I have another question of a somewhat similar nature. Just somewhat !
Why is air travel still so slow? For decades now, flights take the same (large) number of hours to fly direct between 2 points. For example, NYC to London. SF to Boston. Why has there been no innovation in this area of engineering? What is the bottleneck?
I know some interesting stuff has been written on the Concorde and supersonic travel etc. I think government regulation and public hysteria etc. are mostly at blame for the lack of innovation.
The air resistance (drag) on an airplane increases exponentially as the airplane’s speed increases. If a plane flies twice as fast, then there is four times more drag. As a result, the cost of fuel increases significantly as the plane flies faster.
The answer you're most likely to hear in this comments thread is that it's excessive, precautionary regulation setting an effective hard subsonic speed limit. While plausible, it's not clear to me that this is actually true. The cost savings to staying subsonic are substantial, and the benefits of higher speed are diminishing since they only apply to the airborne cruising phase of a journey. The current regulatory regime could probably be improved but I think the real problem is probably just economic and technical.
I feel like there is sufficient mechanical technology that we should be able to construct something that can transform from 6 seats into 6 beds, or possibly some other ratio, so planes could adapt to what tickets people buy or perhaps shift mid-flight.
When I took a sleeper train in thailand recently, the seats were setup in such a way that you had room for 4 people facing each other (a little tightly in) per spot, or you could turn that into 2 bunkbeds. Then for sleeper tickets you sell them such that each row has only 4 total tickets.
I have another question of a somewhat similar nature. Just somewhat !
Why is air travel still so slow? For decades now, flights take the same (large) number of hours to fly direct between 2 points. For example, NYC to London. SF to Boston. Why has there been no innovation in this area of engineering? What is the bottleneck?
One bottleneck is the speed of sound. It is possible to go faster than that — many military planes do — but it raises significant difficulties.
Seems regulation is the culprit, as is too often the case: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/03/end-speed-limits-on-aircraft.html
I know some interesting stuff has been written on the Concorde and supersonic travel etc. I think government regulation and public hysteria etc. are mostly at blame for the lack of innovation.
The air resistance (drag) on an airplane increases exponentially as the airplane’s speed increases. If a plane flies twice as fast, then there is four times more drag. As a result, the cost of fuel increases significantly as the plane flies faster.
That's a quadratic function, not an exponential one.
The answer you're most likely to hear in this comments thread is that it's excessive, precautionary regulation setting an effective hard subsonic speed limit. While plausible, it's not clear to me that this is actually true. The cost savings to staying subsonic are substantial, and the benefits of higher speed are diminishing since they only apply to the airborne cruising phase of a journey. The current regulatory regime could probably be improved but I think the real problem is probably just economic and technical.
Where can I find the original post?
I feel like there is sufficient mechanical technology that we should be able to construct something that can transform from 6 seats into 6 beds, or possibly some other ratio, so planes could adapt to what tickets people buy or perhaps shift mid-flight.
When I took a sleeper train in thailand recently, the seats were setup in such a way that you had room for 4 people facing each other (a little tightly in) per spot, or you could turn that into 2 bunkbeds. Then for sleeper tickets you sell them such that each row has only 4 total tickets.