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posted by on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the is-that-fast-enough-for-you? dept.

One of the odd aspects of modern air travel is that it's not really getting any faster. Ever since British Airways retired its money-losing supersonic Concorde in 2003, airlines have generally stuck to top speeds of around 615 miles per hour. That'll get you from New York to San Francisco in five or six hours, depending on the winds, but you can't find a plane that will get you there significantly sooner.

We've largely learned to tolerate our slow, boring aircraft. But there's a compelling case that we shouldn't — that air travel should actually be much, much quicker.

Right now there are a host of energetic startups and NASA engineers working on sleek new supersonic jets that could fly twice as fast as today's commercial planes, if not faster. These jets would be major upgrades on the noisy, fuel-squandering Concordes of old, and they could be ready within the decade.

When you talk to people working on these super-fast planes, it's hard not to get swept up in the excitement. Take Blake Scholl, the CEO of Boom, a startup that's working with Virgin Galactic to put a new supersonic business jet into service by the early 2020s. He envisions a day when anyone could cross the Pacific or Atlantic in just a few short hours. "It changes how you think about the world," he tells me.

So what say you, Soylentils? Do the political, environmental, technical and economic challenges standing against these efforts outweigh the benefits of supersonic air travel? Should supersonic flights become common or even ubiquitous?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:52PM (#427488)

    hey just pointing out that the atmosphere isn't very thick.
    also that going faster and faster doesn't just double the resistance encountered but alot more.

    in a sense it's completely crazy to "fight the atmosphere" to go someplace quicker.
    either really go for outer atmosphere travel where you can go as fast as you want

    (some smart person could probably calculate how much joules are expended from say, london to N.Y. city
    in atmosphere (regular airplane speed?) and what max velocity could be reached expending the
    same amount of joules without air friction, ex-atmosphere.)

    or if you don't want to leave the shallow "fog of atmosphere" surrounding the planet,
    then rather travel in style: cruise ships (submerged even?) and airships spring to mind.
    I mean, we got the internet and telepresence and kindda can be anywhere were the internet
    reaches instantly, so why not return to the old style of slow and enjoyable travel?

    As for the g-forces on human body, there is a way to stabilize a 80% water containing human body to
    survive 20 Gs (hint: water is not compressible)