Re:Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
by scythe on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @07:00PM
(#46520708)
Supersonic is more interesting over the Pacific than the Atlantic. An uncomfortable 7-hour flight becoming a less uncomfortable 4-hour flight isn't really news. A miserable 14-hour flight becoming a tolerable 8-hour flight is, both for passengers and possibly even for the burden on staff. IIRC the old Concorde just didn't have the range, but any improvement in the underlying tech could change that.
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I think we’ll eventually have some technology to make this realistic.
Supersonic flights powered by jet/rocket engines might not be it for all we know. IMO we are still pretty early in the history of aviation as a technology.
Re:Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
by dotancohen on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @08:18PM
(#46521295)
If you are already mentioning rocket propulsion, then you should know that Gwen Shotwell foresees Starship flying E2E (point to point on Earth) flights with paying passengers, competing with airlines. One hour to anywhere on the planet.
Hopefully we discover some sort of gravity physics/tech that makes chemical rockets obsolete!
I don't see Starship being useful for civilian transport use cases, but for military operations sure! But there's not much to distinguish a starship from a nuke launch during a war, so it remains to be seen whether that risk is worth it.
Re:Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
by robotresearcher on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @08:49PM
(#46521518)
> One hour to anywhere on the planet.
Anywhere they can take off from, which is a decent distance from a population center. The last (forty?) mile problem bites again.
I can imagine Starship landing on a sea launchpad (in coastal cities), and the last 30 miles can be taken by a speedboat in half an hour. The sea usually isn't as traffic-jammed as land communications, and boats, unlike high-speed trains, don't require that much infrastructure.
Re:Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
by mrguyorama on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @12:44PM
(#46529612)
Which is nonsense. Not only will rockets never have airplane reliability and safety for basic physics reasons, but that rocket profile looks exactly like an ICBM and nobody wants to let that confusion happen.
Re:Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
by dotancohen on Thursday January 08, 2026 @02:35AM
(#46538331)
Airplane flight trajectories look exactly like a V1 missile, and even modern tomahawks could be made to fly such a profile. Or it could be a subsonic B-1B instead of a Boeing 747. Solutions to IFF have decades of development.