Your plan has never been done before. It might completely fail for risks you and everyone else has never considered.

For all of rail's faults, we are certain it is possible. It's been done many times before. Maybe it can be done cheaper or more efficiently but there is no question that if we build it it will actually work.

Ok I'm sure it's a horrible plan. But I'm also sure if you think a little out of the box you could mop the floor with this rail project. Being too risk averse is also a risk, it's a risk of settling when you could have had better.

I don't think you can even get a (new) 10 seat plane for less than $10,000,000. And I doubt that a plane built using technology that doesn't exist yet will be 70% cheaper than ones you can get today. Even if you can find 33,000 planes for that cost there will be significant infrastructure costs (if you want to multiply the # of planes in the air in California by 10, you'll need more ATC, more runways, more hangars, more parking garages, and probably more airports).

Upfront costs are just a small fraction of the price of flying planes around. That 3 (or 10) million per plane quickly gets subsumed by maintenance, staffing, and other recurring costs.

I don't know how loud these hypothetical electric planes are, but if they're like traditional ones I doubt that they'd beat a train in terms of noise (even though HSR can be 10-20 decibels louder than slower trains). I would question that there would actually be an advantage in speed or convenience, at least between highly populated areas.

Very impressive. But in just three minutes, I thought of an even better plan: put a $10M wormhole between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Wormholes don’t quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand.

I thought of an even better plan: put a $7.5B Hyperloop between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Hyperloops don't quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050815/elon-...

There was a plane featured on HN this week with those exact specs.

...and last year, and the one before that, and the one before that. And each of them has, for some unfathomable reason, failed to materialize. But that's just a small matter of sky-piloting (in the original sense, i.e. "pie in the sky").

For sale for $3M?

Yes, but I have my doubts

“aims to have one flying early next year.”, and HN is skeptical about it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602771)

> For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes

If you intend to make a honest comparison then you need to factor in at least the cost of building and operating at least two airports.

> For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range

So, how much does all the new airport and hanger capacity and support infrastructure cost, and what are the maintenance, operations, and replacement costs like over time?

> And it took me 5 minutes to think of a (possibly) better plan than theirs.

Not even close.