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Comment by foobarqux | Hacker News Reader

There is a substantial noise beyond the initial boom which is very loud even relative to the main boom. But even just a half second of a car horn going off right next to you every so often is intolerable.

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People finding a way to tolerate what was previously considered intolerable is pretty much the story of civilization.

I'd argue that civilization is the story of people finding ways to overcome what they previously had to tolerate.

If supersonic flight is so expensive that less than 1% of the population can enjoy it its not clear why the rest of us ought to tolerate it

You have to start somewhere before you can build towards an economy of scale that makes it affordable. If people used your same logic about regular airplanes, we wouldn't be using them today.

Supersonic flight will never be suitable for the masses compared to normal flight due to basic physics. It will always require much more expensive planes and more fuel.

It's not more viable now wealth inequality just means that there are more rich people to benefit.

>Supersonic flight will never be suitable for the masses compared to normal flight due to basic physics. It will always require much more expensive planes and more fuel.

You could have used the exact same argument for normal flight 100 years ago. Supersonic flight being more expensive than normal flight doesn't mean it will always be too expensive for the masses unless you assume there'll be no more economic growth ever.

Physics doesnt change. It will always cost more energy to fly faster.

Relatively, absolutely, but look at computers. Yes, more computing still costs more than less computing. Physics hasn't changed, but the cost of computers has. I have, in my hand, for part of a couple months of middle class wages, more computing power than existed in the world in 1960.

Yes and now wafer costs are going up for n+1 node, because of physics reasons.

There are 28 000 passenger flights in the US every day, imagine the noise under major corridors if a large percentage of them was supersonic.

What are we talking about? 5% more? 200% more?

I'm still waiting for Tesla's plan to come true where the rich paid for development before scaling up brings the prices down. The luxury economy of scale is about as realistic trickle down economy

> still waiting for Tesla's plan to come true where the rich paid for development before scaling up brings the prices down

The low-volume, high-priced rich-person toys (Roadster) finance the scaling up that enables lower-priced mass-manufactured product (Model 3).

Get those rich people out of the private jets and into the supersonic ones. Then the rich people currently in first class can move into the private jets.

Eventually, that means that there will be some seats in the back of the regular plans for everyday wage slaves.

Its not clear why you would think any of this works this way. Not one thing you said makes sense it's like a weird trickle down economics for flights as if better steaks would get oliver twist more gruel

Food is different from airplanes. On a middle class salary, I could afford to take a flight from Atlanta to Liberia and back for $300. Or $250 to get to Vegas and back. Spirit recently went out of business, but in 100 years I bet supersonic jet travel will be available to the middle class.

Liberia the African country or Liberia the city in Costa Rica?

It's worth noting that the initial supersonic bans came as a result of sustained sonic boom testing over the same population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests

I disagree. The more that I travel, the more that I notice the trend: The richer you become, the quieter you become. Even in the same country, income level seems to strongly correlate with how loud you are in public (and private).

> But even just a half second of a car horn going off right next to you every so often is intolerable.

You must not have a neighbor with a car whose alarm constantly goes off at random points throughout the day right outside your window. You eventually don't notice it. Speaking from experience

live by a railroad track. takes about 6 months till you don't notice it. at all.

Depends on the frequency and duration. Lived near some tracks for years and what got me was waking up in the middle of the night for that freight train that was irregular. The regular passenger train I got used to though.

To state the obvious, it's better if it's calm:

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/health-impa...

On getting used to it, people adapt in that they stop consciously noticing the noise, but it's still constantly processed and grinding on one's environmental awareness.

I actually do, and I still notice it every time. Some asshole across the street rides a motorcycle and every day he revs his motorcycle which sets off the alarm of some other asshole's van.

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