[verandaguy]

I strongly agree with your point, but I think some extra context is warranted.

As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to optimise for reducing fuel consumption, since that's (by far) the biggest fraction of a commercial aircraft's operating cost.

If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because the economics will make sense, which (in my mind) will be either because of:

- Somehow reduced fuel consumption, potentially through engines that leverage the effects of the supersonic flight regime for increased fuel efficiency (e.g. ramjets, through that likely wouldn't be possible in low-supersonic flight)

-> As another commenter in this thread mentioned, drag decreases with lower atmospheric pressure at higher altitudes, so there are fuel efficiency gains to be made just by flying higher, within the engines' design constraints.

- It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets to skip highway traffic.

There's likely more cases than just these, but these are just the greatest hits as far as I can tell; and I say all of that as someone who's not involved in the aviation industry.

For the record, I don't support this second niche existing, but it does, and it can be an economic driver.

[bobthepanda]

> As it stands, the economics of air travel force carriers to optimise for reducing fuel consumption, since that's (by far) the biggest fraction of a commercial aircraft's operating cost.

Not only this, but in general jet speeds have decreased due to airspace congestion. There is a lot of schedule padding due to delays at hubs like JFK, LAX, LHR, etc.

[seanmcdirmid]

Flights to and from Beijing between the USA have (or had before the pandemic) at least a one hour pad due to PLA airspace restrictions popping up randomly combined with airport congestion. It often meant arriving in Seattle early before customs and immigration opened.

[CyanBird]

The second niche as a rule of thumb pollutes-more-than-God already(0)

I am skeptical that lifting barriers to them polluting more would land any type of net benefit given that ultra-luxury products such as said jets don't tend to land outsized downstream advancements than let's say, funding basic sciences such as what Boeing or Airbus are already doing

(0) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-mi...

If it could be proved that things like faster private jets or faster planes could benefit in a sizeable and proportionate way to the general public, then yeah I would be in favor of this too, but as it stands I don't find the available info compelling, I'd rather them to pay more taxes

[verandaguy]

You're preaching to the choir; human progress isn't proportional to the number of billionaires with fleets of Gulfstreams (or rather, if it is, there's almost certainly no causation there).

[aaomidi]

I’m constantly in pain about how much human ingenuity takes the back seat just to keep the wheels turning in lives. If we actually tried to meet most of the requirements for people, creative thinking would flourish.

[seventytwo]

100%.

I like to bring up the question of how many startups and how much innovation is stifled because people stay with their jobs because of the healthcare.

[jandrewrogers]

Isn’t Europe evidence of the answer to this question?

[aaomidi]

Healthcare isn’t the only thing keeping people back.

[oceanplexian]

I’m not a billionaire apologist, but billionaires get a lot of flak for using private aircraft where it makes a lot of sense.

Zoom is not a valid substitute when you’re trying to make high stakes decisions that involve millions - billions of dollars and complex relationships in multiple time zones. Saying that human progress depends on it is a bit dramatic but these folks allocate large amounts of capital and have an outsized impact on the economy.

[CyanBird]

Sure, but the private jet usage is not exclusively to said high level meetings.... If it were, then the Oxfam piece above would be singing a quite different tune

[grumple]

Crew and maintenance are both higher costs for most airlines, according to this and other sources I've found: https://www.icao.int/mid/documents/2017/aviation%20data%20an...

Let's say that you can now make twice as many flights in a day. You can now do twice as many flights with the same crew and aircraft (same maintenance costs). Your fuel costs increase, but your other costs remain fixed, so despite the increase in fuel costs, you still end up making more profit. You might be able to charge more for the faster flights as well, and there may be beneficial second-order effects.

[htag]

> It'll fill the niche of richer-than-god people who use jets to skip highway traffic.

To skip highway traffic a richer-than-god person would use a helicopter. Private jets are used for further distances.

[javiramos]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/kylie-je...

[ClumsyPilot]

"She was attacked by twitter users"

Nice language, was she stabbed? Has she lost money, job?

Why conflate well-deserved criticism with violence?

[h0h0h0h0111]

attacked is a widely used synonym for criticised

[htag]

> to assail with unfriendly or bitter words

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attacked

[oliwarner]

Given the ecological cost, the economic balance has to be thumbed; taxed to the hilt to fund restorative programmes.

Being absurdly rich shouldn't give you license to destroy the planet.

[golemotron]

I hate to break it to you but the planet is very resilient. It was here long before humanity and it will be here and habitable for life long after we've disappeared or evolved into something else.

[seanmcdirmid]

When we say “destroy the planet”, it usually means making it inhabitable for human (as we are) life, Mother Nature would recover in the long term, but in the long term we would be dead.

[golemotron]

Global population is set to decrease dramatically as industrialization's demographic wave passes. Pollution will decrease with it. It's a plot change many haven't noticed yet.

[seanmcdirmid]

Climate change skeptics think humans have little to do with climate change and so we are all doomed anyways (conservation won’t help, so YOLO). Definitely Mother Nature will correct it one way or another, and humans could be totally obsolete in a few centuries anyways. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable using this as justification to drive a canyonero.

[runarberg]

We are already almost at +1.5° C, we are looking at +4° C at the end of this century with the current trends. The Global population will still be around 11 billion (3 billion more than today) in 2100 (if we are not all dead at that point from wars and famines which is inevitable after 4° warming).

[geysersam]

How are people still not understanding that acting to prevent climate change is a cost saving measure?

It's not about saving humans from extinction.

It's just the smart thing to do unless we want to spend massive amounts of resources in the future to adapt to the consequences of a warming climate.

[oliwarner]

This is a pretty odd outlook.

As trajectories go, currently habitable places will become uninhabitable within the lifetime of people you know. And that process isn't nice. Becoming uninhabitable means a series of natural disasters (and clean water pressures) that force people to migrate. Mass migration means global turmoil as people scramble to get safe. And many will die along the way. That's already started.

The planet will physically be here but its habitability matters too. I don't really care about what comes after humans, as long as it doesn't come now and kill me and mine.

If your only argument is "life, uhh, finds a way", that's great. Thank you for your contribution. Now find us a way to relocate a billion people in the next three decades.

[seattle_spring]

You might be ok with breathing air that tastes like dirty anus and gives you cancer in exchange for some added conveniences, but me and I'd hazard to guess most other people would rather make some concessions so our planet is as healthy as possible.

[ClumsyPilot]

Yeah, if we stanrt a nuclear holocaust, the planet will still be here, but all its inhabitants will be dead.

The best combination of being technically correct of missing the point.

[TechBro8615]

Actually, a nuclear holocaust would most likely not lead to all humans losing their lives. Many, if not most, would survive. Even some in the cities and their immediately surrounding areas would survive. Unless you tell everyone to go outside in the middle of their nearest city right before the bomb drops, you're going to be stuck with humans even after the dust settles.

[ClumsyPilot]

the overall point was that the planet has survived things that humans cannot survive. There were 5 or 6 mass extinctions.

When peopme talk about the planet being destroyed, they usually mean for human life.

[TechBro8615]

And my point was that neither climate change nor nuclear holocaust would be sufficient to cause a mass extinction on the scale of, say, that which eliminated the dinosaurs. In either case there will be plenty of humans remaining.

[TechBro8615]

Stop it. We must seize the wealth of all billionaires before the water rises to the second rung of the ladder on Barack Obama's dock in Martha's Vineyard.

[drewcoo]

> If supersonic transport makes a comeback, it'll be because the economics will make sense

And not because it kills the planet less.

[cue sad trombone]

[Nextgrid]

You can offset environmental impact by excise-style taxes on the polluting activity that are used to subsidize environmentally-friendly processes elsewhere that would've otherwise used fossil fuels due to cost.

It's not perfect (as fossil fuels are still being burned) but it's better than nothing and a much more realistic solution than some extremist ideas such as stopping using fossil fuels overnight and effectively shutting down the economy as a result.

[kelseyfrog]

You could, but you could also maintain the status quo. Not everything needs a market based solution.

[Dylan16807]

You can tax enough to remove 150% of the pollution. I'd call that much better than the status quo. And that's before we talk about the usefulness of funneling rich people money into technology research.

[bobthepanda]

IIRC, with aviation fuel it's kind of complicated due to international treaties on taxation of fuel.

[wkat4242]

Yeah and those are necessary to avoid airlines filling all the way up at the cheapest location and thus wasting more energy carrying unneeded fuel around

[AlphaCharlie]

That's a very eloquent way to put it, I agree to it all :)