The End of the "Age of Speed" 531
DesScorp writes "'The human race is slowing down,' begins an article in the Wall Street Journal that laments the state of man's quest of aerial speed: we're going backwards. With the end of the Space Shuttle program, man is losing its fastest carrier of human beings (only single use moonshot rockets were faster). 'The shuttles' retirement follows the grounding over recent years of other ultra-fast people carriers, including the supersonic Concorde and the speedier SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. With nothing ready to replace them, our species is decelerating—perhaps for the first time in history,' the article notes. Astronauts are interviewed, and their sadness and disappointment is apparent. In the '60s and '70s, it was assumed that Mach 2+ airline travel would one day be cheap and commonplace. And now it seems that we, and our children, will fly no faster than our grandparents did in 707s. The last major attempt at faster commerical air travel — Boeing's Sonic Cruiser — was abandoned and replaced with the Dreamliner, an airliner designed from the ground up for fuel efficiency."
physical speed is irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
it's bandwidth that matters.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to speed a lot as a teenager- guess what? Now, I like to take my time, enjoy the travel, and save money on gas.
Commercial flight is fast enough now (Score:5, Insightful)
With the pat-downs and all the hassle at both ends of a flight, why would we need a Mach 2+ vehicle in the middle?
There's not much point .... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not much point in plugging faster airplanes into a hub-and-spoke air transit system with chronic Air Traffic Control delays (assuming they're not asleep), 45-minute airport security lines and 20-minute waits for your baggage.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't use them. Nobody uses them.
This is about machines that are actually used. We don't fly to the moon anymore. We don't use shuttles anymore.
Concorde was, for decades, the fastest any 'ordinary' person could go, and it's no longer here. There's nobody developing any alternatives to that.
The world doesn't seem to need speed anymore. And that'd pretty believable; What's the use of shaving a few hours off your London-New York trip when you might as well just have a video conference with the people there? Transporting humans with speed doesn't seem to be important to the world. Instead, transporting data (And in a lesser amount; physical goods) faster and in more volume seems to be.
Yes, there'll always be somebody pushing the limit. Be that some top secret military project, be that some suicidal maniacs on a salt flat. They will always be there. But this is about machines and methods that actually make it to the real world; And in the real world, who cares about speed?
Actually very true (Score:5, Insightful)
it's bandwidth that matters.
A 200mph train link giving affordable travel between distant cities would be much more useful that a celebrity supersonic service.
Meh... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a saying from the murky world of the intersection between market actors and regulatory agents: "Nobody screams louder than the guy whose subsidy is being cut."
Astronauts, and their ilk, while they did the jobs we offered, fair and square, were (in terms of human speed) some of the most subsidized travellers in history. For a mixture of reasons, some more or less universal(scientific curiosity), some bound up in particular historical moments(Cold war dickwaving and spy games), we made comparatively massive investments in the velocity of a small number of pilots carrying out specific missions. I have nothing against the pilots, who largely executed their missions with skill and nerve; but that doesn't change the fact that those were some of the most expensive tickets in human history, made possible only by certain historical conditions. Those guys were playing with once-in-a-lifetime white elephants, not prerelease prototypes of consumer goods.
(Now, unfortunately, our extraordinary subsidies projects seem to be focused on our parasitic layer of financial services con-men, an entirely crasser class of people, with far fewer virtues and far greater dangers...)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Concorde was, for decades, the fastest any 'ordinary' person with 4 grand burning a hole in their wallets could go, and it's no longer here.
Fixed that for you. Easy jet is preferable for ordinary people, because it's affordable. Video conferencing is preferable for business, because it's cheaper than flights + hotel rooms. There is a common theme here - money! (and a desire to retain as much of it, as you can).
it's going to get worse in terms of access to (Score:5, Insightful)
petroleum is getting more expensive to dig up and process, as a function of more marginal types of deposits (oil shale, tar sands, etc), and just plain deeper to get to
at the same time, india, brazil, china: approaching western standards of lifestyle and energy consumption
this is a simple economic equation: decreasing supply, increasing demand, which means the age of cheap easy petroleum is over. and while we might be able to switch to electric cars relatively painlessly, i don't see electric powered aircraft in our future (battery weight/ energy density being the obvious issue)
which means air travel, a mainstay of middle class lifestyle, might move back into the realm of the upper middle class and the rich as it was in the 1940s. simply as a function of fuel prices
this doesn't have to do with speed, but it does have a lot to do with the related perception from the middle of the last century of air travel/ space travel becoming more and more ubiquitous and common place. think flying cars. but air travel is actually going to get less common, more rare
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The world needs speed plenty. It just never bought into the marginal cost of going slightly bit faster.
Being a discount "jet setter" is a big improvement over what it replaced, Concorde not so much.
You also have to acknowledge the fact that our grandparents simply were not "jet setters" of any sort. It didn't matter if it was a 707 or Concorde or even some prop driven job. Air travel was simply not within their means.
Now a smart shopper can go anywhere on the planet they want.
THAT is a significant improvement that is not altered by the fact that the mode of transport is no longer considered glamourous enough.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to love to fly when I was a kid, and even as a young(er) adult.
Now though... getting there several hours early cause you never know how long security is going to take...
wondering what new hoop I have to jump through. What's that? empty my pockets? ok sure I guess. Huh? take off my belt? what really? ok, let me hold my pants up... take off my shoes? are you kidding? really? well crap, I didn't bring my shoehorn with me it's going to take me awhile to get them back on, no wonder this damn line is moving so fuckin slow. Take my computer out of the computer bag?! are you serious? isn't that what the damn x-ray machine is for? put my deoderant, suntan lotion, and mouthwash in individual plastic baggies? ok fuck it i'm going home this is rediculous... oh what's that? I'm under arrest? well fuck.
and that's even before the groping.
Re:my kingdom for a modpoint... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually very true (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, the interstate highway system was never envisioned to become the monstrosity it has become. The original intent was a widely spaced grid, not the all-encompassing web it has become.
Maintaining rail is cheaper, and scars the land much less
the problem is, in any transition, you're essentially compelled to maintain both, which is even more hideously expensive.
Re:Actually very true (Score:0, Insightful)
indeed trains will be faster (Score:4, Insightful)
mod parent up.
While our time saw the death of the only supersonic passenger plane (the french/british Concorde), years ago already, it also saw the dawn of superfast trains, from the japanese shinkansen to the french TGV to the german ICE.
The french experience is, when you set up a fast train on a 500-km-like destination, you just shift 90% of the air traffic down to land.
Fast trains are still slower than aircrafts, but if you factor in starting, and arriving, straight in city centers -and generally a much lower travel cost, this is definitely a move ongoing in many parts of the world.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
You think money is the primary reason for video conferencing?
I've done quite a bit of business travel, and I would take a good video conference any day over the travel.
Fact is that of all the business trips I've made, only a fraction were really absolutely necessary, and I already tried to cut them down. From my experience with both myself and others, in decreasing order of relative frequency, these are the real reasons for business trips:
1.) desire to feel important or demonstrate worth, including the nice hotel and other amenities.
2.) side-reasons related to business but not officially stated, e.g. networking with customers or employees, judging something in person, meeting someone else over lunch or simply getting out of the office for a day
3.) actual need of being there in person
I did, in fact, set up a working conferencing system for four locations. It was very interesting to see how two of them constantly experienced inexplainable "technical problems" that the third could all solve or never had, despite them all being quite similar in both infrastructure and available technical support (the fourth was my own main office location). The two who just couldn't get it working were also the ones where, for the relevant persons, reason #1 was very obviously quite important.
Money is an important part, but it doesn't tell the whole story, as any large company that has tried to cut travel expenses has found out the hard way. The main problem is that the rational, good people are the ones who are most likely to cut down on unnecessary - and sometimes even on necessary - trips. The ego-trippers and "networkers" will find or make up reasons why the trip is required. You'll do quite a bit of damage to your company if you don't realize that and take steps to make sure you eliminate #1 and #2 first, before you reduce the amount of #3 events.
Also, unless you realize that a little bit of #1 and #2 is necessary. I went to quite a few company meetings where I had to give a presentation. I could have given them remotely, technically that wouldn't have been a problem. But a couple hundred employees really appreciated that I had taken the time and effort and come, and the feeling of being taken seriously is an important motivator. Likewise, your good networkers will accomplish more over lunch than in three meetings. Your first goal in reducing travel expenses is to create an atmosphere in which they can write "lunch with decider XYZ" on the form instead of making up a bullshit pseudo-reason. Once you have that atmosphere of mutual trust, you can start looking for bullshit reasons and eliminate those trips.
Re:Shaving hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why pure speed is pointless: JFK to LHR (or CDG) is great. Except that with the airport security and procedures, and the city-to-airport travel which is damnably slow, it is pretty pointless.
When in the future, mass transit will have become massively efficient, and we all have chips implanted which will remove the need for humans to do border checks, then having a faster plane will again cause travel times to be significantly smaller.
when concorde was introduced, going to the airport would have taken 20 minutes, and the check-in procedures be completed in a couple more minutes. Then, of course, going at Mach 2 made sense.
Now, hours to reach the airports (three hours before departure) So your trip will last the day. Even if your plane is supersonic. So who cares?
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you think that it is not your problem, then think about the Easter Islands destroying all of their trees for the sake of their lifestyle, and what happened to them - http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/Easter_Island/html/tour4.html [mysteriousplaces.com]. Then think about Obama & Co bickering at Copenhagen Climate Summit last year, not being able to come to consensus - everyone saying "we need a global solution", but noone doing anything because they don't want to be disadvantaged.
That 1.36 kW/m2 is your gift of life from the sun. What are you going to do with it? Use your portion of energy to keep the circle of life running, or greedily eat a bigger slice of the pie than is yours to eat.
That is what it all comes down to, and I hopefully imagine that for the 22nd century human that is self-evident, and they will look on us 20th centuryers with disdain, scorn and regret as we looked on previous generations for believing the world was flat, participating in tribal warfare, and dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, etc.
We should all be thinking about how much Phosphorus and Nitrogen we are consuming, and not just Carbon. We are dumping C into the air, P & fixated N into the seas (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology) [wikipedia.org] to sustain our lifestyles, but how are we going to close the P cycle sustainably?
We are going through the periodic table.
The 70's dealt with the Pb (lead) problem of leaded gas. the 80's with Sulpher & Ozone & CL & F into the atmosphere. Now we are talking seriously about C. Next we will realise N & P are also big issues. Today we are also realizing that He is also scarce. And since Fukushima people everywhere are finally realizing that U is probably not the right thing, and maybe the Indians will show us this year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Heavy_Water_Reactor) that Th might really get us somewhere... (The great thing about Thorium is that it is not stored solar energy, and maybe there is enough to go around until we handle solar better)
Re:my kingdom for a modpoint... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually very true (Score:4, Insightful)
Trains are infinitely more comfortable than any other form of transportation, high speed or not. You can get up and walk around, go to the restaurant car, and stretch your legs out in widely spaced seats. The motion of the train is gentle and relaxing, and the view out of the train is often beautiful.
Trains are sometimes perceived as being more expensive than cars, but that is largely because the government maintains the roads "for free", while train companies have to maintain the tracks and pay for it using fare revenue. It makes me angry that our society has chosen to let our passenger railway infrastructure to decay. Passenger rail is vital to our national interest, especially in this world of rising fuel prices.
Re:Actually very true (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree our priorities in many areas are out of whack, I don't think think this is completely one of them.
While I do back the space program, I don't think that the quest for speed for speed's sake for consumers is quite as important. This speed comes requires much more fuel, and is far more energy inefficient. It's clear that the consumer market can't bear those kinds of costs, otherwise Concords would be far more common.
Making energy use more efficient, reducing the resources consumed to make energy, and reducing the environmental impact on producing power are things that we should have as a very high priority. Those have a much higher chance of affecting our long-term happiness and health than getting from Tokyo to New York a little faster than our grandparents could.