5/17/2026 at 9:28:19 PM
by karakoram
5/18/2026 at 4:29:08 AM
Now the question is whether there will be a significant number of people willing to travel to the US in 20 years.by steve1977
5/18/2026 at 4:08:44 AM
(did anyone else think of speed racer?)by m463
5/17/2026 at 11:31:10 PM
20 years. At least they're realistic. Seems Boom is thinking 2029-2030 for their operation (https://flightplan.forecastinternational.com/2025/08/25/boom...). Only time will tellby Neywiny
5/18/2026 at 1:04:26 AM
If you believe Boom, let me know if you'd be interested in a bet. I'll take the "not gonna happen" side of that for any amount.by dmitrygr
5/18/2026 at 12:38:36 AM
Great sounds like something that should be built. Sounds like a job for a country Japan, South Korea, or China that's willing to execute a project over the long-term.by Danox
5/18/2026 at 1:36:34 AM
Casually mentioning space travel along with passenger service makes me think this isn’t a serious project.by ungreased0675
5/18/2026 at 1:52:10 AM
Why? That is exactly what concepts like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saenger_(spacecraft) and later https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_HOTOL and its follow-up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPCAT#Mach_five_vehicle by the now defunct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines envisioned?Remember Space Odyssey 2001? Got something for you:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Pan+American+Space+Odyssey+2001&ia...
by LargoLasskhyfv
5/18/2026 at 1:19:05 AM
Building supersonic passenger planes was never a technical problem (see Concorde), the problem is: they are too expensive to operate to be profitable. I bet this thing will never see any commercial use.by Detrytus
5/18/2026 at 1:30:05 AM
Being "too expensive to operate to be profitable" is a technical problem.by credit_guy
5/18/2026 at 4:37:06 AM
It is a technical problem bit still with very hard limits as to how much energy it will cost minimum to accomplish. You still gotta push through the air at higher speeds which takes a lot of energy/fuel. Best case is they go high enough to avoid a lot of the air, but you still have to get yourself up to that altitude through the air to start with.by AngryData
5/18/2026 at 2:06:42 AM
Yep, TV's were said to be too expensive to produce to have one in every home.Now every home has multiple TVs, with decent TVs being available for like $200
by HDBaseT
5/18/2026 at 2:30:03 AM
Airplane cost to operate is fuel consumption, and, by the laws of physic, aerodynamic resistance scales as a square of speed, so you can’t really work around it unless you invent some new laws of physics.by Detrytus
5/18/2026 at 4:24:36 AM
That's why these schemes typically envision a suborbital hop, with no air resistance for most of the trip.by laughing_man
5/18/2026 at 2:54:43 AM
...at an altitude of 25 kilometers, where atmospheric pressure is one-hundredth that at sea level.by LargoLasskhyfv