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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> issued a rule that remains one of the most destructive acts of industrial vandalism in history.

Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth. Seriously, f this guy. I suppose he's in favor of letting us chuck all of our garbage out of open windows while we drive, too.

I've heard sonic booms before at air shows, and it's not some quiet little "beep". They're loud and disturbing. As someone who values silence, hearing these frequently at any hour of the day would drive me insane.

I don't doubt there is technology that can make booms quieter, but until it's 0, STFU. Sick of people arguing that creating technology for the benefit of a tiny few (as others have mentioned, supersonic travel will always be inherently more inefficient) is OK, the externalities on the rest of the populace be damned.

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“I've heard sonic booms before at air shows, and it's not some quiet little "beep". They're loud and disturbing.”

I highly doubt you’ve heard a sonic boom at an airshow, it’s illegal to perform them and has been for a long time. A true sonic boom performed at low altitude at an airshow would blow out the eardrums of every attendant at the show and all the windows in every car in the parking lot. Only the military is allowed to cause them and only for very good reason. There was a recent case in the UK where fighter jets caused a sonic boom as they were scrambled to respond to a malfunctioning plane; the video is here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fGR96Zz0dXk and it had people from over 20km away calling the police to report that a bomb had gone off somewhere nearby.

What you’ve heard at airshows is close to a sonic boom, it’s called “tickling the cone” and it’s highly compressed but not collapsed sound waves. It resembles the regular roar of an airplane, but packed into a few seconds. Very different to a sonic boom, which sounds exactly like an explosion.

(The practical upshot is this strengthens your argument.)

You could hear them in LA when the Space Shuttle landed at Edwards AFB. Explosion yeah.

So your point is that what they heard wasn't even ad loud as a boom?

That’s why I said “the practical upshot is that this strengthens your argument”, yeah.

Poor guy is so dragged into the pipe of the magical supersonic flight he sees absolutely nothing outside, even the economic downtrun is attributed partially to the sonic boom ban on the end, and the key to greatness are booms in the sky, ridiculous. :D

As one spent my childhood in the Eastern Bloc with fighter planes practicing overhead passing supersonic limit frequently I say the sonic boom is no joke. Most likely those happened lower than the cruising altitude of an airlener and consequently the shaking windows and frighetened animals (and children) may be avoided if happen higher up yet the more silent ones were still enough waking up anyone. Happening multiple times throughout the night - airliners fill the night sky - would be detrimental to health in an already noisy society where good sleep is seldom.

I am living now in Easter Anglia and one or two years ago two Eurofighters went on to intercept an airliner not responding to calls and the resulting booms not only broke the work for everyone - wife was on a call and both end startled about the loud 'explosions' nearby - but the booms were in the news that day triggering discussions and analysis.

Booms are pretty distracting. Even milder noises are like low rumble coming from a factory or works, especially during the night. Better to be avoided, the regulators were wise. Uncaring fisherman - observed by the author - lost in an activity then interrupted by a mild boom only for seconds is no reliable reference here I think. : ) Someone lost in an activity - mind is engaged in to the level of being disconnected of surroundings - should not be noticing it at all to be accepteble.

Did you actually read the article?

He's proposing allowing sonic booms below certain decibel limits that are apparently below what any aircraft can achieve today. So your experience with airshow sonic booms is not directly relevant.

Once that’s a law, it’s super easy to get politicians to alter that number a bit more your way every year. That won’t make news or cause pushback that a binary decision makes.

No, the better thing is to demonstrate the lower number as achievable first, then change the rules to go into production.

They are proposing 85db at ground level. That’s as loud as a gas lawnmower, except it would sound like an explosion.

Even current aircrafts’ air braking is loud enough to be annoying as hell (to the point where people routinely complain and force airports to move approach routes).

The air brakes sound something like “dew-yoooouuuuu”. Not sure what the actual name of the hated thing that makes the noise is.

That's the sound of changing configuration from descent to landing. Involves increasing power to the engines which is the main source of the sound involved.

Properly executed landing in airliner doesn't use airbrakes until touchdown (where they are used among other things to ensure airplane doesn't accidently lift from runway and are triggered by pressure sensors on main gear).

To quote a certain pilot's response to ATC: "Air brakes are for when I fuckup, not for your fuckups"

so it would be about as loud as something most suburban homeowners do on a weekly basis during the summer, but for a much shorter duration? not really making your point here... that sounds like a fair tradeoff to decrease flight times.

The boom would be quieter tan current booms, but still way louder than any commercial aircraft today.

And we're not talking about one (rich) bastard disturbing one other person. A sonic boom will disturb almost everyone under/near the flightpath. How many people would be under a supersonic flight down the US east coast from (say) Boston to Tampa - 50 million?

You went to airshows where the show was being performed at airliner cruising altitude of 30-40k feet?

> but until it's 0, STFU

This is an absurd attitude. Most human activities have externalities, from farming to driving to playing music to hiking to having the lights on.

Things with externalities should ideally have the beneficiaries be made to pay for those externalities, or if that's not practical, have them measured as best we can and a sin tax imposed.

That's such a simplistic attitude. Piguvian taxes aren't magic. And a sin tax doesn't help the people who live close to the airport.

Yeah great you have terrible living situation but at least the government has money for new F-35s.

And the reason this isn't done is because very often you couldn't pay those things in the first place. So companies that depend on not paying them will just lobby it away or die.

Sometimes its better to just make it illegal so no company actually starts depending on these things.

OK, sure, maybe make some things illegal if your government is incapable of spending money well, but you definitely need to weigh the pros and cons in that case, not impose a blanket ban on anything with a negative externality!

My point is that sometimes its better for some things to just be illegal because it is likely better then the alternative that you would likely get.

If this was a hugely important issue, yes, try to change it. However until then, lets not waste political capital on it.

Were those sonic booms from airplanes at cruising altitude, or from low flying jets showing off?

Ok, and from the other side of things, I’ve never heard a sonic boom in my life. No idea how loud it is, or what the tradeoffs are. Shouldn’t we get a say?

More generally, bans on a technology “forever” just seem silly. It should at least be revisited every decade or so. A decade brings lots of advancement; maybe there’s some clever way of minimizing the boom from a sonic boom now.

Or maybe there isn’t. But it’s not nearly as clear cut as “if it’s >0, ban it. No noise whatsoever!” Like… you’ve heard loud motorcycles. Why not argue for those to be banned too?

A sonic boom is quite loud and will shake all the windows of every home across a state (though only a smaller section of the state if it is large like California).

I have not heard them since the Space Shuttle was retired.

I agree with the forever part in theory. However in politics (and law) if you leave a door slightly open, then people are incentivized to open it wide open and “get around” various rules.

Permanent “for forever” laws and never that. They are forever until someone changes them. That’s more binary and easier to reason about than “this sonic boom is better than that sonic boom so it’s ok, and it the 1980s already so let’s have at it!”. You set some threshold number, then the politics is about the number not the booms themselves really.

If technology has truly advanced enough, people will change the laws. Done.

Now as an engineer, I prefer the threshold. But it’s so much easier to change that. You start a company in 1980 and have so much better tech after 10 years in 1990, but it doesn’t materially change things enough, so you shut down or try and change the threshold. What do you do?

Implying we have any control over the laws. :) It’s lobbyists all the way down. Outsourcing our freedom to lobbyists seems like a bad idea in almost every case.

“Just change the law” is usually not an easy proposal. One could argue that it shouldn’t be. But technology advances much faster than the law, and having a lag time of decades doesn’t seem optimal in most cases.

Non sonic boom noise from the airplanes > 0, ban them all?

You only hear them if you live near an airport, and only if you’re right under the landing approach or takeoff route. But not when they’re cruising at 30,000ft, or even if you live within visual range of the airport but not under the takeoff/landing path.

So what? The 0 rule is more compassionate than you are, so it cares about the groups of people you mentioned too!

The French used to fly Mirage jets over the sea near where my family used to go on seaside holidays - no airport anywhere near. I don't know what altitude they were flying at, but you could see them clearly - as long as you looked at the opposite side of the bay from where the sound came from.

To be clear, they boomed, and it was loud and annoying.

Fwiw I was thinking of passenger jets, not military planes. I don’t have a good sense of how loud or quiet the latter are.

You're still wrong, or nearly deaf. During the night I can hear airliners between 9 and 13KM up. With closed windows. Through triple paned glass. Sometimes even while hearing music with over the ear headphones, at between 20 to 30% volume. It varies in intensity with the weather, but it's regular.

Edit: They don't need to be directly above me, 10KM to any side suffices. Of course it depends on the type, too. From experience, curiously clicking on flighttrackers to see who was that, it doesn't really matter though, because it goes all the way from small bizjets over airliners and freighters to heavy transports. And then there is the military. Always louder, no matter which. Even subsonic.

This isn't true. Sonic booms are quite loud, even at altitude. The Concorde was audible at its cruising altitude of 60,000ft.

It sounds like his biggest problem is that he's bored. "I want a bigger toy!"

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