Would really fast commercial air travel pave way for commercial space travel?

[Asteroza]

I believe there is a quote attributed to Burt Rutan where someone asked him what he is investing in, and he replied VR companies, because it will kill the business traveler market, decimating airline companies.

[CameronD]

I believe there is a quote attributed to Burt Rutan where someone asked him what he is investing in, and he replied VR companies, because it will kill the business traveler market, decimating airline companies.

'Dent' maybe, but not so sure about 'decimate'.  Human interaction is something VR will need to go a long way yet to properly demonstrate.. and until then, there are plenty of honeymooners and holiday travellers willing to occupy vacant seats in business-class.

..but since I indirectly work for the airline industry, maybe I'm biased. 

[Robotbeat]

People read more paper books now than ever. New media, new tech do not always displace old tech but instead add to and enrich it.

[CameronD]

People read more paper books now than ever. New media, new tech do not always displace old tech but instead add to and enrich it.

Yep, Ray Bradbury got it wrong. ..still a good read though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

[M_Puckett]

Well, if it's decimated, it will still be 90% intact.

I believe there is a quote attributed to Burt Rutan where someone asked him what he is investing in, and he replied VR companies, because it will kill the business traveler market, decimating airline companies.

'Dent' maybe, but not so sure about 'decimate'.  Human interaction is something VR will need to go a long way yet to properly demonstrate.. and until then, there are plenty of honeymooners and holiday travellers willing to occupy vacant seats in business-class.

..but since I indirectly work for the airline industry, maybe I'm biased. 

[nec207]

So what technology will be needed to bring down the cost or make it a reality? Better engines, better way they add fuel mixtures, improvements in materials, regenerative cooling, new thrusters, Fuel efficiency to craft weight or higher powered engines?

[nec207]

Cost is irrelevant (and meaningless) if the concept is not technically possible to build.

Virgin Galactic spaceship 2 could be city hop of going really fast of almost going into space. Going from LA to Hong Hong really fast but Virgin Galactic spaceship 2 is prohibitively expensive for most people.

You are forgetting that VG's Spaceship 2 needs to be carried to a height greater than the regular cruising altitude of commercial airliners before it can be launched.  That takes quite a long time.  And then it has to get down again..

May be Spaceship 3 or Spaceship 4 will not need this. 

Also there really is no R&D into supersonic or hypersonic out side the military because it is too costly for market demand.

Has most people are happy with 10 to 20 hour flight and don't want to pay more than $1,000 plane ticket.

[Bynaus]

Going from LA to Hong Hong really fast but Virgin Galactic spaceship 2 is prohibitively expensive for most people.

Also, VG SS2 would simply not survive re-entry from a suborbital hop from LA to Hong Kong. The required velocities are much higher, and the VG SS2 is just not built for that kind of thermal stress. I doubt it can even be "improved", to the point of a complete re-design being required. A suborbital point-to-point transport will have much more in common with the X-33 than with VG SS2. So its essentially rocketry.

This is why I think VG-style space tourism is a dead end (in contrast to BO-style space tourism).

[john smith 19]

'Dent' maybe, but not so sure about 'decimate'.  Human interaction is something VR will need to go a long way yet to properly demonstrate.. and until then, there are plenty of honeymooners and holiday travellers willing to occupy vacant seats in business-class.

..but since I indirectly work for the airline industry, maybe I'm biased. 

I think it would be interesting to see how the high end seat sales (mostly business travelers) varied around 9/11/01 and wheather (and if so how quickly) they recovered.

My expectation was it would radically drop as US executives decided to do more by video conferencing.

But I don't know that it did. Which is sort of encouraging.

Concorde was also pretty well booked throughout its operating life, given it roughly cut the London/New York travel time. BTW the 17th Concorde was planned to be the start of a block upgrade that (among other things) would have eliminated the need for an afterburner (and its associated tripling of fuel consumption and hence reduced range).

[RanulfC]

We where discussing this with a friend of mine and topic is if technology for cheap and really fast commercial air travel like Concord 2 came to be  would this pave way for commercial space travel?

Simple answer? No in the same way that cheaper and faster railroad or ocean travel will "pave-the-way" because the actual useful development is largely non-applicable.

Now having said that care to take a guess at how many concepts and ideas there are out there that incorporate not only "fast" air travel but trains and various ocean transport ideas?

The actual "holy grail" of commercial space flight is less about technology than about having it be as close as possible to every other form of transportation we know with regular schedules and wide access.

But we don't go supersonic because it is very costly and is like a drunken sailor when comes to jet fuel. If these two problems where solved it could pave way for cheaper space travel?

It's 'costly' because of both the fuel consumption and the cost of designing, building and maintaining/operating a supersonic (or faster) airframe. But both these costs have come down significantly with technological advances yet we still don't have common super-sonic travel you will note.

The first factor is while the costs have come down, they still aren't cheap and as it turns out "time" is actually NOT "money" in most cases so there is very little incentive to get there as fast as possible.

Next is regulatory and public effect which is both broad and restrictive at the same time. Something like 2/3rds of the supposed negative effects of high-altitude supersonic travel never came about but there are enough actual effects, (sonic booms mainly) that there are strict regulations in place that make actually travelling at supersonic speeds impractical for a majority of routes. Again technology and other advances have changed some of the basic equation with airframe shaping and quieter and more efficient engines, but that increases the cost factor as well and the basic trades still don't show a marked advantage for supersonic air travel.

The factors actually get worse the faster you go which is why even though "fast-package-delivery" (which is the current face of suborbital or hypersonic travel studies and planning) gets study and work it still isn't considered viable yet. While the technology is probably there the other factors end up making it non-viable with any current model.

Cost, both in designing, building and maintaining  a very high speed airframe is a major hurdle as there is a significant difference in operational and maintenance requirements between sub-sonic and supersonic and it gets more complex the faster the airframe is designed to go. (A damaged skin panel on a sub-sonic aircraft is minor, on a supersonic one it is concerning, on a hypersonic airframe it is fatal)

But some people say in past 15 to 20 years airplane engines like the rocket engines have not really changed much.   And most likely will not change in the future because this is mature technology. And we have squeezed as much as we can out of airplane engines and rocket engines. And that it not really going to get better.

People who say such things obviously have no idea what they are talking about and are basing their statements on what an engine looks like rather than how and how well it works

Some say scramjets or space plane / rocket combo may be the future. If this is the case planes and rockets may be harder to tell apart in the future. If it like a combo. But some say this technology is really too new and have not mature enough for scramjets and space plane / rocket combo to take of yet.  That we need more time to mature this technology before scramjets or space plane / rocket combo become reality.

That we should not be trying to build scramjets or space plane / rocket combo to the technology mature.

SCramjets will be ready for normal use "any day now" you know

But seriously the required technology for making a space plane of some type has existed for almost 60 years but it's not that simple. Rocket powered launch vehicles ARE in fact simple but they won't be talking off and landing at any local airport. Noise, facilities, regulatory, maintenance and operational issues alone will preclude directly interfacing with the air travel system. There are some exceptions of course but they prove the rule rather than break it since most of them are either very limited systems or based on standard airframes that can easily be included in the current system. Currently air-travel is a highly integrated and choreographed system that requires high pace and minimal disruption at all times. There's a good reason that those launch system that DO use 'normal' air fields do so where they do.

The goal of "aircraft-like" operations is and always has been more a hope towards a generally easier and more accessible operating regime than an actual end-product. Transportation systems in general have always been compared to previous forms when first introduced in order to offer a comparative between where they are now and where they can be in the future. The actual analogy is more often than not only applicable in general rather than the specific. In the main what drives the advancement of any transportation system is simply need and utility rather than technology. Technology, economics, and ideology along with other factors will be a part of the overall methodology and operations in the end but it's only ancillary to the development, growth and even fading away of the system itself over the long run.

Randy

[Robotbeat]

If "really fast commercial air travel" means Mach 20, then yes.

[Arb]

Aaand Boom 

[RanulfC]

Aaand Boom 

But will it 'pave the way' for commercial space travel? Answer would appear to still be no as it's a niche market, looks to be limited production and unless they make a dedicated version to launch a "Spaceship-3" not really applicable. (And by the look of the "simulated Heathrow" picture it has less room for such a set up than the Hustler did)

The technology to do something like Boom, (and the other proposals) have been developing for decades with the main factors of engine T/W, SFC, and supercruise having come a long way since the Concorde was first designed but it should be made clear that the market this aircraft is aimed at is trying to lure away the 40 passengers who would normally be flying business/first-class on a 767 not the 200+ 'normal' passengers off that same airframe.

Randy

[Ludus]

There's also the reverse of the question whether commercial space travel would pave the way for really fast commercial "air" travel.

Elon Musk at the ITS presentation did briefly wonder whether there might be a market for the ITS system to move cargo or passengers very fast between places on earth.

[maint1234]

After a tiring 15 hr flight , supersonic flight looks very attractive.
Concorde used engine tech from the 1960s ,  and the engine efficiencies on which all the high concorde ticket prices were based  might not apply with the much more fuel efficient engines that can be designed now.
For eg the present jets use 55% less fuel than the jets of the 1960s.
Advances in aerodynamic design could also save fuel.
A plane which reduces the travel time from 15 hrs to 8 hrs will be quite popular with the business and 1st class fliers.

[MATTBLAK]

Aircraft that fly faster than MACH 2 usually need relatively exotic and hardy structural and 'skin' alloys. A 'low boom' airliner with the most efficient engines possible in 'Supercruise', flying at MACH 1.4 could be a very attractive prospect for shaving many hours off super long-haul flights. And the aircraft structure could be closer to conventional.

[Vahe231991]

Although SpaceShipTwo and SpaceShipThree are capable of Mach 3 (SpaceShipTwo attained Mach 3 on one flight in February 2019), supersonic air travel was never going to pave the way for commercial space travel because SpaceShipTwo and SpaceShipThree are purely rocket-powered and only designed for suborbital altitudes, and many hypersonic airliner designs, including Boeing's recent proposal for a hypersonic airliner and the proposed Venus Aerospace airliner, are designed to reach the edge of space.