[nine_k]

Geography may also be a problem. Running a gigawatt cable from sun-soaked Australia anywhere in SEA is enormously expensive. Instead, packaging the energy into carbohydrates produced from waste water (cleaning it in the process) and waste CO₂ may be much more economical and convenient. You can likely produce the best quality Jet A fuel or octane 98 gasoline with little other fractions by tuning the synthesis process (unlike an oil well which gives you a mix you can't control).

Beside that, a transatlantic jet, let alone a Falcon 9, won't ever fly with battery power. You still need highly energetic fuels where power density is at a huge premium.

[namibj]

The need to fly commercial liquid-fuel planes beyond the near/medium future far from certain. To my understanding we could quite easily use electric ships for most trans-oceanic cargo, and supplement it with some rail tunnels/bridges crossing from the UK, over the Faroe Islands, to Iceland, Greenland, Baffin Island, and Québec. The only tectonic "issue" would be crossing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on Iceland.

Sure, it'd be quite a large civil engineering feat, but the speeds would be hard to beat. It'd be just a 12h ride from London to NYC, assuming TGV's top speed of 575 km/h.

A potential alternative could be to use a low-flying plane and deploy a series of HVDC-fed buoys/platforms straight across the Atlantic for fast-charging.

You're right about the Falcon 9 though.

[selectodude]

Not even power density but also the ability to get lighter as you go farther.