"If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline."

- Richard Branson

Yep. My feeling is that this story involves Elon Musk losing his completely conventional fleet of aircraft and slightly quirky service to creditors and wishing that he'd set up a space company or a 140 characters company instead...

I mean, you could turn the quote into "If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new rocket company."

Not sure what are SpaceX financials but Musk seems ok.

The same but the screens on the back of the seats would be slightly larger.

The pilot's controls will all be touchscreen :)

The horror

The worst part about flying is the part before and after the plane ride, when you get stressed about what time to show up, going through security, sitting around, waiting to board, landing and waiting for the doors to open, taking a bus to the terminal, waiting for a carousel for 5 ~ 60 minutes, etc.

If someone could solve that for me affordably, I can handle the sitting on an airplane in economy class for 15 hours bit.

Although yes: having high speed, low latency internet for those 15 hours would make it much more pleasant.

The solution exists but unfortunately for your affordability criterion it means flying first class.

First class has its own levels I think, just because you spend 10k for a flight you're not going with a limo directly under the plane without any wait in the airport. Some airports do have shortcuts though, that's true.

Isn't PreCheck supposed to lessen that a bit?

I don't think "security" is going to be lessened in our lifetime, if anything it can only get worse. Disrupting the space would take an insane amount of money you don't have. People who have money, can fly private.

Everybody getting PreCheck and all those other features is basically lessening security, but only if you pay.

It’s not lessening security.

It's certainly lessening privacy at the very least. Government sanctioned spying in exchange for saving a few minutes.

The information you provide as part of PreCheck is all stuff the US government already likely posesses on you.

It's really not. You just provide some info that the government already has along with your fingerprints, they do a quick background check, and you're done. Whether you have PreCheck or not, the government knows what flights you've taken because the airlines have to submit their passenger lists. $85 for 5 years of less hassle at security is worth it for anyone who flies even once every 1-2 years.

I'd happily part with the $85 or whatever nominal amount, but I almost never fly through the USA.

Its lessening security theater if I understand the process correctly. I'm not American.

The worst part about flying is sitting in an uncomfortable, cramped space for hours

To me, the worst part about flying is landing. As soon as you land a ton of inpatient people stand up and just rush to stand and wait in the middle isle. Every single flight this happens on.

Planes need to have exits on the rear, middle, and front of the plane to make deplaning a lot easier and quicker.

If this issue is ever solved it will be a miracle.

Every plane has front and rear exits, and the bigger ones have middle exits as well. The issue is airport infrastructure, not the planes.

Do you mean an airline (end service provider) or an airplane manufacturer? The latter would be more analogous to what Elon has done with SpaceX.

If the former, I couldn’t imagine anything more deathly boring than this, working insanely hard to run a commodity service that’s fundamentally identical to all of your competitors other than on the margins. It would be like wondering how different the car hire industry would be if Musk had launched a hire company at the same time as Tesla.

Not very I'm sure; for space tech, they tried Concorde, too expensive. for electric tech, companies are working on electric airplanes but that too is still far away - despite the huge drop in the cost of battery tech for example that in part Tesla was responsible for.

Electric planes are not 'far' away. They will see service for shorter routes this decade most likely.

Yes, maybe he would then have had a legitimate reason to use the term 'Autopilot'.

What Musk should have done is create a company that is owned 50% by Tesla, 50% by SpaceX and they should be developing a electric airplane.

If you are willing to do the necessary investment, I think there is huge potential to build an airplane that goes significantly further then planes like the Aviation Alice or what Heart Aerospace ES-30 is doing.

Tesla is already half solving this problem indirectly through their batter research, buuut the biggest issue with electric aircraft is the energy density of batteries isn't, and isn't projected, to get anywhere near what it needs to be to handle long range flying.

Many industry experts believe we're going to see an electrification but in tiers. Pure electric in the regional space, with more regional options than now on smaller planes, followed by hydrogen or alternative fuels powering the mid-range. Long range may go to hydrogen or alternatives, but the density is still such that jet fuel will rein on the longest flights for the next 10-15 years minimum.

The cool thing is that with every 50km you can unlock new locations.

The ES-30 flying from Zürich can get you to important cities in France, Germany, Italy and Austria. With they hybrid mode almost to Paris.

In Europe you have great trains but in the US this could be a game changer in all the big metro areas, North East, Florida, Texas Triangle, Southern California, Mid West/Canada.

Pushing on that whole stack you can get out more then the ES-30. There is potential for things like flying higher, using PRANTL Wing, Flying wing structure, batteries as part of the structure and so on.

A startup wouldn't risk doing any of these, but a company like SpaceX/Tesla could easily invest the capital to do this.

Elon Musk has a strong vision for environmentally friendly means of transportation, and I don't think that is currently possible with planes.

> environmentally friendly means of transportation

Hate to break it to you but displacing three tonnes of metal and batteries to move your 80kg ass to Walmart isn't environmentally friendly in any way

If the energy to build and power the batteries all came from sunlight then why not?

And methane is made of unicorn farts right ?

Producing one tonne of lithium requires digging out 500 tonnes of earth. We don't mine lithium with solar panels and horses, it's an extremely energy intensive and polluting industry, and that's only a tiny part of the equation, building the car already is already extremely polluting

Is it better than straight up burning dino juice ? Sure, is it sustainable and eco friendly as it is presented today ? not at all

And that's not even talking about the fact that a big part of car pollution is due to tires, heavier/faster accelerating cars = eat through tires more quickly than lighter/slower vehicles

There is no shame in buying a tesla but don't feel like you're saving/helping the planet, this is environmentally friendly the same way having 1 terminal cancer is healthier than having 2 terminal cancers, you might die in 6 months instead of 5 but you're still utterly fucked

Why can't lithium be dug with solar power? California generates 10 gigawatts of it on a good day.

Tire technology is also improving to be eco friendly - https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=...

The system doesn't go from bad to good overnight. Every piece needs to be updated, vehicles that don't put out fumes is just one piece of that system.

You're argument reads, 'well the entire system isn't perfect yet, so that negates all improvements to the components' Give me a break. Electric cars are a huge step forward. One of many steps that need to be taken.

The world will move forward while you sit on the sidelines and complain.

> Why can't lithium be dug with solar power?

It isn't and most likely won't be until upgrading the whole production is cheaper than burning fossil fuel and god knows how long it'll take given how advanced and specific mining equipment is. And even if it was 100% electric, it's still an absolute nasty thing: https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li...

> Electric cars are a huge step forward.

Only if you believe personal vehicles are a good thing in the first place, which is already something you can argue against, but I guess most of us have been brain washed by decades of auto industry marketing. Teslas aren't a step in the right direction, e mustangs either, the new f150 either, we're just making the same mistake all over again "but it's electric so you're saving the planet", no it's just a 3 tonnes pile of e waste moving a 80kg meat bag, putting candy sprinkles on top of a big turd doesn't change its fundamental nature.

> The world will move forward while you sit on the sidelines and complain.

I'm fine on my legs powered bicycle thank you

Spraying kids with DDT was progress, lead in paint and gas was progress, freon in fridges was progress, asbestos was the best thing after sliced bread. Everything is progress if your definition of progress is "the hot new thing that generates money". It's always the same thing, the people pushing for these things are making big bucks while selling you a dream that's going to last xx years until it falls apart and be replaced by the next

The entire world uses vehicles of all shapes and sizes. If they’re all built and powered with sunlight, what does it matter if it’s a passenger car or not.

Tire pollution, need for more resources to build the vehicle, harder to dispose/recycle, &c.

It's not so hard to imagine how it all adds up, there are 1.4B personal vehicles on earth, 1 tonne vs 3 tonnes adds up real quick

“I’ve got an idea for an electric jet.” -Elon Musk, Iron Man 2.

He does not need to start an airline company, he is going to change the airline industry if fingers crossed we will live to see Starship Earth to Earth happening - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

And what we will be even better a strong competition, so that kind of flights will be available to all.

People believing in this are the same people who believed we'd have flying cars by the year 2000. I can't believe people are falling for such blatant sci fi marketing bullshit

I bet in 30 years we'll still be arguing that "fully autonomous cars are just around the corner" and "Musk will put a colony on Mars in 5 years"

I hope you’re wrong. In 30 years another couple million people will have died in car accidents if we haven’t mostly solved autonomous driving by then.

It would likely run on vapor and drama. Seriously, the overpromise and under-deliver from most Elon endeavours is getting out of control.