[rbg246]

Having a total of 20 supersonic airlines wasn't exactly common place.

And spending 1.5% of your GDP to send like ten people to the moon probably isn't that great an achievement from a cost benefit analysis (I know there will be fierce disagreement).

Not taking away from how amazing those things are but we have billions of computers that connect most people in the world together which in my opinion just insanely amazing.

[masswerk]

That these planes were operated only by BA and Air France (and a similar plane to some extent by Aeroflot) was merely an accident. Concorde was developed as a mass transport and there was broad interest. Then the US ban and the oil crisis happened.

[rbg246]

Yes but this is my point is there are great reasons why concorde failed but equally it's technology was not enough of progress to overcome the fact that 747s could do things at much greater scale and more economically.

The reach of aeroplane travel is far more impressive now than flying under a 100 people at supersonic speeds.

I also dispute that there was mass transport plans - the total passenger load was tiny.

Not to take away that the plane itself is an amazing piece of technology.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Concorde failed because of politics, not technology. The US wanted to make way for its own SST project so it limited Concorde's access to the US market.

A Concorde B variant with an even longer range and quieter engines was already being developed, and airlines were very interested in it. if the US market had been more open it's likely other markets would have followed suit.

Once it was stabilised in the market other improvements would have followed. Concorde was always a first class for the first class market, not an air bus. But if supersonic travel had become established there would have been market pressure to commoditise it, and we might have seen a continuing supersonic long haul market working in parallel with the smaller more local subsonic services we have now.

[pfdietz]

Concorde failed because of the technology. It was hugely expensive and consumed mass amounts of fuel (13x the fuel per passenger of a 747-200). It used 2 tons of fuel just to taxi to the runway for takeoff!

I dispute that airlines were actually interested in a Concorde B. The economic problems of supersonic flight would have remained.

There's a reason Boeing abandoned any pretense of interest in SST after Congress declined to fund it.

[checker]

Yeah I'll take decent in-flight internet connectivity over massive amounts of fuel being consumed to get to the destination faster.

[CapricornNoble]

I'd like the option of supersonic travel for transoceanic voyages. I'm looking at plane tickets back to the East Coast from Japan.... Tokyo to Dallas alone is ~12hrs, total travel time ~24hrs across 3 flights. Flying to the other side of the planet faster would be far more valuable to me than even browsing HN while airborne (I tend to sleep through my flights, no matter how long, anyway).

[pydry]

The computers and communication tech you love were developed as a result of the moon landing. Loads of stuff like that entered the public domain.

That's apart from improvements in digital imaging, large scale manufacturing, material sciences and flight control that were derived from the project.

Moreover, it was a longer term investment in humankind becoming a spacefaring species - something that will be necessary for our survival.

It was a bargain.

[eru]

You are missing opportunity costs.

All the resources that went into the moonlanding could have gone into something else. Eg could have stayed in private hands.

For a different example:

Yes, in the real world WW2 sort-of gave us computers. But IBM (and similar companies) would have invented electronic general purpose computers anyway, and probably sooner, if there hadn't been a war going on.

[papaf]

Not taking away from how amazing those things are but we have billions of computers that connect most people in the world together which in my opinion just insanely amazing.

The 70s looks at your example of progress, thinks of it as a big ARPANET and is not impressed.

[rbg246]

Scale is everything though - great technology is nothing without reach

[TheOtherHobbes]

Politics is everything.

We have wristwatch and pocket supercomputers with access to a global network.

But many people also live in a far more precarious economy, the global network is far too much a source of poor-quality or tainted information and toxic social experiences, monitoring and manipulation of all kinds are pervasive, and a compulsory personal ethic of branding, consumption, and selling is far more prevalent than anything more adventurous or creative.

[eru]

> But many people also live in a far more precarious economy, [...]

What? Global inequality has dropped through the floor compared to the 70s. People in India and China used to starve, now they have smartphones.

[mahogany]

To be pedantic, a reduction in poverty is not the same as a reduction in inequality. Your example of India and China seems to be pointing to the former.

Also, from a US-centric point of view, it seems to me that economic inequality has gotten worse since the 70s, or at least the 80s. See for example: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... or https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/37/4/921/17127....

I'm not sure what the parent commenter meant, but when I think "precarious economy", I'm thinking about things like wage stagnation and rising costs of healthcare, housing, and debt, rather than the fact that people now have iPhones (which for many are only affordable if paid for in monthly installments over years).

[eru]

> To be pedantic, a reduction in poverty is not the same as a reduction in inequality. Your example of India and China seems to be pointing to the former.

No, I meant that not only has absolute poverty declined, global (!) inequality has also declined.

There is now more inequality inside of China then there was when everyone was really poor in Mao's time. Yes. Hence the emphasis on global: the vast mass of Chinese people are closer to eg American standards of living than ever in the past.

(American) wage stagnation is a myth mostly produced by being sloppy with inflation adjustment.