[extropy-chat] Communication vs transportation

[Dirk Bruere]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Lee" <brian_a_lee at hotmail.com>
To: <hemm at br.inter.net>; <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Communication vs transportation


> I've thought a bit on this lately and am a little let down with the pace
of
> transportation. If you look at air travel over the last 50 years there are
> few major breakthroughs. 75 years ago, it took weeks to travel around the
> world and then with commercial air travel, that was cut down to a day or
> merely hours. 50 years later, we're still pretty much at the same flight
> times. We have more routes and scheduled and tvs in the seats but flights
> are still about the same length. Perhaps they are even longer if you take
> security waits into the equation.
>
> I think the main reason why air travel tech has stalled is lack of
> competition. There's really only two companies making planes-Airbus and
> Boeing- and both are heavily subsidized by their respective governments.
Air
> travel is subsidized by local governments and businesses who don't have
much
> incentive to decrease travel time.


It's more basic than that.
To get from my house in Britain to a friends in New York takes approximately
13hrs.
Of that, 7 is the flight time.

I have no intention of paying a premium so I can knock 3hrs off that time.
It's not the speed of the flight that matters, but the journey times and
getting through the airports at both ends.

Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millennium
http://www.theconsensus.org