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One of the other reasons Concorde never really succeeded was due to the other part of the nature of faster than sound travel: it uses a huge amount of fuel, which is a major expense. For comparison, the 747-100 (which made its first flight just before Concorde's) used perhaps 1.1 times more fuel to cross the Atlantic but carried about 4 times as many passengers.

Suborbital space flight means any place on the globe is a 2 hour flight away, but the fuel costs are pretty high. I expect such a service to one day exist, but I don't expect to be able to afford it.




yeah we need a new way of powering our ships. for it to be affordable. the only cheap and responsible way i think would be to use solar thermal power and use molten salt storage onboard.


Thorium nuclear reactors are weirdly underdeveloped. There are lots of advantages to them, so it's a shame that we're so behind with them.




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