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0 pointsnotahacker1y ago0 comments

> At this time, very few people visit places more than 10 hours away from their homes

I suspect if you were to draw a Venn diagram of "people who had never visited a place more than 10 hours from their home" and "people who could afford a ticket on a Boom Supersonic airliner at their target profitable ticket price range..." there wouldn't be any overlap.

You don't need hypersonic travel to discover places far away, and the target market who are so busy it's worth paying extra so they can get back to the US from their European office without staying overnight aren't going to be doing much of that anyway...

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rbanffy1y ago

Boom will only be the first. Other supersonic airliners will happen once Boom validates the market. We can do a lot better than Concorde did now, with higher efficiency engines and lighter materials.

I just saw the other day China developing a rotating detonation ramjet. I guess missiles will come first, but, eventually, China will want to cross their 21st century empire faster than current airliners.

notahackerOP1y ago

There's a difference between "better than Concorde", which isn't exactly a high point of efficiency, and defying the laws of physics to make supersonic flights so cheap they can operate flights between origins and destinations that aren't commercially viable to fly direct at the moment (like your trip to Brazil) in sufficient comfort to attract people that don't do long haul at the moment

The barrier to most people not to visiting places that are very far away isn't "flights are 40% longer than ideal". 40% cheaper flights would open up the world more, but this is a step in the opposite direction

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