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Post by PG on Jun 6, 2018 11:36:36 GMT
Concorde was going to be the future of air travel - supersonic travel for masses all over the world would follow. Well, that was what everybody said at the time, but that soon changed. Bigger, slower sub-sonic jets are what happened instead.
I read this morning that two second hand A380 aircraft are going to broken up for parts as nobody wants to lease them. It seems that second hand demand for them is minimal. Apart from Emirates, nobody is really buying them new either now. So the A380 - the future of flying - has also it seems reached a potential dead end. Planes are not getting bigger - mid or mid-large size, two engines planes are now where it is at.
Computers have seen the exact reverse apply. People were saying in the 1970's that computers would never take over the world - they would be too big and way too expensive. Then the micro-chip was invented, the IBM Personal Computer (model number 5150), and launched on 12 August 1981, and here we are on an internet forum.
All this tells me is that anybody predicting the future is just guessing, or at best making an educated guess. If in doubt of this see every economic forecast ever made!
So, as governments decide now that cars in 2040 will have to be x, or y or z, what chance is there that this will really be what happens? Probably zero......
Anybody willing to make any future predictions?
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Post by Alex on Jun 6, 2018 11:47:18 GMT
Planes like the Dreamliner and A350 are the future for super long haul. I think Qantas have said they can run two 787s on the Heathrow to Perth route for less than the cost of one A380.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jun 6, 2018 11:48:40 GMT
I was thinking about this yesterday when they were talking about the expansion of Heathrow airport and how important it was for the economy due to the increase in air travel over the next 40 years. Will we all be taking these business flights for meetings around the World in the future? Video conferencing will only get bigger and better. Will we all be gathering at Heathrow to take some huge plane somewhere or will we all be flying direct from our local airport in smaller, more fuel efficient planes. Concorde was a great technological achievement but, even flying at twice the speed of sound, it's quicker to fly to New York subsonic direct from Newcastle, than to fly down to London and pick up a supersonic flight there.
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Post by PG on Jun 6, 2018 12:00:38 GMT
Will we all be gathering at Heathrow to take some huge plane somewhere or will we all be flying direct from our local airport in smaller, more fuel efficient planes. Concorde was a great technological achievement but, even flying at twice the speed of sound, it's quicker to fly to New York subsonic direct from Newcastle, than to fly down to London and pick up a supersonic flight there. Yes, it's door to door time that is the issue isn't it? A point lost on all planners. For me to travel from home to my ex-employer's head office in Santa Barbara too about 22 hours door to door. Of that only 11 was sitting on the plane from Heathrow to LAX. The rest was, as you say, getting to the airport, plus waiting around and driving at the other end. HS2 also suffers from the same issues. It may be 20 minutes quicker to travel from London to Birmingham, but for everyone involved, it is all the ad hoc travel to and from that adds the time. Unless you live in central London, it's no real help. And who lives in central London? Oh, yes, all the taxpayer funded politicians and decision makers. |
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Post by scouse on Jun 6, 2018 12:09:11 GMT
Clarkson got it right in his book 'I know you got soul' when he said about Concorde that she went out of service not because she was too fast, but in the digital age, she was too slow.
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Post by ChrisM on Jun 6, 2018 12:36:07 GMT
One of Concorde's issues was apparently that it was very thirsty and consumed alot of expensive fuel but only had 100 passengers on board to pay for it all.
The A380 was supposed to be the future - huge numbers of passengers to make the cost-per-mile very low. But people want to fly direct to their destinations now, not change and have a connecting flight to their final destination, hence the success of the Dreamliner and its like. (There was an article on the radio this morning that I listened to).
However the expansion of Heathrow is at odds with the "need" to cut emissions/pollution - we should apparently be looking at reducing air travel not increasing the number of flights/planes. Predicting the future is very difficult, especially where air travel and airports are involved due to the long lead times in designing and building new planes and airports. With world population increasing and our desire to travel to new places seemingly growing, I can't see air travel numbers reducing. I just hope that there will always be a supply of fuel of some sort to enable flying to continue.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2018 12:38:13 GMT
I think requiring some form of electrical assistance in all new cars by 2040 is a very easily-achieved target. Isn't that all that is being mandated at present? I'm assuming that there will be low volume exemptions as per many existing regs.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jun 6, 2018 13:21:01 GMT
I think the emissions/pollution argument against the expansion of Heathrow is a red herring. Planes will become increasingly efficient and like cars start to move over to electrical propulsion in the next 30 or so years.
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Post by Big Blue on Jun 6, 2018 13:27:31 GMT
Ah. Door to door travel. The reason I ride a motorcycle to work despite it theoretically not being more than a few minutes faster than the public transport option.
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Post by Alex on Jun 6, 2018 15:30:51 GMT
I’ve not been able to help wonder why we are spending so much money on a third runway and HS2 just as video conferencing is starting to become the norm. Seems daft to me. I suppose at lease the government can say they’ve created a shit load of jobs in the construction industry for the next few years!
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Post by Tim on Jun 6, 2018 15:59:29 GMT
I can't help wondering why they're going to spend so much on Heathrow AND HS2 - just expand Brum airport, rename it London North and make sure there's an HS2 station there. Then spend the £30B + that will now NOT be spent on Heathrow,on other infrastructure projects such as making railways in the Midlands/North less shit, fill in some potholes and loads else besides. The point has been made that people don't want to have to travel to Heathrow as a transport hub before they go elsewhere. Of course the Northern voice inside my head says that won't happen because it won't benefit That There London, the centre of the known universe......  |
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Post by ChrisM on Jun 6, 2018 17:35:00 GMT
I can't help wondering why they're going to spend so much on Heathrow AND HS2 - just expand Brum airport, rename it London North and make sure there's an HS2 station there. Of course the Northern voice inside my head says that won't happen because it won't benefit That There London, the centre of the known universe...... +1 |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2018 22:00:11 GMT
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Post by Big Blue on Jun 6, 2018 22:41:49 GMT
That There London, the centre of the known universe...... It is.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2018 15:39:17 GMT
Concorde was going to be the future of air travel - supersonic travel for masses all over the world would follow. Well, that was what everybody said at the time, but that soon changed. Bigger, slower sub-sonic jets are what happened instead. For reasons too convoluted to tell, I ended up buying a complete Brooke Bond History of Aviation album, like this one:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brooke-Bond-HISTORY-OF-AVIATION-ALBUM-COMPLETE-AND-CARDS/282970150080?hash=item41e255d4c0:g:lfYAAOSwG~Va~e9N
Towards the end it suggests that by 2000 we might be travelling hypersonically, and getting to the Antipodes in four hours...
Other than that, it was a great little nostalgia-fest. Also bought the one about the space race and the history of cars. I thought that they would be much more expensive.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2018 17:40:24 GMT
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Post by Alex on Jun 8, 2018 18:32:37 GMT
What I want to know is where the cure for baldness I keep being promised is? And my flying car! Wear a wig and drive off a cliff? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2018 19:05:20 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2018 17:05:22 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2018 9:31:06 GMT
A project in the US is a so called arsenal aircraft, usually based on the 747. Basically a large civil aircraft stuffed full of cruise missiles that can fly outside what they call contested airspace. Cheaper than most military types.
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Post by Tim on Jul 25, 2018 9:34:41 GMT
They should know better, I was watching a documentary about the 747 - it's 50 years since it flew - and now there are apparently none in service with the major US airlines. They've all moved across to twin engined jets.
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Post by LandieMark on Jul 25, 2018 9:41:17 GMT
I saw the first episode of that.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2018 9:42:19 GMT
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Post by Tim on Jul 25, 2018 10:06:22 GMT
I saw the first episode of that.
I watched both. Disappointed that they didn't show footage of the test pilot rolling it.........
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jul 25, 2018 14:17:24 GMT
They should know better, I was watching a documentary about the 747 - it's 50 years since it flew - and now there are apparently none in service with the major US airlines. They've all moved across to twin engined jets. It was interesting that the 747 - designed and developed in 26 months, was only meant as a stopgap until Boeing's supersonic plane was ready. The distinctive flightdeck hump was so that they could all be subsequently converted into cargo carriers. |
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