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sfredd1

And no mention of how bad this will be for the environment?

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Insignificant compared to the tens of thousands or airplanes flying daily.

For over-land flights, you don't think the sonic boom might have any impact on wildlife?

Which land are they flying over?

They don't have an aircraft yet, obviously. But one of the company's explicit goals is overland flights.

Apparently non oceanic flights are banned in the US, so it’s currently a non-issue here. Not aware of the EU restrictions.

One of the explicit goals of Boom the company is to make overland flight viable (which makes the economics of supersonic flight closer to viable).

How is a sonic boom 1/40th the volume of Concordes going to affect wildlife?

That's the question, isn't it? It would be a good idea to find out.

(Additionally, I suspect any figure like 1/40th the volume of Concorde is drawn from thin air at this point. They don't have a prototype flying subsonic yet, much less supersonic.)

We’ve had supersonic flight for just over 70 years now, and haven’t seen any indication that your fears are justified.

Yeah but what if? We better completely stop developing all new technology until our fears can be resolved

.. and it's been banned over land for civilians and rarely used by militaries.

I'm not sure if a business-focused article discussing an order of the aircraft really needs to make mention of it?

Simplistic counter-argument: At this point, any article needs to mention the environment if we're going to cut back on carbon pollution as much as we need to.

Nope. You can increase carbon pollution in one area while still reducing total net carbon emissions.

You can also give food to every hungry child on earth.

Given the financial risks associated with ICAO's commitments for carbon neutral growth of the industry, and potential impact of current and future national/supranational emissions trading and carbon tax policies over the expected lifetime of a plane that's not going into service for a few more years yet, perhaps it's quite relevant even from a business-focused perspective.

It is worse, but probably not that bad. There's strong evidence that emissions at high altitudes have magnified effects on the atmosphere (~2-4x IIRC) and planes are the second largest source of transportation CO2 besides road vehicles. Supersonic planes fly higher and emit a couple times more pollution. However planes are still like 7% of all transport emissions even when scaled for altitude, and stopping those emissions is incredibly challenging.

Plus, frankly, if we get a handle on energy and road vehicles it probably just won't matter. Those two factors would reduce emissions by an order of magnitude. The planet might just be able to sustain air travel without intervention. Also, I like going fast.

Several countries have already committed to ban cars with internal combustion engines in the next 10-20 years.

London is introducing a new "T-charge" today whereby owners of older and more polluting vehicles have to pay an extra fee to enter central London.

I suspect that 'a jet that generates double the pollution so that rich people can get to their destination faster' is dead on arrival.

> I suspect that 'a jet that generates double the pollution so that rich people can get to their destination faster' is dead on arrival.

The Concorde actually burned almost 8x as much fuel per passenger-mile as a 747. However that still only brought it down to 14 passenger-miles per US gallon. In the US the average car gets 25 mpg[1], so they're on the same magnitude. A modern supersonic jet would probably get closer to if not better than an average car, but that's also nullified if you put more people in the car. NB that the ban is on selling, not owning, as far as I know.

So yeah on a per-pollution basis it checks out, but the car ban can happen because electric cars are essentially identical and completely substitute-able. I seriously doubt it would happen if electric cars could only drive half the speed of gasoline cars. I could see a carbon tax but I think a ban is very unlikely. Airplanes are just too efficient, and get well over 100 mpg nowadays.

[1]: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-average-fuel-economy-high-mpg....

Key word there: rich people. Nobody with power will want to stop this technology. This isn't even getting into how regulating aviation isn't in the Paris agreement, but has been delegated to the ICAO, which is captured by industry.

It isn't just more emissions per passenger mile, but this will also instead the number of passenger miles due to its convenience.

Seems like it’s aimed at business class. Businesses certainly don’t care about externalities they don’t foot the bill for.

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