Slashdot Mirror
Why We're Not Going To See Sub-orbital Airliners
glowend writes: Sci-fi author Charlie Stross has an article about sub-orbital flight, and why we'll never see it as a common mode of transportation. Quoting: "Yes, we can save some fuel by travelling above the atmosphere and cutting air resistance, but it's not a free lunch: you expend energy getting up to altitude and speed, and the fuel burn for going faster rises nonlinearly with speed. Concorde, flying trans-Atlantic at Mach 2.0, burned about the same amount of fuel as a Boeing 747 of similar vintage flying trans-Atlantic at Mach 0.85 ... while carrying less than a quarter as many passengers. Rockets aren't a magic technology. Neither are hybrid hypersonic air-breathing gadgets like Reaction Engines' Sabre engine. It's going to be a wee bit expensive."
Stross also makes a more general proposition that's particularly interesting to me: "One of the failure modes of extrapolative SF is to assume that just because something is technologically feasible, it will happen. ... Someone has to want it enough to pay for it—and it will be competing with other, possibly more attractive options."
Stross also makes a more general proposition that's particularly interesting to me: "One of the failure modes of extrapolative SF is to assume that just because something is technologically feasible, it will happen. ... Someone has to want it enough to pay for it—and it will be competing with other, possibly more attractive options."
What would have pulled me out of reality for that was realizing I was reading a book aimed at 15 year old girls.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
"My company requires me to book the LUF (Lowest Usable Fair) "
That's not fare!
No, faster was important when you didn't have to be at the airport three hours before your flight for your ceremonial security grope theater.
Last time I crossed the Atlantic by ocean liner
That ranks up with "and that's how I had my most recent foursome with blonde cheerleader triplets" in my list of phrases I never expected to read on slashdot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it