- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
A Chinese aerospace company has successfully completed the first test flight of a groundbreaking hypersonic passenger aircraft.
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Won’t happen. The primary reason the Concord failed was that they couldn’t make enough money. Running engines to push a plane that fast are super expensive.
And most are willing to pay less even if it’s a 6 hour flight.
Because it turned out that no one really needs to get between the UK and the US that quickly. If they do need to get between the UK and the US they’re prepared to pay less for it to take longer because the price difference is substantial.
I’m sure executives would disagree if their companies allow for it.
Would certainly want to though. I hate sitting on planes and also get very little time off work, so wasting 12h of a trip for plane time is a lot to me. First class tickets are often 3x regular price and all you get is a bigger seat and slightly better food. I’d find way more value in a shorter trip than a first class ticket. Not saying I could afford it, but if it cost around 3x as much it seems feasible that it would sell at that level at least.
Well Concord was mostly for business people so they weren’t buying their own tickets. Which was ultimately their downfall because a company would just decide to spend less money and make their employees sit on a plane for longer, it wasn’t really a personal choice the passenger was making.
It was more than that. I’m 1996 round trip tickets were 7500, about 12000 in today’s dollars. I can get a round trip ticket under 400 bucks today for NYC to LHR. So it wasn’t 3x, but 30x the price.
Not only nobody needs to do that trip that fast, but we’re not in the early 00’s anymore, and there has never been as many tools to communicate and collaborate remotely. So I’d expect a non-negligible part of these don’t even need to do the trip anymore if they want to save money and time.
To be honest conferencing was pretty easy even back in the days of Concord. It was kind of a pointless vehicle really.
But the status… /s
Not only nobody needs to do that trip that fast,
I’d say using “nobody” is unwarranted… some people might’ve needed at some point. Regardless, it’s not a need, it’s a want.
Let’s not forget that the Concord failed in 2003. I wonder what started happening around then that made that actual flying part a smaller fraction of the overall time spent traveling…
Even if you can step through a portal and instantaneously get to London from NY, if you still have to go through the rest of the airline process the time savings just isn’t that huge.
The one where a part from another plane fell off and got ingested into the Concord’s engine? It’s hard to see that as Concord’s fault, but there was significant loss of life and reputation. But that really shouldn’t be characterized as a Concord failure.
No, 9/11 security theatre