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Yup! The Saturn V cost $5k per kg to LEO. Best case, SpaceX has a ~2x savings over the tech we had in the 1960s. The Soyuz 2.1a is competitively priced and it's still launching, though we can't really compare since we only know the price and not the actual cost of the launch.

The tradeoffs SpaceX has made have some real cost savings. Problem is that it's not anywhere even remotely close to what they want you to believe it is.

The latter, of course. Launch prices have been fairly consistent for about 50 years. Promising a sudden 20x cost reduction over SpaceX's already exaggerated figures without any real innovation is ludicrous.

>So far I've seen them achieve everything they set out to achieve.

They built competitive rockets. That's a big deal and I don't wish to diminish that. They promised magic 99% cost savings and are nowhere close.

I used to be confused by SpaceX marketing. Why do they talk about 90%+ cost reduction per KG to LEO? Maybe the general public will fall for it, but the general public doesn't often launch satellites. The actual experts will just laugh them out of the room. There's no way their marketing can fool anyone who is in a position to give them money.

Apparently I was mistaken. There are people working at the JPL who seriously believe we'll be able to send payloads to the Martian surface using a human-rated vehicle and bring it back to Earth for $1,000/kg. There are people working for NASA who actually believe we will be able to launch to LEO for $55/kg.

What the Hell?

I guess it's no wonder NASA is doing so badly if these are the sorts of people they're hiring.

I guarantee you the tank is yuge compared to what you'd find in a normal car. All airplanes have big tanks.

Commercial aircraft are the safest mode of transportation. Small aircraft, on the other hand, are deathtraps.

The world records for efficiency are here:

https://www.fai.org/records?f%5B0%5D=field_type_of_record%3A...

The world record for the 1000-1750kg weight class is about 16 miles per gallon. That is burning jet fuel rather than ordinary gasoline. 1000 kg is light for a modern car.

There are no aircraft that can compete with a Prius for transporting small numbers of people. There are few that can compete with a Hummer.

(Note that I'm not sure how the records are calculated. There are a lot of relevant variables, most importantly how fast the plane is flying. And I'm not an aeronautical engineer, just a hobbyist.)

EDIT: More information on that record can be found here: https://lift.erau.edu/for-the-record/

I get a slightly different figure of 17-ish mpg. Still pretty bad.

This very topic has, unsurprisingly, been the subject of debate for a long time. You might want to read this:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion

>no societal problems are solved by adding more

That's not true. Old people often need expensive support and may not be able to work as productively as they once did. If the population ages, the relative amount we spend on medical bills will go up and productivity will go down.

On the whole you might think it's not worth it. That doesn't mean there's no benefit whatsoever.

I was talking about fuel consumption. Most small aircraft run on normal gasoline, but they usually get the equivalent of 10-15 mpg. The Cessna 172, for instance, gets the equivalent of 13 miles per gallon. This vehicle will be worse than that.

I can see why that would be unclear from what I wrote.

>It is considered a potential solution to the strain on existing transport infrastructures.

I'm pretty sure the solution to traffic is not more cars.

Getting a pilot's license costs some $20,000. Fuel costs for small aircraft are sky-high and this thing looks particularly unaerodynamic. Obviously the maintenance costs will be high, since you will be maintaining both a car and an aeroplane. Even if the thing were free most people couldn't afford it.

This will be somewhere between a toy and a business jet. Even assuming it winds up being practical for rich people to use for short jaunts, it will change absolutely nothing for the majority.

I don't want to sound like I'm dismissing this plane. Every pilot knows about the "hundred-dollar hamburger" and flies anyway.

A lot of people, even around here, are bored of obviously money-losing startups and cryptocurrencies. What is there to say?

Terrible article. It's been decades since anyone has taken Malthusianism -- the naïve version discussed in this article -- seriously. It was never the scientific consensus that we would see mass starvation from overpopulation. "Some prominent scientists believe x" is not proof of a consensus.

Besides, why would it matter if the scientists were wrong? Being wrong might be rational if your belief is based on the best available evidence. Changing your mind doesn't mean you past belief was stupid or a lie. This is how science works. We all should have learned this in middle school.

A version of overpopulation is still very much a concern. Obviously, most kinds of environmental destruction scale with population. Our current farming practices have managed to keep people fed, but only by draining aquifers and polluting waterways. Our current modes of transportation have managed to transport billions of people, but only by pumping out destructive amounts of carbon.

Overpopulation is not, in itself, the problem. We know how to sustainably support a population much larger than the one that exists today. However, a large population is a multiplier to the destruction of all our unsustainable practices.