alt Hacker NewsI just don't see any pressing need for supersonic jet travel now that in-flight Wi-Fi, hi-res HMDs for your laptop and the Nintendo Switch all exist. And I think that trying to justify it in terms of "we have to end the stagnation and go back to a regime where plane speeds increase YoY" is silly: either it provides a compelling service for its high cost (there's no getting around that air drag and fuel consumption increases quadratically with speed) or it doesn't, and personally I don't think it will.
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IMHO digital entertainment doesn't make up for being stuck in a cramped cabin for up to 19 hours (the longest international flight) around people (with varying levels of considerateness, contagiousness, and personal hygiene). Not to mention the increased risks of DVT and radiation exposure.
I travel each year to see family abroad, a minimum 2-leg trip totaling at least 27 hours. I can't sleep on planes so I arrive exhausted and am useless and cranky for the first 2 days after this trip. I would happily pay 2x the fare to cut that trip in half.
Even with those conveniences IMO that only dulls the tedium of the flight and no matter how comfy the travel is I'm still losing about a whole day at least of just flying across the Atlantic going from the US to Europe and back for a vacation which is pretty valuable with US leave allowances. At the very least there's the market for business travel where workers don't lose whole days to travel.
And also the negative externalities. Plane noise is irritating, sonic booms are far worse and spread farther.
There's a powerful and outspoken modern cult that worships technological progress, but only for values of "progress" that meet a certain wow-factor/"shininess" threshold.
The idea that such progress could ever falter is anathema to such a cohort (which, in their defense, have lived their whole lives in the most technologically anomalous period of the entirety of human history), making them susceptible to scams like Boom.
Instead, I'd implore people to consider that true progress is the ability to do more with less, and not merely the ability to do more with more.
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You are not the only consumer of air travel. Supersonic is not for you, it is for elites willing to spend 4x the ticket price for half the flight time. Concorde tickets were $6000 for D.C. to London in the mid 1990s, so about $12,500 today, and that was for an economy-style seat. It was very popular among a certain segment.
East Coast US to Europe in 3-4 hours versus 7-8, West Coast US to Asia in 5-6 hours versus 10-12.... makes it more like a domestic flight.
“ Blake’s pitch to airlines is enticing: “You’re already flying this route with a 300-seat plane where 80+ people in business class generate most of your profit. Give those passengers a supersonic plane, cut the flight time in half, and charge the same price.”
There is such a huge market of ways to improve flights that are between "what we have now" and "high price supersonic" that aren't currently being done; indicating that there's not a terribly large market for it.
Those who could easily afford supersonic can already afford other luxuries; the only one it gives is time; but if time is of the essence you can save it elsewhere by chartering your own jet.