Re:Air travel’s sudden collapse will reshape a trillion-doll...
by newacct583 on Thursday July 30, 2020 @08:12PM
(#24004304)
Yes, but they travel 5-10x faster than ground vehicles. Drag losses go linearly with air density and quadraticly with speed. Likewise the distance traveled is going to be higher on a rail network but probably in the "2x as far" realm. You're not going to make those two orders of magnitude up with this.
I think if you want to make this analysis come out you need to include starting/stopping losses (and maybe fuel hauling, empty car overhead, etc...) to the train trip or somesuch. Naively trains are going to win and it's not even close.
I think if you want to make this analysis come out you need to include starting/stopping losses (and maybe fuel hauling, empty car overhead, etc...) to the train trip or somesuch. Naively trains are going to win and it's not even close.