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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

It won't be flying that route if the sonic boom can be heard from populated areas.

Is a Mach-9 sonic boom 9x (or sth proportionally) greater than a Mach-1 boom?

Also, I bet the tickets will either be 0, because there's a non-zero probability you will burn up mid-flight, or really expensive, because maybe that money helps peel the risk onion.

Unless the "jet" is "non-conventional propulsion"...

Also, here's a vid of a rotating detonation engine (the type supposed to be used by this "jet"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRgiSHjdet0 (NASA test-fires 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine, January 2023)

That route works as they can get out over the ocean very quickly. Getting out of Paris, Berlin, Riyadh, New Delhi and other land locked major cities would be slower.

I don't think there is any reasonable route you can fly from Tokyo to New York without going over some land...

The current route takes it through the Arctic rather than what you may expect looking at a flat map. While it does go over land it wouldn't be hard to avoid populated areas, since there isn't many people in Greenland or the Arctic parts of Alaska.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-HND Here's the route. Once you pass Southern Ontario, there's basically no populated areas along the route.

My comment was about the fact that if you are taking off from a land locked city, you have to wait till you are over the ocean before going supersonic. So there is more time just travelling at regular speed. With New York, Toyko, London etc you only travel a short distance before you can speed up and create the sonic boom.

It's flying near space, though not quite in space. I doubt it will be loud enough to be a problem

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