich people can afford it, but it is maybe realistic.
2. Utilisation - you will not find 100 people who simultaneously want to travel from A to B in the same exact hour while planning this trip weeks/months in advance. Planning trips is a vacation mode, business trips happen sporadically and quickly. This automatically throws off item #1 because then your price will skyrocket due to fewer people travelling.
3. Safety for passengers - no comments. Obvious blocker even on its own. Also Gov authorities will demand passengers training etc. (billionaire would go to months long training to save few hours of flight? lolno)
3b. Evacuation requirement. There is no possibility for quick evacuation of the 100 humans in spacesuits on the launchpad, so Gov will ban this idea.
4. G forces. Old and frail billionaires won't be able to fly this due to health concerns.
5. Landing pads. They need to be dozens of kilometers of both start and destination. This will eliminate any fantasies about saving time. And they will introduce immense additional expenses (so no 2mil flights).
6. Countries paranoia. Ballistic missiles of foreign force regularly overflying their countries in their airspace? Won't happen. The Axis of Pissed Contrarian Kids will block their airspace on principle (China, Ruzzia, all middle east, half of the South America etc.).
7. Reliability and reusability is not yet proven at all.
There are probably ten more issues with his plan if someone would sit and carefully analyze it and calculate costs.
tl;dr
Both hyperjets and passenger Starship is the same basic idea - futuristic travel via small but advanced "pods". Where "pods" is whatever futuristic looking vehicle of the day is used, with small capacity and unrealistic use case. Like hyperloop, autonomous cars, monorail cars, flying taxis, private rail vehicles etc. All complete bullshit.
All good points. I think this is why the main customer they are courting for this use case is the US military, which doesn't care about many of those things in peace time, and would care even less in war time.
There is a similar list for the military application, at least in my mind.
I used to love this idea, but when you actually think it through it's just not necessary / borderline plain dumb. Unless I am missing something, I really hope that US tax dollars are not thrown into this boondoggle.
1. This will come up on any ballistic missile radar as a threat. "Oh don't worry nuclear armed enemy, it's just cargo."
2. Unless it's a one-way trip, this would require huge infrastructure investment for "stage zero" and for logistics required for the oxygen and methane tank farms at both ends.
3. The trajectory is much more predictable than the flight path of say a C-17. This would greatly simplify interception.
4. The landing options are hugely limited compared to say a C-17. There is no go-around option. LZ got hot during transit? Too bad, we are landing!
5. I cannot identify the type of cargo that would be better served by the least stealthy delivery method possible, and most fragile landing infrastructure, only to save a dozen or so hours of transit time. Prepositioning the cargo closer to potential trouble zones and using traditional aircraft seems to be a much better idea in all cases that I can imagine.
It could be powerful against non peer adversaries. There are only a few countries that track ballistic launches, and with luck they would be delayed relaying the information to whatever useful fool of theirs the US military is invading until after SpaceForce Starship lands.
But, to attack my point, the utility is very limited - essentially for special ops insertion an hour or so before all the conventional forces show up. A very expensive paratrooper insertion with the possibility of a one way trip.
Even then the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers banging the door down are probably too vulnerable to SAM during the last phase of flight. I guess the hope would be that operators would ignore or be confused by a massive radar blip traveling at high speed before the suicidal burn?
The more realistic case for Starship is shipping lots and lots of military tonnage to orbit. Rods from God are achievable if Starship reuse pans out, and those are truly perfect hour zero weapons before the stealth planes show up.
I will just comment on the cost part. 100 percent Reusable rockets + saving money on food for international flights + passengers in tight pods with no walking room + no astronaut gear + little to no staff + 10 flights per day. Even if you only take 10 passengers a flight, you have a cost a little bit more than business class. If you take the number of hours a person saves and multiply that by executive wages ($200k), the savings are a no Brainer. Of anything, there is upside in raising the price.
Half of what you wrote is either unrealistic or completely unrealistic.
1) fully multi-reusable rocket - not yet proven. It can happen, or can't. No need to imagine anything - Shuttle famously had been marketed and designed as super rapidly and fully reusable. We all know how it really went.
2a) food costs - negligible savings.
2b) inability to eat tasty or even gourmet food, in a normal human position and environment (jet or first class seat) is actually a negative factor. But let's disregard it.
3) passengers in pods ??? - what's a "pod" here? A space suit with a different brand name?
4) passengers without space suit - lolno, won't happen. Maybe it would be some fancy low profile suits, like new SpaceX ones for Dragon use only, without space walks and EVA capabilities. Even then they would still be pressurized airtight suits. This is actually yet another negative factor for my list above. Manufacturing thousands of unused space suits in different sizes, so that on any flight they would have a hundred suits in arbitrary random sizes ready at each start complex is a laughable idea. Just the suits cost 0.5 million dollars each (4 suits = 1 fantasy Starship launch price (fantasy price, not the ship, obviously)). And their maintenance is also not cheap, regular checks, repairs, replacements, cleaning, etc. Costs would be astronomical.
5) little to no staff - doubtful but maybe. 2 pilots would be needed at minimum, and I suspect one or two more aux flight engineers too. No service crew, yes, that would be cost savings. But lets look wider. Maintenance crews for the Starhip - much bigger and much more senior and technical. Dispatchers at the cosmodromes - a lot of people in every location, dozens of people per location. Aircraft can be controlled by a lone dispatcher, maybe with an assistant. And the list goes on. There will be much more people involved per 100 passengers than with any aircraft of any size.
6) 10 flights a day - funnily enough, some industries DO NOT benefit from economies of scale. Like almost at all. Starship is one of them. Regardless of the number of flights per time period, if you will increase number of rockets, their costs would almost wont go down. They will stabilize after first few units and stay constant. Same with all operational costs. If you need to fuel 1 Starship you pay X money. For 10 Starships you pay 10X and no less. If you service 1 flight you pay in aggregate Y human/hours of highly qualified workforce wages. If you service 10 flights, you will pay 10Y for human/hours.
The only scalable component here is engine production, but after stabilizing manufacturing at some large number per year, cost drop would also stop.
And finally - 10 passengers per flight is not 20k, it is 200k dollars, which is 2-3 times more than entire top model large business jet rental for the whole flight. And jet is available on demand at the time and destination which YOU decide, airport is conveniently located almost in the city border and there are literally no restrictions of any kind in such flight for rich people. E2E rockets are not viable.
Flights aren’t exhausting now - indeed it’s 20 hours of calm Reading a book and sleeping, perhaps moreso in first than in business but business isn’t that bad.
The time zone change is another thing.
Compare with the g-forces of a suborbital flight.
It remains to be seen how much time could actually be saved. When I fly from Heathrow I turn up an hour beforehand and get on a plane. An hour from arrival to blastoff seems optimistic. Weather rarely affects things either.
All of these supersonic passenger craft have solved the issue with the noise. Nobody wants planes sending sonic booms over them, so the routes for these planes will be quite limited.
Cruising at 50km of altitude is one way to solve it. The problem I’ve always had with the idea of rocket-powered rapid aircraft like this is that, presumably, only the very wealthy could afford this. But what billionaire is going to risk the much higher risk of death compared to regular aircraft? Especially if they’re taking 10 long flights per year, I don’t see how you can engineer a rocket plane that doesn’t shorten life expectancy for frequent flyers by several years.
Airliners were at one time reserved for the rich. And they crashed, a lot. When you get to know a lot of ultra wealthy people you can sense a lot of these guys are pathological gamblers and have intimidatingly low risk aversion.
> Cruising at 50km of altitude is one way to solve it. The problem I’ve always had with the idea of rocket-powered rapid aircraft like this is that, presumably, only the very wealthy could afford this.
Surely the primary issues are that the efficiency would be dreadful and that the price would be ridiculous even for “the very wealthy”?
This would only be accessible to double if not triple digit millionaires, and is the gain in time really worth the hassle versus the comfort of a long-range business jet?
> Surely the primary issues are that the efficiency would be dreadful and that the price would be ridiculous even for “the very wealthy”?
I guess you're thinking that drag increases with the square of the speed, and so for very high speed the fuel consumption should be horrendous.
This is only if all things are equal. And they are not. Two things change when you increase speed: you decrease the cross-section (via decreased angle of attack, and shorter wings) and decrease the air density (because you fly higher).
A regular commercial jet flies at about 10 km height, where the air density is about 3-4 times lower than on the ground. The airplane discussed here is supposed to fly at 50km where the air density is more than 1000 times lower than at ground level [1].
By the way, I don't think this particular project has any chance of ever becoming reality. The main problem with hypersonic vehicles is the aerodynamics, not the propulsion. These guys are simply working on the wrong problem.
I hope not. I believe energy costs are historically falling, so not only for upper middle class. Efficiency is usually sacrificed for the effect, so yes, it will spend joules - but that's what the human race does since birth.
Why not? Because an engine based on 'rotating detonation' could be more efficient than what is in current use today. An engine that can burn a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and Jet-A fuel is better than just Jet-A fuel.? Why is the first response always about burning carbon... at least this is getting people to destinations fast. Go beat up on people joy riding around in cruise ships burning heavy fuel oil.
Because carbon is the religious original sin of our time. No matter what one does (carbon tax, cafe standards, other efficiency standards, etc) one will always be tarnished by committing the sin of using carbon and one must always be looked down on for it, at least to some people. It does not seem possible to have a reasonable conversation with these people along the lines of, ok set a carbon tax for the supposed externality releasing co2 causes and then stop wasting brain cycles on this. Let people choose under the new price regime and mind your own business because you don't know what their utility function looks like, what seems like waste to you is just the delta between your respective utility functions and you need to get along with each other for society to function, which necessarily means mind your own damn business once the harm that wasn't previously in the price is reasonably in the price.
I don't think the people you're talking about are the ones preventing a carbon tax from being implemented. If you start from the assumption that passing an effective carbon tax is impossible, as it seems to be, then their behavior starts to seem less irrational.
Most of the comments seem to be basically medieval anti-progress views. It's really sad, and seems to be becoming even more of a norm across the technologies (e.g. AI also)
When I read this, my first thought was this company almost certainly won't succeed, but it's great that there is private investment going into developing the technology. What a way better thing to explore than some "me-too" SaaS CRM thing or wherever the usual VC money flows.
Picking some obviously not viable mega hard tech, on which multiple big countries has already failed multiple times each, and then pretending that it is viable to develop as a small company is indeed different than some "metoo SaaS CRM". It is actually worse, because they are deliberately misleading any investor gullible enough to fall for their pitch.
So it's not that everyone commenting is anti-progress, it's just that they're all smarter than the investors and are trying to protect them from being scammed?
Didn’t the Chinese successfully test a SODAMJET at the end of 2020 that enables flight of Mach 16 at some extreme altitudes, and requires little fuel as well?
They are similar/related concepts, sometimes these are called shcramjet engines. They differ from scramjets in that they combust fuel along a very small standing shockwave.
> The people designing the planes of tomorrow got so caught up in the technology that they forgot to ask the very important question, “what are we building this for?”
I’ll raise my hand. Instead of going to Europe or Asia from the East Coast requiring a multi-day itinerary on account of the travel time, a straight in-and-out route would be more efficient. It should be extremely expensive. But there is legitimate demand for that travel, both for people and for freight (e.g. organs, custom-manufactured components, et cetera).
We need _technology that will pollute even more_ to _continue doing stuff that pollute a lot even though we know we shouldn't do it, but faster_
~15 hours to get to the other side of the world is fast enough, if it isn't you have a very very weird problem that affects 0.000001% of the world and we shouldn't care about it
> (e.g. organs, custom-manufactured components, et cetera)
Serious question for someone who knows. How common is it to have an organ ready for transplant, but not time enough to wait the hours it woukd take to transport it across the country?
Seems quite unlikely to me that this will be the dominating use case for the technology. Hypothetically, if I was an investor interested in making investments that save peoples lives, I'd suspect this is not the most worthwhile investment I could make.
> quite unlikely to me that this will be the dominating use case for the technology
Low-latency long haul doesn’t exist, so it’s tough to track. That said, I agree this would be a fringe use. (Disaster relief is the common, if commercially unrealistic, answer.)
How does a 10% boost in efficiency yield higher Mach levels? It sounds like it could be more like a rocket design. Get a super high altitude at a smaller Mach level and then let gravity do its work. But then it’s less clear how this would be better price economics than a traditional rocket which needs more than a 10% reduction in fuels to make it profitable at scale, no?
This isn't the future of transport, they just want to widen their investor pool for what will inevitably become a weapon if successful. They know exactly what they're doing.
> for what will inevitably become a weapon if successful
This is true of any propulsion technology. Rotating detonation engines [1] are efficient, noisy and complicated. That doesn’t, at first glance, seem like a great fit for single-use applications.
I think its more like "We can get paid to play with rotating detonation engines!". Which, if they figure it out would be very nice for spaceflight, but it won't get us mach 9 airlines.
It's the same bullshit and completely not viable, not realistic and not cost effective idea as Elon's E2E rocket taxi. This will likely never happen in the next century.
Why not? Maybe because it’s the exact opposite of what we should be doing? We need to find ways for people to burn less carbon, not more. How about improving the efficiency of normal aircraft, or even better work on ways to reduce travel altogether
I know I’m a bit off topic, but in 2023 are we still saying “why not” when someone comes up with another cool way to burn hydrocarbons?
> in 2023 are we still saying “why not” when someone comes up with another cool way to burn hydrocarbons
This is solvable with synthetic fuels and offsets.
> work on ways to reduce travel altogether
Good luck forcing quality of life reduction as an explicit policy goal. Or betting on less contact widening of our circles of empathy in the way we must to address global, long-term problems like climate change.
I agree our current offset regime is a scam. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do right, or that doing it right shouldn’t be a precondition to scaling something like supersonic travel. (Would note that linking to Greenpeace seldom strengthens one’s argument.)
> we chose to do it willingly or we'll be forced to do it
So your argument is based on a scam program and fuels we don't really have yet
That's not very convincing. In a perfect world with perfect people and infinite money we could indeed do a lot of crazy things, but then again we have to deal with reality
> This is an entirely solvable problem, between synthetic fuels and offsets.
I wish. But unfortunately, both synthetic fuels (e-fuels) and offsets are severely lacking in terms of actually contributing to solving the problem. We do not have enough energy to produce enough synthetic fuels to cover the same amount of oil and gas that we use today. And carbon offsets are in most cases not a reliable way to actually keep carbon out of the atmosphere long-term.
> Good luck forcing quality of life reduction as an explicit policy goal
Climate change will be the greatest quality of life reduction that humanity has ever faced.
Part of the problem is that people consider being able to travel that much as "quality of life". There is nothing in human psychology that requires us to be as mobile as we are today. In fact, it is harmful that this degree of mobility is deemed "normal" by our western culture. This has to change.
> do not have enough energy to produce enough synthetic fuels to cover the same amount of oil and gas that we use today
We’re not jetting around at Mach 9 today. Or tomorrow. Rotating detonation engines [1] are closer to basic research than commerce. The earliest this could be technologically viable is in the 2030s; commercially, the 2050s. (That is ambitious.)
At the point we might consider scaling such kit, our options will be less limited (or we’ll have consigned ourselves to doom). If they aren’t, we can choose not to use it for passenger travel.
Inflation is forcing quality of life reduction on people. The problem is that hasn't correlated with carbon reduction. So it's not the way to do it. What OP is suggesting, directly adressing high carbon sources, is the way to go.
> This is solvable with synthetic fuels and offsets.
Well, until it is solved (and it clearly isn’t- carbon offsets are basically bullshit), maybe we should work on that rather than making the amount of stuff to offset even bigger?
Forcing quality of life reduction is going to be hard enough without the world’s 1% (i.e. us) finding new ways to spew out carbon by jetting around at Mach9
> we should work on that rather than making the amount of stuff to offset even bigger
False economy. Developing e.g. rotating detonation engines requires solving flame front, detonation mechanics, additive manufacturing and materials science problems. (Off the top of my head.) Do you really not see any interdisciplinary applications for any of those?
This is the failure of top-down industry planning and scientific regulation: you miss unexpected gains.
> Yes, but sort of irrelevant. If you want to fix a problem, start with 25% of it and not 2%.
Those 25% from coal are themselves composed of several smaller percentages from different sources. The tricky part about climate change is that you have to start basically everywhere and look for opportunities to optimize, reduce, or completely eliminate emissions.
Not really. if you know 20-25% of emissions come from one source,…
Sure, kicking the can down the road requires more miracles now. That “we need to do everything at once” is what people say after spending half a century off basically ignoring the problem.
"one source" is a misrepresentation. Coal is burned in many regions of the planet. But each of these regions has different structural characteristics. It is not possible to solve one big "coal problem", because it is actually many individual energy supply problems that need to be solved.
Of course we need to do everything at once, that's how any change of this magnitude has to work.
I assure you the people who suggest flying should be limited to reduce carbon emissions are not the same people "kicking the can down the road" for half a century.
Don't apply eco-morals to someone else's business plan. It doesn't scale - if something is profitable, there will always be someone doing it behind closed doors.
Instead, work to change the regulatory environment so that a non-eco business plan isn't profitable.
That most likely means carbon taxes, carbon caps, or carbon trading.
Carbon taxes yes. Provides a direct incentive to get off carbon and those taxes should be invested directly into meaningful alternatives. Difficult to figure out what the pricing actually should be.
Carbon caps maybe but it might cripple industry as opposed to taxes which just become priced in. Maybe start with carbon caps 20% higher than today’s levels and bring them down over time. Still, unclear how to enact it. Is it per industry? How do you define that industry? What about companies in multiple industries? Is it for a single country? The price of carbon might sky rocket and you’ll get weird secondary effects like making oil companies richer yet.
Carbon trading no. I used to think it was an interesting idea to explore but it’s extremely difficult to avoid scams: well I was going to clear cut a forest, but I didn’t so now I get carbon credits. Or “donate $X while flying to offset your emissions” and it’s completely unclear where that $X actually goes (not to mention you’ve still emitted carbon and that $x hasn’t necessarily lowered carbon utilization somewhere else nor led to extra carbon sequestration.
I think ultimately we need a carbon tax that subsidizes creation of more green energy capacity from sources like solar, wind, nuclear (~30%) + long distance power distribution (HVDC) and investment in startups doing sequestration or making nuclear even cheaper (~70%).
I don’t follow your argument - yes of course, the only way to put a stop to this madness is by global legislation, but that shouldn’t stop us naming and shaming those who keep doing it in the meanwhile.
If slave labour is legal in North Korea that doesn’t mean we can’t criticise someone posting in hacker news about their new startup that will offshore UI testing to Pyongyang slave workshops
Something the EU could trivially implement - but rather than taxing the fuel directly, tax the fuel
Countries like the U.K. already charge poor tax on airlines - fly 20 people from london to paris in a 747 and you pay far less tax than than flying 100 people on an a319, despite causing far more pollution.
Instead charge based on the length of flight the the efficiency of the plane, regardless of how many people are actually on.
You’ll probably have to cap the tax on longer flights east otherwise everyone would transfer via Istanbul or ME3, but it wouldn’t require taxing fuel, or having airlines fuel up at the other end
Tbh as society we don’t care that much about the environment and we like flying long distances in planes that go fast.
We say we care about the environment, but none of our actions (again, as a society) recently back that up in a real way.
Until the effects of climate change are felt in a very real way by people currently alive with something meaningful to lose, then there’s not much hope for people to do anything but look for another cool way to burn hydrocarbons.
Data backs this up. World oil production has been ~100 million barrels per day, and gradually increasing for many years (except the covid year).
People like to have recycling bins and eco friendly water bottles, but they don't think twice about driving a few hundred miles in a gas guzzling truck, producing as much CO2 as tens of thousands of water bottles.
Nor do they worry about firing up the AC or heating, burning loads of natural gas, far outweighing the little solar panels they put on the roof to look eco friendly.
The hypothetical plane can only carry a dozen people at a time and burns a lot more fuel per mile than a comparable subsonic aircraft, so the tickets will be very expensive. Most people will not be able to justify the cost, even most business travelers.
Unless the cost of oil goes down dramatically, the only way for hypersonic flight to become affordable for the masses is for new technology to achieve drastic fuel savings. If that happens, there would be no reason to oppose it any more than one might oppose "regular" air travel today.
Commercial airlines have an extremely strong incentive to reduce carbon emissions, more so than virtually any other industry. I wouldn't worry too much about aviation tech moving in the less efficient direction.
Except they didn't even correct correctly. GP said "We need to find ways for people to burn less carbon," which is totally correct. "Carbon" is being used as a mass noun.
I don't know if you are referring about my comment "fewer hydrocarbons", but it was a direct reference to the post I was referring to, "cool way to burn hydrocarbons". I wasn't trying to be pedantic or correcting anybody. Maybe I should have said less, but... I just didn't. The point is simply that higher efficiency doesn't directly equate to more usage; though it can in some cases.
Okay, but 9 Mach is a lot. And flying higher also burns more fuel to reach that altitude. Not sure which of the effects dominate though.
All in all, I'd be extremely surprised if this technology reduces fuel consumption.
The only mention in the text about fuel usage is that they need to use a special engine with lower fuel consumption to even be able to put people and equipment on the plane. Why don't regular jets have that problem? Because they don't consume that much fuel.
Over the long term, All these excessive forms of travel are going in the wrong direction. It's not even a matter of ethics or morality. Peak oil is here (Source: Nate Hagens, Shell, etc ~ all predicting less and less oil available). The ramifications are vast and transportation is only going to get increasingly expensive as the material standard of living declines over the next several decades and centuries. Even normal airplane travel will get increasingly expensive, and less and less available to the middle and upper class.
The future is cheaper more energy efficient forms of travel like bicycles, e-bikes, micromobility and dare i say, walking.
