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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

With the increased number of ultra-rich these days, Concorde or another SST is probably more viable then ever. It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk. When I see a ferrari drive by I think "cool car" but I certainly would be against any and all tax breaks or special treatment to keep it on the road. Mounting a Concorde on a special platform in the middle of the London Tames seems like a cheap tourist trap.

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Worse yet, the plane on display would not even "fly" as a cheap tourist trap. The Concorde may be a fascination symbol of stagnation, the absolute peak of the lighting fast development during the first half-dozen decades of aviation, a snapshot from just before progress suddenly stopped to be anything else than "same thing, just maybe a little cheaper". This is all very exciting for aviation geeks and people who like to think a lot about the younger history of technology, but those won't fill a restaurant. People who have never used the Concorde just don't have the level of nostalgia for it as some of those few that have.

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk.

Did you ever hear the term "jet set" used to describe the glamorous social elite, well that term comes from the days when international air travel was the exclusive preserve of the super rich. Nowadays you can jump on a plane for less than the cost of a meal at the airport (+ taxes of course). Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".

> Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".

Not having such cheap flights might ultimately have been for the better. Flying has become very cheap, but we're not paying the true cost in terms of environmental damage.

As far as international air travel, I've never seen a flight from the US to Europe for less than $1,000. That's a damn expensive airport meal.

Short-haul commuter flights are a different thing entirely.

Really? I routinely travel to US to Europe for between $600 and $800. Still not an airport meal but not that insane.

A flight between any two European countries is still international. €10 + taxes flights are easy to find.

(accidentally downvoted you, sorry.)

Put some consumption taxes in place and not only do I not begrudge the ultra rich their toys, I'm happy to bend the rules a little bit to enable it.

For example, want to waive the height restrictions so you can have airplane view so of Manhattan from your $100M penthouse? Sure, no problem. Want to pay the same property taxes as a $3 million apartment? That's a horse of a different color.

Concorde itself is a non-starter. The companies which know how to make the parts for it don't want to make the parts, and the agencies which would have to give regulatory approval for it to fly won't give the approval (especially without the parts).

If someone cracks the economic difficulties of supersonic passenger flight, maybe some other aircraft could do it. But Concorde is going to remain a museum piece.

Actually, I suspect the internet has all but killed the real value of the Concorde.The only thing it had to offer was NY-London in 3.5 hours instead of 7.5 hours. There are so few cases where those 4 hours make any difference, particularly with the advances in telepresence, that there's just no real market for the service. The seats are all technically First Class, but First Class in a Concorde was really not that much better than coach in a subsonic aircraft. Personally, I'd take an 8 hour flight in a 747 with a seat that lays flat rather than pay the same price for a leather coach seat for 4 hours.

Sure but to the ultra rich the Concorde lets them wake up and decide they want to eat dinner at the best restaurant in London that night, then fly back home to party all night in NYC.

Except not really, that's still 7 hours of flying. Lets say 1 hour transit from airport to restaurant and 2 hours of eating, you've already spent 11 hours on that dinner.

One hour transit to the airport? HA! Forgetting traffic. You'll need at least an hour just to clear security.

Depends on if we're talking "ultra rich" or not

Security is hardly an issue flying privately, I've had experiences where we've landed and all stepped out of the plane just looking around the airfield waiting for someone to come say something... and nobody coming.

Hey, are you Julius?

yes?

I just wonder how you've got so much experience on flying.

I'm an avid traveler.

1 hour transit time to the airport? You need to get a new helicopter pilot.

Seriously though, you're forgetting timezones. Hop on the jet at 11am NYC time and be in London at 7:30pm London time. Leave London at midnight and be back in NYC at 10:30pm NYC time. You're not going to be exhausted from travel because it's first class all the way and you don't even need to pack bags.

Many bigger cities seem to actually be surprisingly lacking on viable (and legal) landing sites for helicopters... Trust me, I've tried.

You may not be exhausted but sitting stationary for 7 hours just to get dinner doesn't seem like such a fun thought, even in first class. (The novelty wears off very quickly)

747 seats didn't lay flat at the time but, to your basic point, the real market for the Concorde--such as it was--was the international lawyer who had to jet over to London for the day. And it was relatively cramped compared to first class on a 747 and certainly compared to today's wide bodies. I'm not sure how much the Internet has to do with it as the Concorde never really did have a market but probably the "need" for 4 hour trips to New York or London have declined in any case.

That's like saying a Rolls Royce with chauffer is essentially the same as a town car.

They both do the same job in the same amount of time, arguably both are as comfortable as each other (or near enough as makes no difference).

The concorde has enormous brand appeal and exclusivity, and that matters to people.

> It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.

as far as in understand the X-15 is more simple than Concorde. The suborbital and ICBM-ballistic tech is well understood and has been in constant use for half a century, where is Mach 3+ aircraft territory is still almost no-go zone. Compare to high Mach the suborbital/ballistic is just more energy efficient.

Yes, but you aren't going to see wealthy people (generally older) going through the astronaut training, tying in with 5-point harnesses, climbing into a vertically-mounted fuselage, then pulling 3+Gs on "takeoff" followed by several vomit-filled minutes of weightlessness before reversing the entire process.

Imagine the chaos of a dozen members of the general public experiencing zero gravity for the first time. Better bring lots of towels ... and an umbrella.

It's very easy to dramatically underestimate the amount of fuel needed for an effective suborbital trajectory. If you want to travel half-way round the world, then delta-V wise, you're not very far off actually getting into orbit.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1118/1

That article quotes 7km/s for a 10,000km trip, compared to about 8km/s for LEO.

The X-15 (and SpaceshipOne, for that matter) was never trying to actually go anywhere; it just hopped out of the atmosphere and come down again very close to where it took off, with a delta-V of about 1.5km/s.

It's worth getting a copy of KSP and actually trying this. It's eye-opening.

What about electric cars? At this point most of the wealthy get all the tax breaks from owning these cars. And they don't contribute to the upkeep of the roads since no gas tax.

Money is fungible, through progressive taxation those people (unless they are hedge fund managers who pay lower tax than almost everyone else) heavily contribute to the tax base even if it isn't earmarked for roads to the extent gas is.

> (unless they are hedge fund managers who pay lower tax than almost everyone else)

Everyone whose income is largely derived through long-term capital gains does this, really; hedge-fund managers just happen to be people who seem like they are working for someone else but manage to get paid for that work in a way that gets them taxed like capitalists.

(Which might explain while a few notable actual major capitalists -- who don't favor general reform of taxation on capital -- have come out in favor of reforms that would tax hedge-fund manager earnings like normal income.)

The wealthy paying for expensive electric cars (I'm sure you're insinuating Tesla) are subsidizing the build out of charging infrastructure as well as a manufacturing base for electric vehicles and batteries.

Those tax benefits the wealthy receive are a less risky subsidy than directly giving electric vehicle and charging infrastructure companies funds directly. Its a balance between doing nothing and doing something more drastic (full disclaimer: we aren't doing enough, and we should be pouring buckets of money into electrification of mobility, but that's an argument for another thread).

With regards to gas taxes, most people already aren't paying their fair share of gas/road taxes (the US highway trust fund is completely broke). I'm not sure electric vehicles are contributing to the problem as much as the existing 253 million internal combustion vehicles already on the road (not counting heavy trucks, that contribute even more to road damage).

It's true that user fees - gas taxes and tolls - for motor vehicle drivers in the US pay far less than the costs of the roads they use. I think it's roughly 50%.

However, assuming that by "electrification of mobility" you mean "everybody who's driving their own car keeps driving their own car, only it's electric rather than gas-powered", then I believe you're looking at it all wrong. In cities where people increasingly live, single-person cars have huge negative externalities aside from fossil fuel consumption, starting with congestion and moving on to over-building of parking, road deaths, sprawl, etc. Electric cars won't solve all of these, and neither will self-driving cars, or self-driving electric cars.

Instead, what we need for mobility in cities is better land use, with dense areas or corridors, safe walking and bicycling infrastructure, frequent and convenient mass transit, and congestion charging.

Do all that and you'll have real mobility fixes.

Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. It's the lorries that should be paying for road upkeep; the amount of wear from cars is negligible.

> The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft

Maybe once or twice. After that it was super annoying. It would set off car alarms it was so loud.

Why deny rich people their spending? Do you wish that exclusive art be denied from rich people? Exclusive property?

What's wrong with some tax breaks for old classic cars to keep them on the road? They're part of the modern design language and aesthetic and just as important as any important architecture. If you see road/fuel taxes as a cost of using the public road network then providing lower taxes to vehicles who barely drive 500 miles in a year is hardly a burden given the benefit that seeing old classic cars brings to people. Besides, the majority of people driving old cars (even old ferraris) are not mega wealthy but people on more regular incomes who are dedicated to their hobby.

Putting any type of barrier in front of wealthy people spending on this type of technology is a net lose for us all. A private SST would not be built by exploiting workers or robbing pension funds.

As for cheap Tourist traps - London is crawling with them already, including the London Eye and the battleship in WW2 camo.

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