Ok, but how much energy and manpower does it take to keep this in working condition? Even moving the crew from china to japan to service the plain would have cost money and used fuel from conventional transportation.

It's a vehicle on life-support from fuel but not using it directly.

Cool to see things moving along in the right direction though

One step at a time. It took 11 years to get from the Spirit of St. Louis to the first commercial transatlantic flight.

but not farther "His jet-powered Virgin GlobalFlyer vehicle completed a full circumnavigation of the world in that time [76 hours], travelling more than 41,000km."

I guess you could travel farther, given enough time. Someone should calculate how big the wingspan would need to be to power a commercial airliner, probably the width of Texas? :)

Still, great stuff - this is how all great tech starts

Oh, I think it is an amazing achievement, but the weather limitations and speed are problematic for any use as a people carrier. On the other had, there is a large amount of uses cases outside of people transport and many of them are quite exciting.

Could potentially develop hybrid systems to reduce the fuel needs of people-movers.