Hacker News Reader

Comment by ArtWomb | Hacker News Reader

Hypersonic and supersonic civilian transport. SpaceX published a first render of what parabolic arcs through low-earth orbit would look like. With estimated one-way arrival time under an hour. YC's own Boom Aerospace is set to announce first flight of its experimental XB-1 aircraft sometime next year. But it is just the beginning. Latent consumer demand could equal 100M+ passengers per annum. The technology is here today. It's simply not evenly distributed yet ;)

View on HN

Do you really think there are 100M people on the planet willing and able to pay for the absurd fuel cost this would require, just to shave off a few hours heading to a holiday or business meeting? There’s a reason that present day jets are so slow, and it’s not technological, it’s economical.

You are confusing "unique visitors" with "clicks", to borrow from Website-speak. I hope this makes sense now.

Also, the reason the jets are so slow is that supersonic flight is illegal for civilan aircraft over much developed land. There are ways to greatly reduce the noise though, and for subsonic aircraft there are also ways to fly fast but very silent if optimized for this. We have the tech, the oscillations have to be eliminated in e.g. rocket engines, and we are talking about conditions that we can simulate due to the temperature and pressure being in much more comfortable ranges.

Supersonic civilian transport was here in the 70's. It also wasn't evenly distributed then either. Hypersonic okay, now you have my attention.

I saw the best minds of my generation wasted making hyper-toys for the hyper-rich.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com