By 2060 the Airplane Industry Will Be Mostly Gone

The Airline Industry is going to go through a continued rise and then a fairly sharp decline over the next forty years. Peak air travel will occur around 2035.

The International Air Transport Association forecasts that the number of passengers transported by airlines will double by 2040 to around 8.5 billion passengers.

The rise in travel is caused by a surge in the number of people in Asia who can afford to travel internationally.

IATA forecasts from 2017 to 2037 the new air passengers will be:
China: 1 billion new passengers for a total of 1.6 billion
US: 481 million new passengers for a total of 1.3 billion
India: 414 million new passengers for a total of 572 million
Indonesia: 282 million new passengers for a total of 411 million
Thailand: 116 million new passengers for a total of 214 million

The Fall of Air Travel

China has built over 30,000 kilometers of high-speed rail but this network will be expanded through 2030. The total operating mileage of China’s high-speed rail network is predicted to exceed 50,000 km by 2030–2035, thus revolutionizing land-based travel.

China is developing faster versions of their conventional rolling high-speed trains. Most of China’s high-speed rail travel at 250-300 kph. The speed was for safety after a high-speed rail accident. However, safety issues have been addressed and China is increasing train speeds on different lines to 350 kph. China is developing two types of next-generation trains. One class of trains can carry passengers at a top speed of 500 kilometers (310 miles) an hour and cargo at 250km/h, with wheels that can adjust to fit different track gauges used around the world. They will use a hybrid-propulsion system that allows higher speeds. The hybrid propulsion systems will be driven by electrical power lines, backed up by batteries and diesel engines.

China is also developing maglev trains capable of 600 kph and speed will be increased to 1000 kph and beyond by adding evacuated tubes around the maglev lines.

The higher speed maglev and rolling high-speed rail will increase the competition against air travel from the 400-800 kilometer range up to 1500 kilometers. The short-haul flights will not just see 40% decreases because people currently often want to have their own car at their destination. However, low-cost robotaxis will mean that people will not need their own car. It will just be based on time and convenience. Three-hour trips with fast trains will kill air travel up to 1500 kilometers and even 1500 kilometers, except where there are significant water, mountain or other barriers without mitigating tunnels. This will likely cut China’s air travel to 40-50% of previous estimates.

Reduced journey time is one of the main reasons for passengers to choose HSR but there remains the issue of the amount of time spent before arriving the railway system.

In the next 15 years, there will be a relatively sharp shift to self-driving cars. This will be a sharp shift because of ride-sharing. If Tesla gets self-driving software working in their cars by 2022 then there would be 3 million self-driving cars available after an over the air software update. Ten million self-driving taxis would be able to handle over 95% of the rides needed in the cities in developed countries. If major roads became dedicated to self-driving cars then the safe driving speed could be increased to about 150-200 miles per hour. Most major highway will become like high-speed rail lines in terms of speed and the volume of passengers and cargo.

In China, high-speed rail and fast self-driving cars will ensure the nearly complete elimination of shorter air trips up to the three hour trip time. There will not be local delays.

Survey of the shift from flying for longer self-driving rides where no car is needed at the destination. (Rice, S., & Winter, S. R. (2018). To Drive or Fly: Will Driverless Cars Significantly Disrupt Commercial Airline Travel?. International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace)

5 hours – 74%
7 hours – 71%
11 hours- 54%
21 hours – 25%

Longer duration drives in North America at 150 mph would be eliminated with self-driving vehicles. Rest stops would be eliminated with self-driving vehicles. Recharging of electric vehicles would be needed. If the vehicles were fast buses then there would be toilet facilities. The vehicles would also be more productive with high-speed communication and comfortable seating. Superior amenities would further shift the choice of self-driving ground vehicles over air travel.

A self-driving car has recently set a speed record over 175 mph. Tesla electric cars will become self-driving and can reach speeds over 155 mph. The 2020 Tesla roadster will be able to reach speeds of 250 mph. The German autobahn has cars and truck regularly driving at 81 to 125 mph (130 km/h to 200 km/h).

In the USA and other countries without high-speed rail, the fast self-driving cars will eliminate short flights up to about 500 miles. This would be popular routes like Los-Angeles to Las Vegas or Las Angeles to San Francisco.

China making new maglev trains that will reach 1,000 kilometers per hour by 2030.

Elimination of Planes for Long-Range Travel

Starting around 2030, SpaceX reusable Starship rockets will start providing a replacement for long international flights. The speed will be increased twenty times. It will be anywhere in the world in one hour. SpaceX will be able to have 1000 people in reclined seating arrangements. The cost will be about $500-1000 per seat per flight. The key enabling factor is increasing the safety of rockets.

SpaceX success in this area would cripple the main financial strength of existing airlines. Business travel and first-class travel and international flights will be replaced with reusable rockets.

Airlines receive only about 60% of their revenue from passengers directly and the other 40% comes from selling frequent-flier miles to credit card companies. 60% of passenger consumer revenue, the big money comes from business travelers. Business travelers account for 12% percent of airlines’ passengers, but they are typically twice as profitable. Business passengers sometimes represent 75% of an airline’s profits.

If the air travel goes away for shorter and longer flights, then the demand for frequent-flier miles will also evaporate.

By 2060, the economics of the airplane industry will be crippled and the usage will be less than one-third of the peak level.

SOURCES- IATA, SpaceX, Tesla, International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace, Sustainability
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

102 thoughts on “By 2060 the Airplane Industry Will Be Mostly Gone”

  1. yes all the fuel consuming planes will go down because the crude oil will decrese in another 50 years and small electric planes will come into action. fuel cosuming planes will be there for more than 30 to 35 years from 2020 in the world ….. and in the top aviation countries like us ,india ,china etc . then electricplanes will come into action .even sustainable aviation fuels will come by 2030 comment if you have more doubts

  2. “So if a deer would peak out of the woods, all the cars would “know” this even hundreds of kilometers away.”
    Deer only peek out of the woods in your universe. But I have only ever seen them crossing a road at full tilt, and out of a thicket. So at best the second car would probably “know”.

  3. What does red states have do with anything??? China deserves all the criticism it gets. The point is environmentalism and lawyers blocking progress in the U.S. to the point that nothing big can ever get done. How the heck does that translate to – conservative red states criticize China??

  4. As in if you have brain cells? Here’s a tip buddy, no one give a fck about your one word replies, it’s an automatic skip over.

  5. Ha, yet people in the US, at least those in the red states anyway, routinely criticizes China for a litany of supposedly anti-democratic values. You certainly can’t blame them for their efficiency though!

  6. Again, your time in the automotive industry was relevant when human were drivers, this is vastly different when computers take over.

  7. Apparently, you are the Einstein of our age that even the engineers at Waymo or Tesla haven’t thought of the deer jumping into road scenario. The fact that you mentioned NASCAR at all has pretty much guarantee that the only place you will be testifying is your local AA group. Without going into a long drawn-out retort to your provincial logic, here’s a hint: the cars are controlled by computers! Perhaps even a quantum one in the future. Get it now?

  8. How is your first sentence relevant to anything except political in nature, or to show that you are some inbred neocon who’s never travelled out of your trailer park?

  9. Maybe in China where they can dismiss environmental concerns (and the lawyers) but the U.S. can’t build anything anymore. The U.S. is absolutely paralyzed by environmentalism and lawyers. California, perhaps the most conceptually train friendly state spent billions and the better part of decade on a high speed line and they eventually just gave up. The only way things get done here is by fast tracking and doing away with impact studies. The collapsed I-35 bridge in Minneapolis was rebuilt in a year – by this method. Consider that it took over a decade to built the Freedom Tower in Manhattan while the comparably sized Empire State building took 18 months.

  10. I sincerely hope that Boring company will succeed in their goals. The potential is enormous. I do, however, have my doubt about the strategy of the Boring company to drill tunnels that are very narrow (14 feet).

    They have two generations of tunnel diggers in the pipeline. Brian, could you do a piece on these diggers once they are finished? Possibly with interviews?

  11. A side note. You can achieve greater acceleration than 1g – and conversely greater than 1g retardation if you create a negative lift with the body of the car.

    That is, if the air “sucks” the car down towards the asphalt with a force that is equal to the cars original weight, then the car would be pressed towards the asphalt with twice the normal (gravity induced) force.

    In that case, you could reach 2*0.69 g ~1.4 g. If the “suction” is even greater, even greater acceleration and braking is possible.

    But, I would argue that is not relevant for this discussion, i.e. 1 g suffices.

  12. I have to reply to myself for the answers to come in the correct order..

    Your second question. Why do you only need to brake with 1g?

    Well, as you have seen in the prevous question, the coefficient of friction between the tyre and the asphalt is 0.69. This means that the maximum braking ability is 0.69 g.

    I would argue that you cannot brake the car more efficiently by crashing than “normal” braking. Think about it. If you accidentally lock your tires, then you obtain (at most) 1g. If you flip the car on the side the you have a maximum friction coefficient of metal against asphalt, which is less than that of rubber against asphalt. If you manage to roll the car – happens all the time in movies – then you will have an average coefficient between rubber-against-asphalt and metal-against-asphalt, i.e. less than 0.69g. Etc.

    So, a car that is having an accident cannot be retarded at *a grater retardation than 1g*, and that is why you don’t have to be able to brake harder than 1g. The crashing car in front of you an *at most* brake by “crashing” at 1g. If the car behind it matches this retardation – i.e. 1g – it will always be able to keep its distance.

    The car that is front of the crashing car does not have to brake at all. After all, the crashing car cannot *accelerate* to catch the car in front.

    Do you understand?

  13. A lot to answer.

    No, you don’t need to make sure that the tires are in contact with the tarmac, they are always in contact with the tarmac. And the typical coefficient of friction rubber-to-asphalt is about 1. If you don’t believe me, check out this link [1].

    At 20 mph they list the reaction distance as 6m (“thinking”) and the actual braking distance as 6 m. 20 mph is the same as ~9 m/s. So the kinetic energy per kg of mass is 81 J/2 = 40.5 J per kilo. The coefficient of friction is “k”, and we obtain 1 kg * 9.8 N/kg*k*6m = 40.5 J ==> k = 0.69; close enough. It is easy to have a lower coefficient of friction than 1.

    I don’t want to be rude, but it is also obvious from theory that your model is wrong. I am listing this link so that you can see that *empirically* your theory of response time cannot possibly be correct.

    (1)
    https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/stopping-distances

  14. One point: I didn’t follow the argument about why we would restrict braking to 1g.

    Given than the best modern tyres can pull significantly better than one G, why would we deliberately derate the brakes?

    All very well to ensure that one car doesn’t brake harder then the one behind. But if the front car hits the errant deer or fallen tree or something because your software deliberately sabotaged this innocent person’s car…

    Getting back to the car’s response to braking:
    jam the brakes on and the car rocks forward. Comparing this to the resonant freq. of suspensions I still think this is on the order of a second.

    Yes, the intial ms test tests the actual brake (or regenerative braking) itself. But the braking system on a car involves the response of the suspension. As our shock absorber advertisements keep reminding us, one bad shock absorber increases braking distance by some metres. Not because it affects the pads clamping the discs, but because the rocking forward movement on the suspension needs to be controlled to keep the tyres in good contact with the ground.

  15. About your point of the compliant body. I appreciate that you are trying to simulate this event in your head. Nice to have you with me on this journy.

    Your reasoning is incorrect, however. First of, the response time of the “softness” of the body depends on the length of the wheel-to-body displacement. Once the wheels are at the “back” end of their lateral travel they reach a hard stop in the chassis and the full braking force of the tyres act on the car.

    Say this distance is 30 cm and the car is traveling at 100 m/s, then this would add at most about 3.3 ms to the response time.

    Second, I do not believe that the *lateral* softness is the the same as the *vertical* softness of the suspension system. I believe that the lateral stiffness is much larger, meaning the car will feel the braking force long before the wheels reach the end of their lateral travel.

    Remember, we are only aiming for 1g deceleration, so we are looking for the lateral displacement of the wheels where the lateral suspension pushes against the car body with a force equal to the car weight, not the hard stop…

  16. Regenerative braking should – or could – have almost zero response time. The motor is already attached to the axle and all you have to do is to short the motor leads to a capacitor/battery.

    This short can be made with high voltage transistors and it is a piece of cake to reach microsecond response time with these devices.

    So the maximum response time should be set by the angular distribution of the poles in the motor. Say the motor has 10 poles, the motor would spin at most 36 degrees before the magnetic field would grip the rotor with the full force even though the transistor has already shorted the winding. At 100 revolutions per second, this would come down to 1ms…

  17. Yes, I was thinking of the spaceX angle.

    I agree that highspeed rail is already very well established, like flight in 1945.

    I also agree that it seems well established enough that we can have a good grasp as to how much it costs. You can put a rail line in Beijing (20 million people) to Shanghai (25 million) with another 10M living in a couple of cities in between and get a profitable line. But Sydney (5M) to Melbourne (4M) over a similar distance just doesn’t work out financially.

    Forget the trains, we need an order of magnitude cheaper bridges/tunnels/level concrete beds before it takes over. Where is that coming from?

    But with an every larger % of the world’s population living in cities of 10 million plus, the rail system will probably have more and more applications.

  18. Automotive braking systems have response times longer than 10ms.
    The full dynamic response of the system hasn’t occurred until the brakes have applied full friction (arguably on the scale of ms), the rotating wheel has applied force to the ground through a compliant, inflated tyre ( several 10s of ms), the resulting decelerating force has been transferred back to the body of the car via the compliant, damped suspension ( a typical car suspension response speed is 2 Hz, so let’s say 0.5 to 1 second to get the full effect.

    Then there is the thermal response time as all those hundreds to thousands of kW of power is dumped into the pads and discs and everything heats up. That is on the scale of seconds.

  19. Another way to simplify the problem but gain the benefits of high speed self-driving is to designate certain highway segments as self-driving autobahns.

  20. Elon’s Boring Company has the target of bringing tunnel costs down below $10 million per mile. This is the cost of widening a road in rural areas. Electric vehicles do not need the ventilation that current tunnels need. Dedicated high speed single direction tunnels do not need complicated AI.

    Close following vehicles. There has been a lot of work on platooning cars and trucks. Having vehicles have a short gap for high density of high speed vehicles without risks of crashes or traffic jams.

    https://cei.org/content/authorizing-automated-vehicle-platooning-2019

  21. For shorter travel, the current high speed train system already cut the travel time down enough such that it is competitive with air travel given all the overheads of air travel over regular high speed trains.

  22. Not necessarily. The car can break for 10 ms every now and then. At 1g this would be felt like a shudder in the car. Nothing more.

    Also,since the cars are communicating, the car that is testing its brakes will “ask” the other cars for some space during the test.

  23. sorry, I don’t get your point. China’s life expectancy at birth is 78, Japan is 83. The differential is the infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births) where China is 7 and Japan is 3, and the deaths in China due to smog and lung cancer.

    These stats aside, what does this have to do with that fact that China’s total population will peak in about 8 years and then will decline? This is just a function of how their population pyramid looks. Increasing the life expectancy (by reducing infant mortality) will have a negligible impact because the birth rate is already so low. To “regain” 200 million or so people in China by 2060 will require that TODAY’s Chinese women have 3 or 4 children each. That seems far-fetched.

  24. ? Are you talking about the SpaceX angle? I don’t know what % of air travel miles that is, but it’s far fewer trips than are made within a country. For those, only the self-driving cars and trains portion of the article are relevant. So I think my dates are reasonable.

    I don’t see how high speed rail is going to be cheaper than flying. But that seems to be an assumption of the prediction, so I’m willing to accept it for the sake of argument.

  25. Yes, I was criticising the reporter not the engineers. Both in this article and in the fear mongering of the 1830s.

    And I’m fine with people not knowing physics (I’ll give a list of subjects I know nothing or even negative amounts about if anyone wants).

    I’m not so sanguine about people like that being reporters and reporting on stuff when physics is a basic prerequisite to understanding the subject. But that’s just one in a whole list of reasons that main stream media is largely useless these days.

  26. all cars would be mandated to check the braking power regularly by braking hard at different speeds

    I assume this would not be with anyone in the car. Because otherwise you’ve probably caused more death and injury than you saved.

  27. Except that by 1945 100s of thousands of people had already travelled by air.

    This is more like making such a claim in 1910, when everyone who had travelled in this manner was still known by name.

  28. As others have said, building train lines is horribly expensive in developed countries where planning rules balance public and private interests. China simply builds lines where it wishes, whether the existing occupants like it or not. Go back 150 years to Victorian Britain, when it was building hundreds of miles of new track a year, and it was the same. Wind forward to 2019, and HS2, a 140 mile high speed line being built between London and Birmingham will cost 70 billion sterling, approaching 100 billion USD! A big chunk of this is paying landowners for the loss of their land, rerouting roads, rivers, demolition of buildings and construction of stations. Only a small part is for the track, signalling and trains, which are now all commodities. Then the kicker, that line will not be finished until around 2030, and work is already well underway. As for high speed rail in the US, well how long have we waited for that?

    I get the vision, but fixed infrastructure like high speed railways is horribly expensive if you have developed country and enforced property rights already.

  29. Japan isn’t a polluted wasteland that’s running concentration camps on its minorities. Japan and South Korea are more similar demographically, but Japan still lives longer.

    China is not Japan.

  30. There is no way Starship point to point travel will be more than a smidgen of the transportation numbers. It’s way too loud to be near the vast majority of cities. Entry sonic booms will also limit where the Starship can operate from. Point to point by Starship will be limited to just a few places/novelty trips.

  31. Tell me more about the evacuated tunnels. Clear skin, to let light through and do a little sightseeing at speed? Or opaque, at which point, if the tubes are buried, it doesn’t matter. And no artificial projections, that’s hokey.

  32. I continue to question whether suborbital space-flight as a mass-trasnport phenomenon is practically doable. Your point № 2 touched on it … noise. Elsewhere, you make good arguments for cost-of-fuel constraints.  

    № 3 — carry all the oxygen
    № 4 — mass vomit containment
    № 5 — graceless failure modes
    № 6 — limited ‘safe’ airframe life
    № 7 — support infrastructure
    № 8 — international certification
    № 9 — profit, insurance, ops, management, …

    There’s probably another dozen, but those the main points.

    (№ 3) … we know that a sub-orbital ballistic is going to be out-of-atmosphere for most of a trip, meaning “friction free”. The price paid for that is achieving high velocity, with an unsurprisingly large part of the acceleration-deceleration plan also out-of-atmosphere. So, all oxygen must be carried. Oxygen is heavy, and not cheap. I wonder if that cost mostly offsets the out-of-atmosphere free-flight savings.  

    (№ 4) … is a real problem. Real people get real sick at really low G’s. What’s the solution to that?

    (№ 5) … well, I hardly need list the spectacular unplanned flight anomaly possibilities. Tell you what tho: they alone would keep ME from flying the Big Fûqueing Rocket. 

    (№ 6) … no amount of static testing will determine this one.
    (№ 7) … because of № 2, where will all these spaceports go?  
    (№ 8) … LOL, right.
    (№ 9) … LOL³ 

    Just sayin’, GoatGuy

  33. Aren’t two sparrows sold for only a penny? But your Father knows when any one of them falls to the ground. — Biblical Translation

    More likely is a vast network of underground tunnels where only the computers (of electric cars) get to drive, and with sleds or some such for longer distances. Enough cheap tunnels, drilled by mostly robots, and roads start to become a rarity on the surface except for very local use.

    I have to think it would make things fairly nice up top, not to have to worry about thousands of pounds of metal rushing at you or by you every second you are out in anything but a car or truck.

  34. I will be stuck in the olden days when those two or three billion people come around and dig themselves a latrine without some UN program assisting them, something people elsewhere did forever at the slightest need. It takes a shovel and a day of work – Africa has shovels, but is allergic to work. If it takes them 40 years, hydrogen fuel and flying cars is not even relevant to them. They will have to visit Dubai to sell some discounted African gold for the tech goodies.

  35. You assume that lifespan in China won’t increase. What if lifespan in China in 2060 will be the same as is in Japan now or even longer.

  36. You might be stuck in the olden days. India’s latrine/household went from 37% in 2014 to 70% last year. You can argue a few percent variance here or there, but I think it is safe to say that by 2060 – in 40 years (!!), that problem will have been solved. The other big population growth area – the middle east, is far ahead. Africa, especially SSA is not an issue of going for new technologies. The only thing really holding them back is old-think regulation. The new generation coming in is very hungry to change that model. With it, and the billions of new consumers comes the future.

  37. You are referring to places that prefer not to construct latrines, and prefer open-air defecation. They cannot and will not transition from that into a hydrogen economy and autonomous flying craft. The future may be in the sky, but not for them.

  38. > brings up the worry that people would not be able to survive travelling at thousands of km/h.

    Yea, I noticed that too. But that’s purely the fault of the reporter, and has nothing to do with the validity of the engineering – nor even with whether this will be transatlantic or not.

    In her defense, the common travel speeds are much lower, so in relative terms, the difference is similar to steam trains vs horses. Furthermore, the issue of g-forces at high speed (when turning) is correct and relevant, and is brought up often when such ideas are discussed. Perhaps she doesn’t have the physics background to understand the difference between speed and acceleration. Not everyone studies physics in high-school, and even if they do, not everyone learns anything from it.

  39. Right – or a belief in 1945 that planes would reduce inter city rail passenger miles per capita about 95% by 1975. Such things are FAR too speculative… despite it turning out to be true.

  40. I think that the limiting factor for how close you could have the car go would be the mechanical response time of the brakes. Say you get it down to 10 ms (which is fast), then the minimum distance should be about 10 ms * 100 m/s =1 m.

    Not quite as close as I would have liked, but I am sure this would at least increase the high way throughput if only saving part of the energy cost.

  41. You have calculated the braking force needed to come to a full stop, but I would argue that this is not relevant because the *delta* acceleration in an accident would never supersede 1g.

    If a car blows a tyre and starts rolling on its side (worst case scenario) this rolling would result in *at most* 1 g retardation. I.e. it is a more efficient method to brake with tires on asphalt than sliding on the roof of the car. And that is why it is sufficient to brake with 1g.

    The only real risk would be if a car crashed into opposing traffic. But this could be mitigated by have a middle barrier of sufficient strength. Actually this is standard tech today…

  42. “There is no way that 20 cars in a row that close would ever be able to panic brake without crashing. Braking would vary too much due to factors like the number of passengers in a vehicle, condition and design of brake pad material, ECM processing latency and tire wear.”

    Well, you have a point, sort of. But, unlike a human, you could have very fast proximity sensors for the automatic SW. Say it is working a 10 kHz. This would mean that if a car in front would break less efficiently than ideal, the cars behind would adapt their braking to match. This would be impossible with human drivers, but not that hard with fast SW.

    This would of course mean that the braking would be limited to the least efficient braking ability in the cordon. In turn, this would implicate that not all cars should be allowed on the super-high way, only the cars which have had the brakes checked within a time span. If a car without this certificate would enter the high way, the other cars would give this car a wide berth and the owner of the car would be issued a ticket.

    Better yet, the SW in all cars would be mandated to check the braking power regularly by braking hard at different speeds. So the information of the actual braking power would be at most a couple of days old. And this data would be forwarded to the other cars in the cordon so that they would automatically brake with the correct force should an accident occur.

  43. @Stillrockin

    Phew, what ire!

    First off, let me just point out that there are roads where people habitually go 300 km/h and they are called “autobahn”. In fact, there is no speed limit.. So clearly, making tires that can withstand 300 km/s is not an issue and neither is making highways that can support this speed. At least for the germans….

    Of course these “super highways” would have to be deer proof. So, if the deer can jump 6 feet, you make the fence 10 feet. Heck, I’ll even throw in 15 feet! And are you seriously claiming that the cost of *fencing* would compare in cost to the actual road? Me thinketh not.

    Here is an estimate of the cost [1] and it is 960 USD per km. Let’s assume that a “super fence” would cost ten times more, i.e. about 10 kUSD per km. How much does “autobahn” cost per km? Well, from about 10 million USD to 50 million USD per kilometer [2]. So the road is at least a thousand times more expensive than the fencing. Can we please forget about the cost of fencing?

    (1)
    https://www.ecologyandsociety.org › vol14 › iss2 › art15 › appendix1

    (2)
    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj9kfvmt4nlAhWdAhAIHZKiDuIQFjABegQIChAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Fsoziales%2Fbundesregierung-plant-teuersten-autobahnabschnitt-aller-zeiten-a-1087460.html&usg=AOvVaw2dGhcXda5d3FS4iGLgvIqC

  44. I’ve spent my whole career in the automotive industry and you simply cannot account for the number of things that can fail at exactly the time you really need them. People have died because Tesla sensors could not distinguish between a sign on the side of the road and a semi truck and trailer approaching at a right angle. Do you honestly think that if the best sensor system on the road today can’t tell signs and trucks apart that a deer standing in a ditch is going to be detectable in every situation. No way. An adult white tail can easily clear a 6 ft tall fence, which I know because they do it on my property regularly. Do you have any idea what it will cost to deer proof highways?

    You didn’t address my concerns with tires or down force either. Traveling as close as you suggest to reduce drag is just a surefire way to kill more people. There is no way that 20 cars in a row that close would ever be able to panic brake without crashing. Braking would vary too much due to factors like the number of passengers in a vehicle, condition and design of brake pad material, ECM processing latency and tire wear.

    I’m not going to waste my time explaining the failure rate of tires at 150 mph but needless to say it would cause thousands of deaths per year.

  45. Airline travel has plummeted in price over the decades, while getting every safer.

    Regulation may be a problem, but it’s just about the last area where I’d start looking for reform at this point.

  46. That linked article literally brings up the worry that people would not be able to survive travelling at thousands of km/h.

    That is an actual argument from the early 19th century, when the prospect of steam trains moving at faster speed than a galloping horse was so radical that newspapers were panicking and whining that humans were not meant to travel so fast, and would not be able to breathe.

    That someone has dug up that argument from nearly 200 years ago is rather impressive actually.

    It also requires them to ignore that humans have travelled much faster than this already, such as in space craft. So in many ways they are even more retarded than the luddites back in the 1830s. The regency at least did not have counter examples sitting in front of them.

    (Note actual correct use of the word “retarded”.)

  47. If the average traveler is actually willing to pay the higher ticket price…

    I don’t think that is the case, in fact, i think it’s more likely Starship will fill the role of the Concorde instead of a replacement for 747.
    That is, it will be a premium service and will not serve as the workhorse of the economy market.
    100% re-usability means fuel is the largest direct cost driver, modern airliners are very fuel efficient.

  48. Concorde also suffered from

    1 Short range, so most of the really long haul flights (where being faster has the biggest advantage) were not possible. A suborbital rocket doesn’t have this problem at all.

    2 Very constraining noise restrictions, so a big proportion of the other valuable flights were also not possible. A suborbital rocket has got this problem to an even greater degree for the takeoff, to a significant degree for the landing, but not at all for the overflight region.

  49. Nice headline to catch eyeballs, but wrong. IF, air travel looks exactly the same today in 2060, yes, it’s diminished in value. Who knows what will transpire by then? Rail etc. takes a ton of infrastructure and approvals etc. Air travel just needs a place to take off and land. I can reroute in-flight, and divert for emergencies. On a fixed rail, none of that. If we get around to air taxi and more small hub flights, then you can’t beat air travel.

  50. Weird how the “future” is looked through the lens of the disappearing peoples. flying cars, space planes, hyperloops. The US, Europe and China will be largely depopulated by 2100. The future is with people who aren’t born yet in places you can’t drink the water. They will be taking puddle hoppers in high speed efficient hydrogen powered craft oblivious to the rest, in point to point airfields, all controlled by expert systems powered controllers and no pilots (a sad point for me). The future is in the sky, not in forging a path with steel brutality efficiency through someones rice paddy.

  51. I’m not in agreement with this future. The vast majority of new people will be in Africa, subcontinent and middle east. 3 billion or thereabouts. Earning enough to not have to walk or take the local matatu (it’s an East Africa minibus). This means in maybe 20 or so years billions will be taking air travel. I really can’t see high speed trains in an area the size of all of Russia, sorry but no way. China, Europe and US will be more or less de-populated. Lots of empty trains….
    But rest of the future world will be humming.

  52. There’s going to be an explosion of electric planes and vtols flying regional distances in the near future so I disagree with this premise.

  53. This, the plane routes who will be beaten by train is the short to medium range routes between large cities.
    Longer travel and planes wins, same with terrain as in oceans but mountains are also expensive to pass.
    Lower population places and planes makes more sense.

    Starship, perhaps, yes they will transfer space flight totally, this is given.
    Orbital tourism will become an thing.

    But P2P has multiple issues, one is safety obviously.
    Space tourism can have some risk, climbing mount Everest or hunting an lion or elephant is also expensive and dangerous.
    The second is the Concorde dilemma. Concorde was very nice going from London to NY, not so nice going from Edinburgh to Miami, more direct flight hurt the concord a lot. This also killed off the A380.
    And starship has an higher capacity than 380 and can not even land on the airport for the connecting flight.

  54. Correct me if I missed it, but the article about disruption to aviation from driverless cars failed to make the trivial connections.

    1. Assuming the “level 5” autonomy (the only level that deserves the term) for cars is achieved, the same technology automatically applies to aviation.
    2. As Japan, Korea and apparently Australia made the choice of building hydrogen economy (for better or worse), one of the consequences will be hydrogen derived from a denser fuel (ammonia). With ammonia storage density at 17% hydrogen by mass, current HFC efficiency at 60%, and current auto HFC power at 100kW, a VTOL aircraft becomes possible with fuel consumption, range, mass and load roughly equal to gasoline aircraft (Rutan Long EZ). That means about 1000km flight, return and reserve without refuelling, at about 500kph, for about $100 per trip. Now indulge yourself: open Google Earth, draw a 1000km circle centered on Dubai, and see what fits inside it. There is the market.
    3. Now adding 1 and 2. A personal flying transport that does not require pilot skills, licence and what not, which takes you 500km way in one hour, during which you can enjoy the flight, sleep or whatever. It can be “uberised” too: call it in, take your ride from your backyard or street, and it takes you to another city or country in an hour. The western crackpots will deny themselves this due to all the “security” nonsense, but the Arab and Asian market will go for it all-in.
    4. This is green, electric, robotic – all the right words.
  55. IIRC Gerard K. O’Neill’s maglev tunnels envisioned for “2081” (the book) are fast enough that gravity is reversed due to the curvature of Earth. This would pretty much doom SpaceX’s intercontinental dominance and replace it, perhaps, with successors to Musk’s hyperloop + boring companies.

  56. I can predict the future… in 2069 Amtrak will Be converted in trails for people to ride mountain bikes… and high speed trains will be extinct in the United States… Airtravel will become norm because everybody has a quadcoper car…

  57. Yep. Airline safety is amazingly good and getting better. For most airlines in the developed world the chance of a fatal accident is 1 in several million flights. It’s going to be a long time, if ever, that rockets will match that.

  58. You make a valid point — cost of ultra-high-speed-rail is increasing, per kilometer.  

    Not because of the land-rights, but because of rail-placement accuracy, materials performance requirements, and the much wider berths for allowable turn radii, etc.  

    Thinking about this article’s premise, that all sorter-haul air-travel will be all-but-eliminated by 2060 … and turning by 2040 to be so, causes me to examine other ‘whys’ that aren’t mentioned.  

    The planet is presently peppered with hundreds of fully ‘international’ sized airports, and tens of thousands of smaller but still arguably commercial landing-and-takeoff facilities. These are going to INCREASE in number, with little-to-no-doubt. More access, to more people, closer to ‘home’.  

    Aircraft, not limited to particular rails, are free to use the entire edge-network of airports as demand and opportunity avail themselves. A meteor hits this airport? No problem… after a few days, all air traffic will be routed to airpots B, C, D and E. How’s this work for rail?

    How does this work for pölïtical unrest motivated sabotage events? Wipe out a tiny section of rail, and well … the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. No link = no chain.  

    Sure the A-team can get out there and fix that rail right quick. And with a sufficiently interconnected mesh, there are rerouting options. Not so much so for the thousand-plus dead in a 500 km/hr derailing.  But still… 

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy ✓

  59. d = ½at²;

    t = √( 2d/a );

    Δv = at; sub in ‘t’ from above.
    Δv = a √( 2d/a );
    Δv = √( 2da );

    v = 50 m/s … 110 mph … 180 km/h.

    a = 1.25 G’s;
    a = 1.25 × 9.81;
    a = 12 m/s²;

    d = 20 m (60 ft);

    Δv = √( 2da );
    Δv = √( 2 × 20 × 12 )
    Δv = 22 m/s

    But, v = 50 m/s… so 

    v₁ = v₀ – Δv
    v₁ = 50 – 22
    v₁ = 28 m/s (60 mph, 100 km/hr) at impact. LETHAL.

    And that’s with instantaneous computerized reaction time. Hence, I suppose, which is why in Elon Musk’s rich science-fiction future-universe, all robotic cars would be outfitted with retrorockets that’d increase maximum deceleration G to maybe 75 or so m/s². 8 Gs. You’d be really bruised, but alive.  

    ΔV = √( 2da = 2 × 20 × 75 ) = 54 m/s.  

    Clearly enough to come-to-a-halt in the 20 meters-ahead deer leap distance. 

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy ✓

  60. Don’t give them any ideas who knows maybe they’ll build a tunnel. It could be like Futurama or something!!!!!!!

  61. “Over next 40 years, air travel will be mostly gone”
    vs.
    “By 2060 the Airplane Industry Will Be Mostly Gone”

    You’re welcome

  62. The price of American trains are not the same around the world. Most of all if American train system moved into the 21st. Century then and only then would I listen to what you have to say.

  63. The true is that international air travel will increase with income and population. And that there will be a decrease in air travel inside of China. And it is doubtful that a rocket will be anywhere as safe as a plane and planes already make a lot of people nervous.

  64. Good point. In the cities, I am not sure that it will be possible to increase the *throughput* dramatically without going to flying vehicles (or using tunnels). And by all indications, self driving helicopters and VTOL aircraft are just around the corner. Lilium and Volocopter seem to be far down the path of development
    (1)
    https://lilium.com/
    (2)
    https://www.volocopter.com/en/

  65. You are missing two very important pieces of information.

    First, self driving SW can react much faster than any human. Think in the lines of 10 to 100 times faster.

    Second, I believe that for high speed car/bus travel to become a reality, all vehicles on a road need to communicate by some sort of radio link (say, 5g?). That way, all cars effectively see all that is happening along the whole high way. So if a deer would peak out of the woods, all the cars would “know” this even hundreds of kilometers away. If one car had to stop, then all the cars on the whole high way would instantly know this, i.e. the car that is 20 miles away would adjust its speed so that safe driving is possible.

    The instant communication vehicle-to-vehicle would allow the cars/buses/trucks to drive almost fender-to-fender to reduce air drag. When it is time for one vehicle to leave the cordon, the other vehicles know this well in advance and create a gap to allow the car to turn off, and then close the gap smoothly within a couple of seconds afterwards.

    Of course, you would have to clear the woods around high speed roads or have fences that prevent animals from surprising the vehicles. Or conversely, if there are no fences and the wood is next to the road, the speed limit would not be 300 km per hour.

  66. It’s the ticket price that will be the main parameter to watch. Train infrastructure is hideously expensive to build in most parts of the world and it’s getting worse, not better like perhaps in China. Unless China manages to enslave the entire planet by 2060, aircraft tickets will cost less in most countries unless trains are subsidized.

    Also, at some battery tech threshold, there will be self driving electrical aircraft. These aircraft will be faster (p2p) and safer than cars at 150+ mph. Energy cost will not be higher than for a car.

    Potential new transportation modes like hyperloop and suborbital rockets will take longer to replace current infrastructure. Maybe Musks tunnelling machinery can eventually beat the snail. How long before a bunch of snails can dig a tunnel network covering most civilized areas? My guess is it will take more than 40 years.

    The most efficient way to solve the transportation problems may be to simply eliminate the need in the first place. Additive manufacturing can make production and logistics more local. Brain interfaces and advanced VR could make physical human presence obsolete. If we finally become space-born, perhaps future generations will look at planetary infrastructure in a completely different way. Now, that would be disruptive…

  67. Well, Starship is moving to hot manoeuvering thrusters that can be fired at any altitude, so it’s not unreasonable to assume they’d be used to compensate for bad weather or crosswinds.

  68. When traveling mid to long distances by ground vs. air, you also have to factor in geopolitical risk, as China is already discovering in Southeast Asia and Africa. Also, factor in geological risks, as in Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Hurricanes (Hurricane Sandy, where I live, wiped out the subway bridge to the Rockaways for months, and that’s just a tiny example on LOW speed trains).
    There are conditions where one can’t fly too, crowded skies etc., but these are known and quantifiable and limited, whereas ground risks increase the more population there is and the more distance traveled.

  69. Cars at 150 Mph? Where do I start? How about all deer hits would be fatal, not just for the deer but anybody in the car. Does Brian have any idea what the rotational forces on tires at his 200 mph are. There are not any production tires that can handle that for more than a short time. Does he think that ground effects are going to provide enough down force to prevent the nose from lifting while going up an incline of oh say, 1% at 150 mph? Watch a NASCAR race once if you think that self driving cars are going to be safe traveling a car length apart at 150 mph when one of those expensive high speed rated tires blows out. What do you think the survivability of a bus full of unrestrained passengers at 150 mph is going to be when one of its tires blows out and it rolls over in the ditch. I’ll be the first person at my state legislature testifying again this stupid idea.

  70. If the average traveler is actually willing to pay the higher ticket price for faster long distance commercial flights, why isn’t the Concorde (or a successor) still in service?

  71. Disagreeing with the prediction is completely different from it being an incoherent prediction.

    If your comment actually was intended to mean that you disagree with the proposed trajectory of airliner use then I’m afraid that you’ll need to make a more complex argument than just “Durr…”

  72. No it doesn’t. It says they will double by 2040 and then magically shoehorns Starship use in as if we’re expected to believe that will happen and international travel is going to be done by something else.

  73. Yes, high speed trains will (may) only have advantages between megacities.

    But the vast majority of travel will be between megacities.

  74. 40 years in the past, the 747 was on its 3rd facelift.

    Air travel tech hasn’t really been advancing that quickly.

  75. I can believe this, providing you interpret “mostly gone” in a reasonable way.

    Some huge % of total air traffic is

    1. Between major cities in North America, Europe or Asia within 1000 km or so and hence can be replaced by high speed trains.
    2. Intercontinental, but still between major cities, and so (might) be replaceable by suborbitals.

    So I dont’ reject an argument (not the same as agreeing it’s true) that we could see 75-85% of total airline passengers choosing another method.

    Dropping 75-85% is “mostly gone” for the purposes of long range predictions.

  76. This assumes no new high density energy storage systems are developed in 40 years. High density energy storage systems could enable VTOL flights that would skip major airports, greatly reducing the ground time component of air travel. Add lightweight composite construction and smart air navigation and control systems and air travel could go on being competitive in terms of cost and convenience indefinitely. 40 years is a long time in materials and energy science and engineering, particularly considering that within 10 years discovery, innovation and development will likely be powered by AIs.

  77. How much do you pay for a long distance air flight?

    $500 in fuel implies something like $1500 for the ticket (I think the rule of thumb is about 1/3 of the ticket is fuel).

    Flying to China or Europe or the USA, I’d generally be paying something like $800 one way. So double the price to save 15-20 hours… it’s a reasonable number. Certainly on a business trip I’d be able to convince the boss for that.

  78. I know it’s a lot of work, but if you read the whole article all the way to the first sentence it will explain this apparent contradiction.

  79. The assumptions here are somewhat naive. There will always be a spectrum of travel needs and vehicles. There are just too many variables and creative possibilities in the future. To say that that planes will largely be gone by 2060 strikes me as equivalent to a belief in 1950 we would all be in flying cars and robot housekeepers by 2000. That is FAR too speculative!

  80. “Wake me up when rockets can take off in 90% of weather…”

    It’s already happened.

    Witness how an astronaut-carrying orbital rocket using 1950s technology launches into space in a blizzard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-22

    Engineering a rocket that is tolerant of a wide range of weather conditions is not magic. It’s been done before.

  81. As the great Yogi once said to Boo Boo… or someone, “Prediction is tough, especially about the future”. I predict there will be more people in the air by 2060 than on trains. But they may not be stuffed like chickens into an airliner between hubs. The reason? Very low cost, high granularity electric/hybrid robot taxi service of 200+ mile radius will be readily available and the infrastructure costs for trains everywhere are just too high.

  82. Would love to see a train going from say New York to London, that would be something to see.
    No, aircraft will not be going away anytime soon.

  83. “Over next 40 years, air travel will be mostly gone”

    “Air passengers are expected to go up by a huge margin”

    Durr…

    Poor reading comprehension? Read it again and pay attention to the actual words.
    btw, If you reinterpret and alter what is said, it becomes your assertion and it’s no longer a quote.

  84. Wake me up when rockets can take off in 90% of weather…

    And when we can build high speed rail in a country with property rights for under $1B/mi.

  85. Elimination of Planes for Long-Range Travel

    I have a hard time envisioning the prevalence of Starship reaching the levels capable of replacing long distance aircraft.

    Fuel may be a tiny part of the rocket cost equation, but it becomes very large at frequency and scale. Based on a previous quote that F9 fuel costs around 200k, FH would be around $500k. If we use that as Starship’s cost, minimum per person ticket fuel cost is ~$500

    A 747 could fly today for 10hrs and fuel costs would be ~$70k, per person ticket fuel cost is ~$140.

    1 vs 10hrs, you may save those 9hrs but each of those hrs will cost you ~$40 more.
    There is always room for premium services, but to accomplish “Elimination of Planes for Long-Range Travel” require servicing the larger economy segment.

  86. “Over next 40 years, air travel will be mostly gone”
    “Air passengers are expected to go up by a huge margin”
    Durr…

  87. A twisted China and Musk centered world view. The price of building infrastructure for building tubed maglev trains will not match those of an electric train, they may only have an advantage between mega cities if at all. When we have electric to scram jet Vtols, SpaceX rockets will never be able to match it.

Comments are closed.