Did you ever hear the term "jet set" used to describe the glamorous social elite, well that term comes from the days when international air travel was the exclusive preserve of the super rich. Nowadays you can jump on a plane for less than the cost of a meal at the airport (+ taxes of course). Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".

Not having such cheap flights might ultimately have been for the better. Flying has become very cheap, but we're not paying the true cost in terms of environmental damage.

Short-haul commuter flights are a different thing entirely.

For example, want to waive the height restrictions so you can have airplane view so of Manhattan from your $100M penthouse? Sure, no problem. Want to pay the same property taxes as a $3 million apartment? That's a horse of a different color.

If someone cracks the economic difficulties of supersonic passenger flight, maybe some other aircraft could do it. But Concorde is going to remain a museum piece.

They both do the same job in the same amount of time, arguably both are as comfortable as each other (or near enough as makes no difference).

The concorde has enormous brand appeal and exclusivity, and that matters to people.

Seriously though, you're forgetting timezones. Hop on the jet at 11am NYC time and be in London at 7:30pm London time. Leave London at midnight and be back in NYC at 10:30pm NYC time. You're not going to be exhausted from travel because it's first class all the way and you don't even need to pack bags.

You may not be exhausted but sitting stationary for 7 hours just to get dinner doesn't seem like such a fun thought, even in first class. (The novelty wears off very quickly)

Security is hardly an issue flying privately, I've had experiences where we've landed and all stepped out of the plane just looking around the airfield waiting for someone to come say something... and nobody coming.

as far as in understand the X-15 is more simple than Concorde. The suborbital and ICBM-ballistic tech is well understood and has been in constant use for half a century, where is Mach 3+ aircraft territory is still almost no-go zone. Compare to high Mach the suborbital/ballistic is just more energy efficient.

Imagine the chaos of a dozen members of the general public experiencing zero gravity for the first time. Better bring lots of towels ... and an umbrella.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1118/1

That article quotes 7km/s for a 10,000km trip, compared to about 8km/s for LEO.

The X-15 (and SpaceshipOne, for that matter) was never trying to actually go anywhere; it just hopped out of the atmosphere and come down again very close to where it took off, with a delta-V of about 1.5km/s.

It's worth getting a copy of KSP and actually trying this. It's eye-opening.

Those tax benefits the wealthy receive are a less risky subsidy than directly giving electric vehicle and charging infrastructure companies funds directly. Its a balance between doing nothing and doing something more drastic (full disclaimer: we aren't doing enough, and we should be pouring buckets of money into electrification of mobility, but that's an argument for another thread).

With regards to gas taxes, most people already aren't paying their fair share of gas/road taxes (the US highway trust fund is completely broke). I'm not sure electric vehicles are contributing to the problem as much as the existing 253 million internal combustion vehicles already on the road (not counting heavy trucks, that contribute even more to road damage).

However, assuming that by "electrification of mobility" you mean "everybody who's driving their own car keeps driving their own car, only it's electric rather than gas-powered", then I believe you're looking at it all wrong. In cities where people increasingly live, single-person cars have huge negative externalities aside from fossil fuel consumption, starting with congestion and moving on to over-building of parking, road deaths, sprawl, etc. Electric cars won't solve all of these, and neither will self-driving cars, or self-driving electric cars.

Instead, what we need for mobility in cities is better land use, with dense areas or corridors, safe walking and bicycling infrastructure, frequent and convenient mass transit, and congestion charging.

Do all that and you'll have real mobility fixes.

Everyone whose income is largely derived through long-term capital gains does this, really; hedge-fund managers just happen to be people who seem like they are working for someone else but manage to get paid for that work in a way that gets them taxed like capitalists.

(Which might explain while a few notable actual major capitalists -- who don't favor general reform of taxation on capital -- have come out in favor of reforms that would tax hedge-fund manager earnings like normal income.)

Maybe once or twice. After that it was super annoying. It would set off car alarms it was so loud.

What's wrong with some tax breaks for old classic cars to keep them on the road? They're part of the modern design language and aesthetic and just as important as any important architecture. If you see road/fuel taxes as a cost of using the public road network then providing lower taxes to vehicles who barely drive 500 miles in a year is hardly a burden given the benefit that seeing old classic cars brings to people. Besides, the majority of people driving old cars (even old ferraris) are not mega wealthy but people on more regular incomes who are dedicated to their hobby.

Putting any type of barrier in front of wealthy people spending on this type of technology is a net lose for us all. A private SST would not be built by exploiting workers or robbing pension funds.

As for cheap Tourist traps - London is crawling with them already, including the London Eye and the battleship in WW2 camo.