> Flight times between Singapore and London would be cut from 18 hours on conventional aircraft at the time to just 10 hours.
This is very interesting, because current Singapore-Heathrow direct flights are around 13 hours. I wouldn't pay first-class++ fares for a 3-hour flight time reduction in a tiny, cramped cabin with worse pressurisation and ventilation than first class on modern A380s, B777s and A350s that currently ply the route.
Currently there are aircraft able to fly that distance without stopovers. That wasn't the case in 70s, including Concorde. Modern version of Concorde that would have the necessary range for that flight would do Heathrow to Singapore in 5-6 h.
Routing in the 1970s (and until at least 1992) would also likely have been far longer, with most Soviet and Eastern European airspace closed to Western flights.
Whether the lack of non-stop service was on account of routing and range or of lack of sufficient travel demand I don't know.
Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could see much of that not being advisable in the 1970s.
Plenty of that isn't advisable now. I flew Frankfurt to Singapore at the end of 2022 and we flew over the south side of the Black Sea to avoid Ukrainian and Russian airspace. We also avoided Afghanistan and flew over Iran instead which slightly surprised me.
It's less the airlines being cautious (like they finally started being over Ukraine, but not until MH17): Russia has just closed their airspace to most Western airlines (and vice versa).
This leads to sometimes quite extreme differences in travel times between two cities depending on whether a Western or e.g. Chinese airline are conducting the flight (e.g. London-Shanghai), since Chinese airlines can still overfly both Europe and Russia.
Oh yes, a while ago the Chinese airline Air China wanted to fly from New York to Beijing over Russian airspace (the shortest path does involve Russian airspace) but the U.S. government prohibited them from doing that as a matter of fairness. The end result is that the Chinese airline had to operate a domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles in order to fly to Beijing. https://viewfromthewing.com/air-china-has-filed-to-fly-new-y...
> The end result is that the Chinese airline had to operate a domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles in order to fly to Beijing.
This isn't unheard-of. Qantas does (or used to) do this as well, running SYD-LAX-JFK, for efficiency reasons.
Cabotage laws prohibit 081/CCA from carrying any passengers on the domestic leg of that route except the ones that are booked on the international leg of the journey as well. So it's not like you can just book a flight with them domestically.
It's less the airlines being cautious
(like they finally started being
over Ukraine, but not until MH17)
You are misrecalling the chronology. Some airlines such as British Airways were avoiding that airspace before MH17 was shot down, it was making the news beforehand. Other airlines such as Malaysia Airlines continued rolling the dice on flying in an active warzone.
What changed after MH17 was that avoiding it was mandated by the relevant authorities.
Another thing into play are the airspace fees. It’s a substantial income for Russia. It’s possible that some airlines estimate that they are too high, just out of economic factors and not political factors.
They skyrocketed (pun intended) by 20% just in 2023, amount to $1.7bn and are justified by the radar and route operators, and by the …security provided by the Russian army.
After downing the MH317, many airlines avoided the Ukrainian airspace… in profit of the (unavoidable?) Russian one, further benefiting Russia for this horrible crime. Killing those people may even have provided more revenue to Russia.
Good call, I was relying on a search for flights and didn't check to see if that was current.
BA11 seems to be among British Airways current LHR->SIN offerings. Here's yesterday's flight path, which largely resembles Singapore Airways. Flight time 13h15m.
> Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could see much of that not being advisable in the 1970s.
When I flew from Helsinki, Finland to Hong Kong this summer, the plane avoided flying through Russian airspace, so not sure it's much better now than in the 70s, for some routes at least.
> On Monday 28 February 2022 Russia closed its airspace as a countermeasure to EU airspace closure. This meant many changes to Finnair’s Asian services, as most of Finnair’s flights between Europe and Asia have used the shortest, fastest, and most environmentally sound route over Russia.
Given russias current trajectory with their war of genocide against Ukraine[0], it is not foreseeable that any western commercial airlines would be able to fly in their airspace for years to come[1].
I remember, when I was a kid, hearing a thunderous roar and rushing outside, and saw the Concorde with the Singapore Airlines livery, flying overhead. Left an impression. Not the usual flight path, as I was living in the central part of Singapore at that time. Assuming it was an one-off for testing purposes.
Hmm I wonder. A modern Concorde might be more spacious and better pressurised but much faster than Mach 2 is going to be very difficult due to higher speeds needing incrementally more energy and generating more heat.
Supercruising at Mach 2 is a huge accomplishment and I don't think there's any aircraft in operation that can still do that. Jetfighters can do it while afterburning but it is impossible to reach Singapore that way.
I just don't see a supercruising aircraft being possible at Mach 3.
I'm not clear what you mean by "better pressurised"? If you mean the cabin altitude, one of the advantages of Concorde was that the cabin had a lower cabin altitude than other airliners, then or now.
Concorde cruising supersonic on dry power was apparently due to the variable intake ramps (https://www.heritageconcorde.com/air-in-take-system), which presented compressed subsonic air to the compressors at supersonic speeds, bypassing excess air. This reduced the work that the compressors had to do, avoiding the surge issues with the J-58 which the A-12 family of aircraft ran in to. There is probably a bit of stretch there, as Concorde was limited by airframe temperature, but the temperature of the compressed intake would probably be the next limitation. As far as I know, Concorde was the only supersonic-native aircraft, with best range being achieved at M1.4.
That becomes the main issue, the Concorde as it was had 26,400 gallons <=> 95,680 kgs of fuel, and would need more than double that (likely) to do the flight in one go (bar major improvements to efficiency, and counting that more weight at takeoff needs more weight of fuel to fly that extra weight).
A quick search says about 40 minutes to refuel a jet, so a stopover is going to add at least an hour, probably more because they have to come out of supersonic, etc.
One thing to take into account is that landing and taking off is very wasteful with fuel - jet engines use significantly more fuel when running in dense air and that doesn't include increased power for climbing.
I'm sure there's someone who can plug in numbers into a flight planner here, I'm interested in actual numbers.
So at least based on this it's not too much of a difference, only 4% more with a stop. (Tehran looked to be roughly in the middle on the flight plan between London and Singapore.)
Carriers don't want to do a stop unless they're offloading and onboarding passengers, so they'd rather run one flight to the intermediary, and another direct.
It adds a surprising amount of time. You have to descend, land, taxi to a fueling area, refuel, taxi, take off, climb. And that's if the local regulations allow fueling with passengers on board.
That's probably around 2 hours extra. And this in turn can require the plane to carry additional pilots and flight attendants.
I'm sure that's true although I don't know how the numbers pencil out. That said, people also much prefer non-stop flights because of time, hassle, and reduced likelihood of something going wrong.
That's not quite true AFAIK at least a couple of years ago the super long routes (18+h) were served in business class only because not enough customers wanted to do such a long flight in economy.
The Singapore Airlines Singapore to New York flight is 19 hours and only has premium economy and business. I have to make this trip fairly often and I prefer to take the direct flight as it’s simpler, faster and I have to pay extra for leg room either way. That said, if I had the means I would take business each time, because 19 hours in even the nicest economy seat can be tough.
Another factor besides comfort is that they can extend the flight time 1-2 hours by having fewer passengers and bags onboard, which of course means premium seats like SQ23/24.
Qantas is planning to launch 18–21 hour routes in 2026 with economy class, using modified A350-1000 with an extra fuel tank in the hold.
That's mostly not true as far as I've seen because most trans-pacific flyers are not willing/able to spend thousands of additional $ to fly in business class.
Accidents, and maintenance - much maintenance is predicated on cycle times, i.e. how many take offs and landings (and others are based on operational hours).
Depends on distance, cargo is best way to look at the ranges. As they optimize for cost per nautical mile. Not passenger demand or comfort or speed. At certain point refuelling saves in cost.
What _was_ the routing and speed? That was my very first question and the blog post doesn't really answer it. How much of the flight was supersonic? They talk about avoiding India for the BAH-SIN leg, and trouble over Saudi Arabia, but there's a lotta populated land between BAH-LHR. The flight listing says this:
Those numbers just don't make sense. That's 130 miles short of the great circle distance from SIN-BAH of 3935 miles. And then they talked about adding another 200 miles to go around India. So assuming the flight time itself is accurate, that leg should be:
But how much of that time _could_ be spent at the listed cruising speed? Mach 2 will travel 4135 in miles in just over 2.5 hours! So we're looking at less than half the flight spent in supersonic — and this is the leg that's mostly over the Indian Ocean.
The BAH-LHR leg is even trickier.
Anyhow, it's little wonder that a direct non-stop is near the Concorde's time with these restrictions and the refueling stop.
> Those numbers just don't make sense. That's 130 miles short of the great circle distance from SIN-BAH of 3935 miles.
In an aviation context, those are most likely nautical miles (equivalent to 1 minute of a degree in north-south direction, which is why 10,000 km (initially defined as the distance from the equator to the pole) is basically 5,400 NM (90 degrees from the equator to the pole, times 60 minutes/degree)) rather than statute miles, which are some certain number of yards and feet in that quaint customary system used still used by some people in the USA, Liberia, and Myanmar.
Indeed, according to the interweb, the distance between Singapore (Singapore Changi Airport) and Manama (Bahrain International Airport) is 3935 miles / 6333 kilometers / 3420 nautical miles.
OK, if those are nautical miles this does make much more sense — 3698nm is 280 nautical miles (320 miles) longer than the great circle route. It's a bit longer than the naive calculation I made — increasing the average speed (and time at cruise) a little bit, too.
Then the BAH-LHR leg is more interesting too — its great circle route is 2754 nm, so they're going 366 nm (420 miles) out of their way. Their listed distance is approximately what it'd be if they routed through the Mediterranean over Malta.
I was surprised that SQ was the only third party airline to have its livery on Concorde, as I saw plenty of pictures of Concordes with Braniff livery on on side.
Well, I did remember correctly that the service operated from Dallas (to NY or Washington). Subsonic only, and with lots of crazy adaptation to fit the crazy laws, like changing the aircraft registration number on each flight.
> I was surprised that SQ was the only third party airline to have its livery on Concorde, as I saw plenty of pictures of Concordes with Braniff livery on on side.
"Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit and cabin crews. During the domestic flights, the Braniff's registration numbers were affixed to the fuselage with temporary adhesive vinyl stickers. At Washington Dulles, the cockpit and cabin crews were replaced by ones from Air France and British Airways for the continued flight to Europe, and the temporary Braniff registration stickers were removed. This process was reversed after alighting in Washington Dulles from Europe for the domestic flights to Dallas-Fort Worth."
> Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit and cabin crews
Presumably own cockpit crew, but I had an instant vision of a replaceable cockpit module that was swapped out at Dulles.
Operating as an American owned airline between Dallas and Washington allowed them to take Dallas-Washington passengers, rather than only Dallas-Europe passengers. This was essential for the economics of the flight to work. At the time BA and AF had 3rd and 4th freedoms, and possibly 5th, but were not allowed to fly passengers on solely domestic itineraries -- a process called "Cabotage".
This page has some great stuff in it. Today I think about commercial airlines being so _optimized_ for efficiency in everything, I just can't imagine a US airline flying a Concorde overland at subsonic speeds. Assuming they flew Mach 0.95 then that's about at 25% speedup compared to today's subsonic cruise (0.78, although you might get faster than this if you're a big plane going a long distance, up in the low 0.80s). Also, the ticket prices they quote for that flight:
> 1979 Feb – May one way – $154 – $169 /Sept – Oct one way – $194
> 1980 Feb – one way – $227
so more than $900 today to fly one way on a flight that today you can have for $40 one way on a budget carrier! I guess I don't mind the extra hour it takes on a 737 or A321.
Although the more fair comparison would be to the competing prices at the time, not today's prices - any ticket was quite a bit more expensive in 1979-80, so that factors in.
Only adding, since you obviously get this, yet even with what seem like expensive ticket prices, the Concorde was still a difficult economic proposition. Even if you didn't pay for crew, fuel, airport fees, ground crew, maintenance, ect...
The Wikipedia article quotes a slightly different number than the article, yet it still amounts to a $200,000,000 plane (in modern $) with only 100 seats that eats fuel. Even at $900 (modern $) you quote, it would still take 2150 full flights to recoup the roll-away cost without anything else. (Interweb says base 737 is $90 million (modern $) with ~160 seats.)
And then there's the factor of 30x development program costs to consider (bathed in by Britain/France). The expected 350 orders, got 100, built 20. The decade extended development hell. The huge fuel cost jump on release. The Concorde is neat, it's just Murphy's Law was all over that plane.
it was landing, so it wasn't much noisier than say a 747, but a bit noisier. or perhaps i was just used to it - my dad was an RAF vulcan captain (same olympus engines as concorde, minus reheat) and if you had a squadron of them taking off on QRA you learned the real meaning of noise!
We used to live under the flightpath for the departures from Heathrow to the US, not far from Reading. The evening flights would go over, which you could feel in your body, then moments later catch the light of the setting sun as they headed west. It was quite inspiring.
The Vulcan is (or was!) my favourite plane sound, beating out the Merlin-engined stuff and even Concorde. Four Olympus engines, plus the howl. Can't be bettered! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ARSE8jEHQ
glad you enjoyed the howl, but, sorry, it didn't have afterburner (reheat). i still probably prefer merlins - the BoB flight Lancaster flies over me here in Lincoln occasionally. and also the Red Arrows!
Concorde’s failure makes me very sad. I understand that the economics didn’t stack up but it feels like we’ve given up trying to reach for the space age style future envisaged 70 years ago and instead are settling for “the same but a fraction nicer or a bit cheaper” in many areas.
> it feels like we’ve given up trying to reach for the space age style future envisaged 70 years ago
We forget now that Concorde was a politically-motivated attempt to demonstrate that the UK and France were still relevant in the aerospace industry and the project itself was plagued with costly development inefficiencies due to the desire to split the work between the UK and French participants. E.g. working in both metric and imperial units. Building parts in multiple factories.
The Soviet equivalent (Tu-144) crashed and burned at the Paris air show and never had any economic justification. The Boeing 2707 was cancelled before it even flew because of cost overruns following the failure of an abortive swing-wing design. Concorde itself only became profitable to operate when the govt wrote off the development costs in 1983 in a deal described as "among the most disastrous conducted by a government minister" [0].
Even more than a supersonic jet, Concorde was a successful attempt to create a homegrown European airspace industry. The aircraft itself was a pioneer in fly-by-wire technologies, which Airbus (the current name of the consortium that build Concorde) later commercialized, also at an initial loss. In this way, the entire business was kickstarted by the governments of Britain and France.
The net result was a company that now outsells Boeing, especially in light of the latter's quality issues. Even though Concorde never made money (and never really could make money w/ the supersonic restrictions it had), I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved.
This kind of ignores the alternative reality. The idea that well if not Concorde then nothing else would have existed and whatever would have existed wouldn't have been 'European'.
This isn't really true. If you look at the British case for example, there were alternative planes in development that asked for British funding. While those projects were British lead, they had specifically designed them to have suppliers all over Europe, including France.
Now that plane could have been a failure or a success, we wont know. Looking at the design, it seems to have some potential.
The French on the other hand might have invested their money in another kind of plane primarily from France but with supply chains outside of France as well.
You could see something like Airbus emerging out of that too. Or maybe something that wasn't Airbus but like Airbus. Or a you could see a British lead company that has success in the narrow body world and later a French plane with success in the Wide-body world. Those could eventually merge.
History could have gone many ways, and could have failed many ways. That we have Airbus now does track back to Concord, but is not true that its clear that without Concord we wouldn't have something Airbus like.
> I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved
Agree, although I'd love to know how many of Concorde's backers were considering this long-game effect. I suspect that the Airbus of today would be seen as even more fantastic than a supersonic aircraft.
It was pretty fundamental. At the time commercial aviation was a different two horse race between Boeing and McDonnell-Douglass. The aviation industry in Europe was not doing well and those industries and their suppliers represented millions of jobs.
Historically though, Airbus exists despite the Concorde, not because of it. The A300 project ran in parallel and there where fights over funding between Airbus and Concorde. The French government also financed the Dassault Mercure at that time.
The initial success of the A300 was also unrelated to the Concorde, so Europe would probably have gotten their successful aviation industry today either way.
But a lot of big technological developments hve political motivations, because governments are the first and biggest customer. Nuclear energy, internet, space race etc, have all been politically motivated, funded and supported.
True - but the actual development of complex and expensive technologies tends to happen far faster, cheaper, and more reliably when a government feels a burning need for Actual Working Technology ASAP. Vs. when the whole thing is some combination of political showboating and spreading pork to everyone who wants "their share" of government money.
Concorde was ine of the precusers of modern day Airbus so. As an aircraft, despite being gorgeous and an engineering marvel, it was kind of pointless, I agree.
Many politically motivated undertaking leave us better off. Modern day rocket engineers are literally working to get us to click on adverts. No I am not saying let's encourage politically motivated initiatives but not everything that costs a lot of money and doesn't necessarily workout is a bad thing. Look at how much was spent on Covid vaccine mandates. Now that was a waste of money and resources.
Also, it only existed via extreme subsidizes. So working class French and UK people were subsidizing rich people farting in 1st class seats going mach 2.
Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types when it was just a welfare flight for those who thought themselves too self-important to fly a few more hours between major far-away cities.
113 people died in 2000. It wasn't exactly the safest plane out there either.
With teleconferencing and modern technology, the need for the business class to show up to far-away places should go down. But a lot of it is entitlement, that is to say, show up for a meeting then enjoy a free vacation while "working."
Everything about the Concorde was corrupt if not classist. It was a mistake even if the engineering was impressive. Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public transportation. We'd have the Chunnel in the 70s instead of the 90s.
The money DID go to public transportation. The cost of the Concorde program is peanuts compared to how much value was gained from it. Concorde brought many innovations such as its electric control system, which was developed further for the Airbus A300, and then reached its pinnacle in the Airbus A320. This tech tree is one of the cornerstones of unprecedented safety that modern airliners have brought to air travel, flying hundreds of millions of people every year without causing the loss of a single life, regardless of whether one is a self-important elitist or a regular schmuck on a 20 EUR flight to Ibiza.
You can't just go out and buy such innovation. It's the natural by-product of relentless pursuit of borderline impossible goals.
Most of Concorde's engineering innovations were tech tree dead ends though.
The Concorde project was certainly good at fostering Anglo French cooperation in aerospace but it's difficult to imagine the counterfactual scenario where the cooperation is doomed to failure because the debut product is a commercially viable subsonic aircraft rather than a technically impressive aircraft that doesn't sell. Similarly, whilst some of the R&D investment in control systems did find it's way into the A300, the A320's digital fly by wire is a completely different system, and it's difficult to imagine the scenario where a nascent Airbus project doesn't consider fly by wire because they hadn't figured out delta wings or droop noses yet
Electric control systems were bound to happen, planes can be safe without them as well. The Concorde cost a huge amount and getting a electric control system out of it isn't actually a good deal.
> It's the natural by-product of relentless pursuit of borderline impossible goals.
No it isn't. Its a direct product of the choice to develop it, and funding it.
Increasing electric support had been going into aircraft for a while and any new development of a major air plane would consider it.
At best it might have slightly push forward adoption of that technology.
> Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types
Not sure what 'free market' types you are talking about. Most 'free market' types I know were and are not in pro of such projects.
> Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public transportation.
I totally agree with you that money invested in high speed trains all over Europe would have been a far better investment. And you can support just as many jobs and you can do just as much research if you really want to.
Britain at the time actually decided between Concrode and more practical single isle plane more like the 737. A workhorse type plan that you could at least make an argument about beyond creating jobs.
The problem with this line of argument is that most tax receipts come from people who are pretty rich, i.e. they are the ones actually funding the government. E.g. in the UK the top 10% of tax payers contribute roughly 60% of income tax receipts, whereas the bottom 50% contribute less than 10% of income tax receipts (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...).
Concorde was at least partly a remnant of people flying to London to close a deal over lunch and getting back to New York in time to tuck the kids in. I assume that sort of things is at least less common today.
JFK-LHR is still one billion dollars in revenue for British Airways alone.
The innovation that killed Concorde was the lie flat business seat. You could be cramped in the Concorde’s leather bus seat for three hours, or you could save money and get a sleep in for six hours.
Not really, because Concorde died in the seventies when the lie flat business seat didn't exist.
BA and AF managed to keep the zombie fleet going very profitably all the way until the end in the early 2000s, and that business wasn't killed by the lie flat business class seat either. It was killed by the impossibility of continuing to operate a tiny fleet of '60s planes forever.
Now if you said that the reason we don't have ANY supersonic passenger jets today is because lie flat business seats are good enough, then that's a more defendable position, but I'd still say that the overland flight restrictions limiting any SST to just a couple of routes is a bigger factor.
When I flew on Concorde the one thought I never had was "I wish I had a lie flat seat and half the airspeed".
It is the combination of lie flat seat and the very limited range and the overland restriction.
A six to three hour flight is not really worth the premium. At the same time no supersonic flight has the range to do transpacific where the time difference would be much greater.
It's still a huge route but it's also something you can do on a day flight. Heck, from Boston, I can fly to EWR and still be in London for a late dinner. I don't even need a lie-flat seat.
The extra $4K or so in your pocket pays for a lot of reduced comfort for 10 or so hours.
The anecdotal, apocryphal rumor I heard back in the day when Concorde was still flying was that the big Wall Street investment banks accounted for a third to a half of all Concorde traffic between London and New York. Impossible to verify, and possibly too good to verify... but I would not be surprised if a large chunk of passengers did come from that demographic.
Yeah. You're probably right. The time change sort of kills you. You could fly to London for a dinner and return the following day. (You can sort of do that today but it's going to be a late dinner.)
Concorde is in the "faster horse" category. It's a fair bit faster then regular planes at substantially increased cost, and it couldn't do long distances (max range 4143 miles), kind of removing the speed advantage where it would have really helped, i.e. very long trips.
Suborbital spaceflight would be the ultimate: UK to Australia in an hour.
That would be an improvement, I guess, but Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip.
Couple of hours to get to the airport, arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance to account for the variance in check-in, security, and immigration times and to get through the overpriced mall itself, then anywhere between ten minutes and over an hour for immigration and customs depending on what flights arrive at the same time, then something like half an hour waiting for your luggage unless you’re very lucky, then again a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
I’ve seen very few efforts to reduce any of this over the last two decades, and basically none as far as the things happening inside the airport are concerned. (Well, OK, automated immigration checks are a thing, but if you are one of a flight of people ineligible for them, fuck you, here are one or two border control officers that every one of you will be funnelled through.)
So while I can appreciate the idea of less miserable long-haul flights, I don’t think “in an hour” is worth anything but a sad chuckle. And I haven’t even accounted for the time you’ll need to spend searching for prices and rearranging your schedule to work around the price discrimination machine. Air travel just sucks, and I don’t think neat aerospace engineering alone can get around that.
Since when does it take a couple of hours to get to the airport for the average traveler? That would only be the case for someone who lives in a very rural area far away from the nearest major airport.
> arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance
3 hours is what's recommended for international flights, but even then thats a conservative recommendation to be safe. "3 to 4 hours" is quite excessive.
> a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
Again, the average traveler is not traveling for a couple of hours to get from their destination airport to their final destination. I can't find the stats, but if I had to guess, the majority of travelers final destination is within an hour of the airport they land at.
I definitely agree with you that all of these aspects of air travel need to be made much more efficient, but inflating these times just paints an inaccurate picture of the travel time benefits that supersonic travel brings.
In my experience, your numbers are out for this particular example. It'd reduce it to at most a day. You're right that there's a few hours of faff at either end, though I don't believe it's nearly as long as you're cumulatively adding up. However, those things are dwarfed by the 24 hours of in-air time it currently takes (sure, 17.5 if you want to go to Perth). That time in the plane is death for me, as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold.
I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU.
What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.
Every time I sit through a hellish long distance flight I wonder the same thing. The closest anyone’s got is Air New Zealand’s Sky couch - which is a minor improvement on the status quo rather than a reimagining of it.
There’s been so much innovation in business class, but relatively little in economy over the last few decades. Is it because airlines are afraid of cannibalising their business seats? Or regulatory issues regarding non-standard seats?
If anyone can figure out how to give me a lie flat bunk for the same weight and volume per passenger as economy (or even premium economy) they’ve got my business for eternity. Sitting down for 11 hours would feel like torture in comparison.
business seats can recline fully flat and also sit up and they take up a lot of room. given that the name of the game in economy is maximizing seats in square footage, we're not likely to get efficiency here.
the regulation is not really that the seats have to be sat up per se, but that the plane has to be evacuatable in X amount of time, and the only way to do that for your average person is for them to be sitting upright. Which makes sense; it takes a lot of time for someone to get out of a lie flat position.
There are more luxurious options out there but something like United's Polaris seating is comfortable enough. Not saying I'd do trans-Pacific flights like that for the recreation but it's not painful in the way that economy (even with extra legroom) is. Mostly sitting/laying down for the better part of 24 hours is going to be a bit painful/boring however you slice it though.
Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I took something not that different from Beijing to Shanghai a number of years back.)
My usual experience flying between the UK and Europe and in three cases China was that 2 hours has always been sufficient before departure and that 1 hour is about the limit after landing.
Why would it be about max? There are always going to be outliers in people's travel plans that make some aspect take longer than usual.
If I decided that from now on, I'm only walking to and from airports rather than driving or taking transit, does my multi hour walk to the airport make it so that airplanes are now as slow as driving places and therefore not worth it for any domestic flying? No, that would of course be a ridiculous conclusion.
It's really mode plus some standard deviation. Stuff can always happen. And sometimes the flight could just be canceled. If I expect it to be 90 minutes to get to the airport, I'm not going to assume it will take 4 hours because whatever even if if I'll miss one flight in my lifetime.
I fly Texas to Florida pretty regularly for leisure with my kids. We all have clear/global entry. Our normal procedure is to pick 6-7AM flights with carryon only. This means leaving for the airport around 4 or 5. With a 2.5 hr flight that typically puts us out of the airport by 11 and generally starting our day by noon.
This is the way to go - and you can reduce luggage even further by "preshipping" via UPS or whatever, or if you travel to the same area often store stuff with friends/relatives/small storage unit.
The other huge advantage with picking the early flights - if something goes wrong you'll get there later on a later flight almost always, so you can cut the times a bit closer and not be terribly worried.
If you're on the last flight out that day, missing it is bad news.
Add some time for people + luggage to leave the UK, and to enter Australia. (There is time for both countries to inspect luggage even if we don't see them doing it.)
Then add some more because the flight is much less regular and costs £1000 rather than £100, so missing it has a worse outcome.
UK to Australia would be a huge improvement and would mean I am significantly more likely to go there. I already happily fly 2-3 hours across Europe without it taking up an entire day of travel (30 minutes to the airport arrive 2 hours before, 2-3 on the plane and then 10 minutes from plane to taxi/train at the other end) vs the same + 20 hours of flying and likely a stop over.
Depends on where you are, but there are numerous attempts to reduce these things in Canada ,where I live, and the US has similar schemes.
Check-in is now online, bag drop is automated, security is a breeze with Verified Traveller or PreCheck, immigration and customs are simplified with NEXUS/Global Entry/APEC, and airline status can get you priority baggage. I am often in the airport lounge within 15 minutes of arriving at the airport, with that all completed. Same with immigration. Plenty of countries offer concierge immigration schemes if you pay between $50 and $300.
> Couple of hours to get to the airport
You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a city.
If I take two extreme, Munich Airport Terminal 3 and the small local airport nearby, we have:
MUC:
- 10-20 minutes from parking to baggage drop off, depending on where ypu park, can be almost 30 minutes for the parking you ise for vacation (and not the close by ones you can put in your travell expenses)
- 10 minutes, if you are unlucky a lot more, from baggage drop off until you pass security
- another 10-15 minutes to get fr security to your gate at Terminal 3
So, at the very least 30, in praxis more like 45 minutes, at the airport alone. And MUC is pretty well built and organized in that regard.
The local airport so, which has no real commercial flihhts anymore, is at max. 15 minutes from parking to gate, all included.
The thing is that in the 90s it used to be 30 to 90 minutes for getting on board an international flight. Much like Concord we decided that slower is better for some reason.
90 minutes is probably still comfortable time for an international flight in the US if you have Pre-Check. I don't like rushing so I'd probably give it a bit more time but usually things go pretty fast.
That said, I agree with the basic point that transatlantic tends to be an all-day thing (or a red-eye) and shaving some hours off the flight itself doesn't really change that. (And even if it made it easier to get to continental Europe on a daytime flight from eastern US, that matters less with modern lie-flat seating.)
"Travel time to the airport, door to door" is often much more than just "driving over there" though that can often be the fastest - drive to the airport, park on the closest ramp, walk in.
If you park at the discount ramps, you're usually adding at least 15 minutes if not more. Transit adds significantly more for most people, unless you have a train to the gate right outside your door.
> Most people live a reasonable distance from a decent-sized airport. Half the people in the United States live within 17 miles of a decent-sized airport, and ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive). Twenty-five percent of the population lives pretty darn close: less than 9 miles.
> Most people live a reasonable distance from a decent-sized airport.
I live in London, UK. There are 4 airports in the greater London area. But the distance to closest airport means little. I never get to chose: given the airline and destination, that narrows it down to 1 of these airports; or on rare occasions 2, and then I chose based on flight price and time of day, and only then proximity.
>ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive)
An hour's drive :-) I'm closer than that to Logan in Boston and planning for 2 hours in the morning is not unreasonable at all. (And basically the car company I use won't let me plan for a lot less than that because they don't want to be on the hook if I miss my flight.)
Parking at Boston Logan is expensive even with Economy Parking (which I joke is in Canada); the airport is very close-in to the city. In my current job, no one has ever pushed back on me using a private car service and, if I'm traveling on my own, it's usually for long enough that the car service is at least breakeven relative to driving/parking.
After a couple issues, e.g. arriving on a cold 10pm night to a flat tire I couldn't get off, I mostly just won't drive in any longer.
There are a couple bus services from the burbs but I haven't really been motivated to check them out for years.
When I was younger and poorer, I used to pay poorer friends who lived nearer the city a few dollars to park my car near their place for a long trip and have them give me a ride into the airport.
These days I could probably optimize a bit by taking car service in and grabbing an Uber to come back home. But really isn't worth the trouble.
It’s not OK to just fly in. Coming to the US you have to go through the special US pre-clearance zone that has extra security. You may not have to take off your shoes, but you often don’t have to in the US either. Really depends on local screening requirements which are wildly inconsistent.
> Coming to the US you have to go through the special US pre-clearance zone that has extra security
This may once have been true but I don't believe it's the case any more, at least not at the major European hubs I've been to.
There is no additional security screening if you fly British Airways to the USA out of LHR. This was no additional security at Frankfurt last month either.
It was the case just a year ago when I flew out of LHR. US flights were out of terminal 5 and a special pre clearance zone. I’ve been through Frankfurt’s pre clearance as well. Maybe things have changed very recently? It flew under the radar if that’s the case.
Maybe? I've flown out of Europe to the US many many times and never encountered any special security measures. Certainly not LHR (Terminal 2 usually I think) and not Frankfurt just a few months ago.
That's the main discrepancy which the US basically overlooks for non-US security procedures. (Though there's some seemingly arbitrary variance in electronics screening as well.)
It is normal. But the point is that it is not required that an airport perform that check, in the same way there are requirements about x-ray and metal detectors, for example. Some airports just don't do the shoe thing.
Perhaps that's the loophole. Although my anecdotal observation at the generally major airports I fly in and out of in the US is that people are pretty much universally taking off shoes if they're not in the pre-check line.
It wouldn't shock me if there were a few things that aren't technically requirements that are still near-universal (for non pre-check) in the US--which give some leeway for travelers coming in from overseas airports that don't have the same equipment or requirements.
> You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a city.
Speaking from the center of Shanghai, it does indeed take a couple of hours to get to the airport by subway, though a taxi is more like one hour.
Airports don't get sited in dense locations - they make a lot of noise - so I can't quite follow your logic. If you live in a city, it's going to take you a while to get to the airport.
> You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case,
Nope, unless you mean "You have to be in a pretty sparse area for it to be that low".
From North London, you should plan on more than 90 minutes to get to Heathrow, regardless of which transport mode you choose. It's not because of sparseness or "far from a city" of the parts in-between, quite the opposite.
Gatwick is worse.
Stansted is slightly is better, but I'm seldom going somewhere that flies from Stansted.
If you really need to get there quicker, there are a few companies offering motorcycle taxi services (where they ride and you ride pillion), which can make a big difference at times of busy traffic (though it does limit the amount of luggage you can bring).
> Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip.
Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not flown from Sweden to the Netherlands for about 4 years now but used trains instead. The actual flight takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours depending on the route taken (which in turn depends on pricing at the moment of booking). Getting to the airport from the farm takes more time, having to arrive there at least 1 but preferably 2 hours in advance to partake in the security theatre adds to that. Regular public transport does not stop at the airport although there are plenty of routes which pass it by at some distance, instead there is a specific airport bus which costs about 3 times what the normal bus costs. This is added to the normal public transport costs because that bus only starts from central station. Then there is the flight itself where they're trying their utmost best to nickel and dime passengers on everything from breathing space to the privilege of taking more than a change of underwear. Arriving in the Netherlands the trip from the airport to my final destination is a bit better arranged since there is a train station right underneath Schiphol Airport. But... going back via Schiphol has become quite tedious since they seem to have problems with their security theatre show, somehow the actors need a lot of time to play their parts which often leads to hour-long delays. Back in Sweden there is that whole special-bus-thing again to get to the place where I can take a train which brings me to the station from where it is a 3 km walk home. Total time taken ends up somewhere around 5 to 10 hours depending on flight time.
The trip by train takes anywhere from ~13 hours to ~21 hours, depending on schedule, route and (ever-present) delays in Germany. I leave early in the morning to walk to the station, take a train, move to the next one, repeat that 4-5 times and I'm at my destination. I can take as much luggage with me as I can carry which is a lot, if I feel like filling my backpack with Shukirkens or lethal nail clippers or $deity forbid more than 1 litre of liquids there is nobody bothering me, I get to have actual leg room and room to move those legs if I feel like it - you can walk quite a distance in some trains - plus a table and an outlet so I can hack away while going in more or less the right direction. There tends to be network connectivity in trains as well and if I end up on one where this does not work - which happens regularly - I can use my phone to get online. There's restaurants for those who want but I tend to bring my own. Delays sometimes mess up my schedule and I have spent hours in damp and dank tunnels under German stations during the hours of night when everything is closed and the only company to be had is the drunks who keep on coming by to beg for a euro 'to call their sick mother' but this, fortunately, is the exception rather than the rule. In short things are not perfect but...
Traveling by train is like going on a journey while air travel has been turned into a chore. It might save me half a day but it gains me the same in time to work/relax/read/talk to other travellers/do nothing.
These days even if the airport is far off (newer airports usually are ) they are typically connected via public transit pretty well. Munich is a good example - airport is good 30+km from the city but there is fairly cheap and frequent train service.
Munich's train connection is not really good. Nearly no long distance trains and a very long travel time to Munich main station where you need to change unless Munich is your final destination. So you lose over an hour, nearly 2 taking the notorious unreliability of German trains these days into account.
Frankfurt is not a pleasant airport but at least it has a long-distance, high-speed train station.
For the most people destination is likely to be Munich , it is urban center with large population and density .
People don’t think long distance trains when talking about commuting to airports, usual expectation of any urban airport is it well connected to the city center
Have you been to Frankfurt airport long distance train station? It's pretty busy. That many airports have worse connections doesn't mean doing better would be unnecessary.
I more or less regularly have to use Munich or Frankfurt airport and take a long distance train. Flying closer to to/from my destination in Germany would be possible in theory, but is not attractive, neither by price nor schedule options. So I have the choice between a horrible airport with a good train station and a more decent airport with time-wasting train connections.
If suborbital flight could be achieved via some combination of space elevators making it sustainable, sure, or some form of propulsion that doesn't consume one million pounds of fuel. Otherwise it's unsustainable, like most things about air travel today.
So IMO the ultimate would be something more along the lines of zeppelins. A week from Taiwan to California isn't so bad if I get to spend the time relaxing in a way similar to how I do on a sleeper train. Plus, airships.
The marginal net energetic cost for two-stage rocket based suborbital transport (e.g. Starship) is about 4x a modern airplane. So about on par with the Concorde and within reach of first-class ticket pricing.
If this is surprising, keep in mind that the rocket is only on for 8 minutes, and most of the flight is experiencing zero drag from being above the atmosphere.
A week on an ocean liner is one thing. A week on the equivalent of a sleeper train with no real scenery seems like something else. That doesn't really feel like a it's the journey not the destination thing after the first day or two.
Somebody on here recently described Concorde as "peak boomer" which was a comment that changed my opinion about it. Yes, it hit some local maximum for what can be accomplished with protractors and a three-person crew on the flight deck. Sure, it brought Phil Collins to the US to perform a concert "before" his UK concert on the same day. It also rattled a lot of windows in its flight path. Right now, everybody else is wondering if they will be boarding a 737-"fuck it, we'll fix it in a software update"-MAX.
If there are any decadent flights I'd like to take from seeing YouTube videos, it would be one on Etihad's "The Residence", but even that doesn't exist any longer.
It is more the price / demand curve , I.e how many will pay a cost of the flight and is that sufficient demand for to recoup the costs .
Emirates (also ethihad ) have for example this ultra luxury suite with its own shower and bedroom in normal flights they sell for like 20k+/per .
It is targeted towards people who have chartered a private jet (100-200k+) and by most accounts the service is successful. However it just 1-2 suites in few select routes .
My point is it may not be typical business class passenger that is the target market, perhaps it those taking a private jet between these two destinations and they will definitely pay a lot .
Look at this way the “billable rate “ for a moderately sized company senior management would be in the range in thousands of dollars/hour, so 10-15 hours saved could be one way to price this service .
The key question is does it require million people / year or only thousand/ year to break even . You can easily do the latter , million people a year would be quite difficult.
> Look at this way the “billable rate “ for a moderately sized company senior management would be in the range in thousands of dollars/hour, so 10-15 hours saved could be one way to price this service
Thanks to in-flight wifi you can still be working (and therefore be billing) while travelling.
Most executives I know who travel are meeting with a bunch of customers if they're going that far. By and large, the idea that "OMG I'm losing 4 hours of billable time" isn't very broadly applicable--if, indeed, it ever was.
That is because they don't bill by the hour, The billable hour is a simple model to visualize the opportunity cost.
People at this level[1] want to get things done quickly, if they can pay to avoid loosing a half a week for couple of meetings traveling back and forth, they won't hesitate to.
[1] Any level really, but executives can both afford to and get a return on this kind of expense
My point is that if you're going to spend the time to travel to another continent, a few hours on each end don't really matter much. There's a good chance they'll be at their destination for a the better part of a week. That's been my experience when I've traveled with execs.
Personally I'll probably take a more comfortable trip over an incrementally faster trip. But that's just me of course. (Unless it possibly avoids a red-eye.) Business-class trans-Pacific is a bit boring but it's not really that painful.
(As I wrote elsewhere, my dad also used to prefer routinely flying first class in a 747 vs. taking the Concorde.) Comfort isn't just about speed.
People do that because it takes 15 hours to travel. 100 years before people will go visit say family for few weeks or even months because travel was slow, now we fly for thanksgiving and back at work the following week. Travel behavior changes depending on the mode of transport and cost of it.
> incrementally faster trip
it is not incremental, we are not shaving couple of hours, it is radically faster trip, 15hr -> 1 hr is a huge difference.
> prefer routinely flying first class in a 747 vs. taking the Concorde
Concorde was quite popular for that one route though, that was not enough to save it.
The challenge then was not there were not other economically viable routes - there were, it was just that nobody was allowing supersonic flight over land, for example San Fransisco -> New York route would have been very successful.
With 2.5 hour on a Concorde a flight you can work (i.e. do meetings) in both cities (esp NY->SF) on the same day. It is a 5 hour flight now you can really work in one city the day you are traveling.
> People do that because it takes 15 hours to travel
...and those annoying time zones and the resulting jet lag*
If we could magically get from Europe to Australia in 5 minutes, I doubt that that many people would use that as an excuse to go to Australia for a shorter time.
* I've visited Australia three separate times in the last ~15 years, all three trips were very short due to external constraints, my longest stay so far was for one night
> Suborbital spaceflight : UK to Australia in an hour
Wait until the safety and security people do risk and threat assessments on that. Worst case is fairly close to a suborbital kinetic impact missile, aimed at the region of a major city from halfway around the globe, with less than an hour's notice.
YouTube channel Real Engineering released a video recently on aviation startup Hermeus, which is developing a ramjet ultimately intended for commercial air travel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyKtxsdI0z8
The thumbnail is a bit click-bait, but the video itself has a lot of depth. They give Hermeus space to present itself in a very positive light. As a non-expert having watched the video, it does seem at least plausible that this company may yet succeed.
They mention fuel costs in passing, but they don't talk about carbon emissions. That's probably fair, since carbon is a much broader issue than just aviation. It's probably more productive to focus on shutting down coal plants than stifling innovation in air travel. But it's worth bearing in mind that positive things like hypersonic air travel do have a cost.
What people always underestimate is the amount of time, and money, it takes to get anything developed, built and certified in aerospace. And that is for even small modifications done on existing design by the major players. Starting from scratch, already a new design is hard enough not to talk about a new company, is even harder. Just timeline wise, realistically you talk about around 5 years for something new, start to finish. That's millions upon millions for existing companies, if everything goes well. And hardly ever goes well, delays and tecjnical issues are common. Again, for proven tech don eby established companies.
Something like a commercial ramjet engine developed by a start-up is not even the same solar system: there we talk, realistically, billions and closer to a decade, if it works technically. And then you need a market for that engine, which means demand (doubtfull, but who knows) and more importantly, an aircraft. And the last bit again is aroubd a decade and another couple of billions.
Engine and aircraft development can, and has, been done in parallel. It still takes longer so, as both development projects depend on each other, the A400M would be a recent example of that approach. If Hermeus doesn't have a development partner for the airframe, realistically, if everything (!) goes well, we talk about at least 15-20 years from now. Not sure if VC funding is the right model for stuff like this.
5 years is pretty sort. Looking at A220, which I think took closer to 10 years. Which I think is realistic timeline for new modern design, not just modernising old one. A350 and 777X also show similar timelines... That is from planning to deliveries. And these are the players with experience building to specific segment of market...
Throw in enough novel ideas and it might double...
Easily. And aerospace began to move fast again since the A380, B777, B787, A350 and such. The decades before were a lot slower. At least now ypu don't have to mix people pulled back from retirement with new grads to get a team that has the collective experience of a programm start to finish anymore.
Real Engineering always gets access to companies because he presents everybody in an overly positive light. He never actually does the negative stuff, except for company he doesn't get invited into.
It is more than "a bit" cheaper. Air travel would have continued to be reserved for the elite had there not been a decades-long effort to reduce costs. You can get a transcontinental round trip today for <$500 vs $10K minimum in the 70s.
I'm not sure the differences are quite that stark--especially if you control for other factors. But I won't disagree that air travel is much more democratized today.
The 'space age' was ahead of its time. And I don't mean that in a positive way: 'putting a clown on the moon' (to quote Tom Lehrer) was an enormously expensive project with 1960s technology for at best questionable utility. (Apart from winning a pissing contest with the Soviets.)
Similar for the Concorde.
Nowadays, we would be much better placed to put people in space. But fortunately we are perhaps wiser (or perhaps forced to be wiser against our own impulses), and are still not lining up to re-ignite manned space flight.
I'm all for space exploration, but manned space exploration does not (yet?) make sense, and neither does space tourism so far.
I kind of disagree. Yes the person on the moon wasn't that important but all the technology outside of the moonlander itself had nice utility.
Its just that the US kind of messed up its space investment strategy. Instead of leveraging all the parts of Apollo it was systematically killed.
Had the doubled down on Apollo and simply continued investing in the technology they could have done impressive things.
The could have built a Saturn 1C as a workhorse rocket for the military and commercial. And then have the Saturn V as your super heavy for the occasional deep space probe, huge telescope or space station.
The Apollo capsule could incrementally be made reusable and could continue to be used for LEO or occasional moon missions.
During Apollo they were already deep in development on second generation version of the different components.
This was not actually finically unsustainable, it was just financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle. And because a Saturn 1C wasn't considered, the military built itself up with Titan rockets instead.
> I kind of disagree. Yes the person on the moon wasn't that important but all the technology outside of the moonlander itself had nice utility.
Counterfactually, all the tax payer money wasted on manned space flight would have been used for something else, and would have driven some other technology, and at that other spending would have had direct utility. (Especially if the money had been left in the tax payers pockets.)
> [...] it was just financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle.
I agree that the Space Shuttle was an even greater waste than the Apollo program. They overshot their projected cost per kg to orbit by 100,000% (one thousand times).
But I hold that approximately all manned space flight is a waste of tax payer money.
If you are just against government spending there is no argument you can make that can challenge that.
> specially if the money had been left in the tax payers pockets.
This was peak suberbia and peak people buying cars. I think there is a good argument being made that more money invested in suberbia and cars wouldn't be good investment. In fact, there is a good argument that this is a negative investment for society.
On the other hand, Apollo lead to a massive investment in engineering and scientific talent and to a huge amount of technology development that was then utilized by lots of other industries.
If I could have picked, I would have preferred some of that investment into nuclear technology. But that wasn't really in the cards.
People have always been critical of Apollo as specially on the left they would have preferred social programs, and libertarians would have preferred nothing.
I am libertarian leaning myself but as far as government spending goes, this is some of the better things they can do. They did arguably spend to much to fast, rather then taking a measured approach.
> If you are just against government spending there is no argument you can make that can challenge that.
Government spending that clears a reasonable bar of utility is fine by me. Eg overall I think I am getting good value for my tax dollars here in my adopted home of Singapore. (Of course, I don't agree with every last item on the budget.)
> This was peak suberbia and peak people buying cars. I think there is a good argument being made that more money invested in suberbia and cars wouldn't be good investment. In fact, there is a good argument that this is a negative investment for society.
I am glad that we have you to tell people that what they want is bad, and that they should want something else instead.
(Btw, it's spelled suburbia. It's not a problem for me, just thought you might want to know.)
> I am glad that we have you to tell people that what they want is bad, and that they should want something else instead.
Suburbia and cars were massively subsidized by the government and have a very high cost for society.
I don't want to tell people what to do, but if a damaging thing is subsidized, suggesting that subsidizing something else might be better isn't much of a stretch.
> Suburbia and cars were massively subsidized by the government and have a very high cost for society.
Yes, and you can probably predict my opinion of those subsidies.
So I'm not sure why you strawman me to be in favour of suburbia, or subsidies for suburbia?
(Btw, I think we should shift more of the funding for roads onto usage fees for them. Ie toll roads. The technology for road usage tracking has become a lot better and cheaper in the last few decades.)
> I don't want to tell people what to do, but if a damaging thing is subsidized, suggesting that subsidizing something else might be better isn't much of a stretch.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just drop both subsidies.
It's the same thing with free trade: unilateral free trade is optimal, no matter whether the other guys insists on damaging their own economy with protectionism. So mutual 'trade agreements' are useless. (Or should be.)
The Saturn 1B looks vaguely like Falcon 9 if you squint appropriately. The H-1 engine is in the same thrust class as the Merlin 1D (it just weighs twice as much).
So, one can imagine the S1B evolving over the years into something like a F9, with the first stage being recovered.
The idea of designing boosters to minimize cost rather than maximize performance also goes back to the late 60s. The biggest problem is government contractors have different incentive structures than SpaceX does.
It would really be the government driving to a unified architecture, making the apart commodity and create enough demand. It would need actual long term strategy.
I disagree with that cynicism, though. I saw Apollo 11 three times when it came out, and I still get excited when I see the sense of purpose and detail in everybody involved. It was a singular event that occurred at this conflux of technology and hubris, like Christopher Columbus' landing. It took so long for everybody to sort out their feelings on what this meant, that an entire subculture sprung up based on the idea that it was all faked by a contemporaneous sci-fi director. It's okay to appreciate those kinds of wins from time to time. And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to give to the Soviets.
> I saw Apollo 11 three times when it came out, and I still get excited when I see the sense of purpose and detail in everybody involved.
I think you are proving my point? Manned spaceflight is strictly for entertainment and pissing contests only.
So we should finance it like entertainment, instead of making random tax payers suffer for your amusement.
> And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to give to the Soviets.
Yes? Obviously you are going to be all smug and rub your success in your adversaries face.
---
Btw, just to be clear: I also find space flight inspiring, and I hope I live long enough to see the vast bulk of humanity living in space habitats (while still increasing the absolute number of humans on earth). I want to see space elevators (via active support) and all that good stuff.
Two things:
(1) The early manned space flight barely contributed to these long term goals. It's only recently thanks to the private sector that launch costs are starting to come down. And the other big advances are coming from better robotics and better computing, both of which are being developed on trajectories so far largely independent of space exploration.
(2) I don't want to force other tax payers to suffer for my flights of fancy. Just like I don't want to have to finance other people's pet projects with my tax money, either.
The phenomenon that ultimately put down the Concorde is actually seen all the time everywhere in everyday life: Bleeding edge performance and tech is almost never economically practical, it's always the stuff well within the margins with room to spare that ultimately define the space.
See for other examples: The 500 Kei Shinkansen, literally every Intel Core i9 and AMD Ryzen 9 CPU, sports and luxury cars, Boeing 747 "Queen of the Skies" Jumbo and Airbus A380, the Space Shuttle, the F-22 Raptor, and more.
All very impressive pieces of tech and their achievements shouldn't be discounted, but all ultimately an interesting footnote in history as significantly more inferior and practical pieces of tech dominate.
The 747 was manufactured for 50 years and over 1,500 of them were made. It’s difficult to put it in the same category with Concorde and the Space Shuttle.
The 747 still has demand as a cargo plane. I bet we see them flown for a long time to come, with most remaining passenger configs gradually being converted to cargo.
I haven't been keeping track lately, but these used to be "the i7, but squeeze out an extra 500MHz by adding another hundred watts", usually; has this changed?
Yeah pretty much that. They usually have the same amount of performance cores but there are more efficient cores and hence threads and on top of that they run on higher frequency too
Given they are sold every generation, they must be practical to enough people. There are quite a lot of multithreaded tasks that can use so many cores.
It was not just not economically practical: it wasn't practical.
Yes, the flights were shorter, but between 9 hours cramped in a tight fuselage with little entertainment and 12 hours in a comfortable chair with headroom and entertainment, I would have taken the latter. There's a sweet spot abive the even more comfortable but vastly slower passenger liners, but Concorde was too extreme - and I guess the suborbital flights imagined by Musk are too far too.
My dad traveled to the UK all the time through JFK. He got upgraded to the Concorde once and his reaction was that he actually preferred first class on a 747--and that was at a time with less comfortable seating than exists today. Very few people really benefit from the faster flight time, especially if it doesn't have the range to do trans-Pacific.
As you say, ocean liners are mostly too slow for anyone who is working but I was surprised to learn recently that they're not necessarily much more expensive than a business class flight.
It is incredibly cramped inside. I stepped into one in Duxford museum and especially the windows are tiny, the looking at the curvature of the earth thing would have been pretty hard.
I don't understand this passage. There were only two supersonic passenger airliners, and Tupolev 144 was obviously off limits for Singapore Airlines. Is it LLM writing?
This should be labeled (2021), as evidenced by the comments. This blog is doing a weird thing where it's re-dating old posts to today, presumably to try to trick Google into thinking that it's fresh content, for SEO purposes.
This is very interesting, because current Singapore-Heathrow direct flights are around 13 hours. I wouldn't pay first-class++ fares for a 3-hour flight time reduction in a tiny, cramped cabin with worse pressurisation and ventilation than first class on modern A380s, B777s and A350s that currently ply the route.