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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

I actually think supersonic is the opposite of the direction to take air travel. The current speed of 500mph is already incredibly fast given the size of the planet. Even 200mph is sufficient.

The real problem is comfort. Planes are incredibly uncomfortable, even if you pay thousands of upgraded seating. I'd rather flights take 2-4x as long but be 10-20x more comfortable.

I'd like to see true innovation, using high-speed blimps or massive ocean-going ground effect airplanes, hovercraft, or something.

I'd rather take 1 day "air cruise" to Europe than a 4 hour hair-raising rollercoaster ride.

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When I walked through Concorde (both the prototype 002 at Yeovilton Museum in the UK and the ex-BA one at the Museum of Flight in Seattle), I was struck by how tiny and cramped the passenger cabin was.

Personally, as attractive as supersonic flight is to a former pilot like me, I would far rather spend time in a wide body cabin and arrive a few hours later than suffer the claustrophobia of sitting in a skinny tube. From what I have seen, the Boom concept jet has a similar fuselage profile to Concorde.

My dad got switched to a Concorde once and his reaction relative to his usual 747 (probably) first class was cool to do once but meh. Less space and it got him into London at rush hour rather than having a nice dinner on the plane.

And first class in those days, modulo first class lounge that got turned into more business class seating at some point, was much less comfortable than modern business class much less first class where it exists.

It would be nice if transPacific were faster (though that has its own set of range problems) but I don't find flying business class from the US East Coast to Europe a particular hardship.

> "I'd like to see true innovation, using high-speed blimps or massive ocean-going ground effect airplanes, hovercraft, or something."

No need for anything exotic like that, just build more and better trains. Trains also have a huge benefit of being easy to run off renewable energy (electric trains powered by the grid).

Even crappy trains like Amtrak operates are leagues more comfortable than air travel.

Trains are not actually easy to run with renewable energies. You need constant power over long distances to run trains effectively.

I would much rather have a coal or nuclear plants to run a fleet of trains rather then a bunch of batteries and some solar panels. Any volcano could disrupt not just air travel but also take down your land based transportation system.

But I agree insofar has having transportation being electric is a good thing. The same could be done for planes at some point. Elon Musk actually has a surprisingly good idea for an electric plane but he has no time to do it.

Even if you're running your trains off coal, you still win. Large scale power production is inherently more efficient. And we can do a lot better than coal of course, natural gas is much better for air quality. Current nuclear is miles better in terms of pollution and speculative near-future fission (LFTR,etc) could be damn near "renewable" in terms not having to worry about running out of the stuff. You've also got hydro, wind, solar, etc. In practice those later three aren't nearly as unreliable as you make them out to be.

Anyway, the point is that grid power is excellent no matter were you get it from, and because you can run them off the grid trains are exceptional.

Basically agree.

Only one point, nuclear is already pretty much unlimited. We don't need LFTR for that. Uranium is easily plentiful enough and newer designs that are much closer then a full LFTR can use it much more efficiently as well.

Thorium would be nice because its already a waste product of current mining, however Thorium is really only worth it if you are doing a LFTR, with most other designs Uranium is preferable.

You don't need innovation. You just need people willing to spend money. Take the wide-body jet of your choice and either Boeing or Airbus will be more than happy to outfit it for a small fraction of the number of people who can normally be accommodated. And you can staff it accordingly.

Of course, you need to remain competitive with private jets that don't have the issues associated with scheduled service.

Sounds like what you long for are the halcyon days of luxury air travel. The problem was it was not much more comfortable and far more dangerous, Plus took way longer

I agree with your points but I think we should take both directions. Speed for some , comfort for others.

Cruises exists

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