Absurdly expensive; the US is unwilling to foot that bill.

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"near" is a relative term !

I reckon Fusion power plants will be up and running in the "near" term too. That is IMHO the only long term energy source, until we have warp engines, sub-space, and anti-matter/dilithium power.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

But the pollution bill needs to be paid, IRstuff!

Fusion power plants will be up and running in the "near" term too, but not before 2040, rb1957.

In small to medium European countries hight velocity trains already replace with advantages the planes and are more ambiently friend.

But, there's a huge difference between paying up front a gigantic bill, vs. monthly installations. I could never have afforded buying a $300,000 house with cash, but $1,800/month is doable. Obviously, the difference is that the bill for pollution increases over time, even beyond inflation, but nevertheless, the concept still applies.

There have been several attempts to develop interstate bullet trains, but the cost has still be too prohibitive. One issue is that the US is not a particularly train-traveling country

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from my knowledge USA was maybe the country which most contributed for the development of trains as a way of transportation.

luis

At some point in history, perhaps; the Transcontinental Railroad was literally and figuratively groundbreaking, fresh out of the Civil War and needing to connect the East and West coasts.

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Modern jets are running nearly 30 seat-miles per gallon of fuel. About the same as most people driving their cars to work at free-running highway speeds. Locomotives are more efficient at transporting cargo over long distances - Europe and Japan mostly use trucking. I'd rather the most efficient means be used for the largest amount of material than score railroad points with train fans.

Trains don´t pollute and in therms of energy are maybe less expensive than jets I suppose!

luis

Diesel is ostensibly a dirtier fuel than gasoline

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trains, burning diesel, pollute …
oh, but he means his yet-to-be-invented "hyper" trains … they wouldn't run on anything as mundane as diesel !

and yes I've read about trains travelling in vacuum tubes … not in our lifetime.

I appreciate your optimism about fusion power ! by 2040 ITER will be up and running, and probably other demonstrators, but commercial fusion is unlikely in this century. But if we work on it now, we will get there.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

I am speaking about trains moved by electricity not diesel trains! Electricity generated by wind power, hidraulic power,and sun power. Indirectly hydrogen power plants are already there but they still pollut with CO2. I have eard that England is already working in a fusion power plant to produce comercial clean hidrogen arround 2040.

luis

I'll take any odds you want that it won't happen before 2050, or even 2099.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

Yes rb1957!Fusion power plants are still far way. But again high velocity electrical trains are less polluent than jet fuel planes don´t you agree? In Europe with the dimension of the cauntries if we achieve a place alf one hour later in a high velocity train than in a plane at the same or less price what does it matter? Meawhile the pollution is much less.

luis

I missed it. What lab is running a continuous small scale fusion reactor that can be scaled up to a power plant? I can foresee that a clean energy source could capture CO2 from the air and combine it with hydrogen from split water to make a convenient hydrocarbon fuel that has high energy density and fits with current infrastructure. While we are hand-waving a distant future.

Europe is smaller than the US (well, western Europe).

You've made trains non-polluting by relying on electrical power generated by renewables. This is not QED (Quite Easily Done). The infrastructure costs are "ginormous". The benefit small.

Why not replace intracontinental travel with the much more renewable horse drawn carriage ? Ok, we'd have to deal with the methane issue ...

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

3DDave in one of my anterior posts I said:"Indirectly hydrogen power plants are already there but they still pollut with CO2". I have nothing against planes but this pandemic times invite us to see how they pollut. My post is not against intercontinental planes. If you can demonstrate me that a big continental plane polutts less than a high velocity electrical train with the actual technology, I will surrend me.

luis

"About Wells Fargo" and the methane of the horses beasts; this, is going to lad us to another thread...

luis

Show me the transcontinental electrically driven high speed train for comparison.

My thread is "Continental flights in the very near futur will be replaced by High Velocity trains"

CONTINENTAL FLIGHTS did you ear?

luis

continental = transcontinental = intracontental .NE. intercontinental

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

Crossing a continent is "transcontinental," not "intercontinental"

Edit: too slow by a few seconds.

when I said continental I meant Europe, Asia, North America,South America,Australia and Africa the Artic and Antartic we left them for planes. When I said intercontinental I meant between Australia end South America, North America and Europe or Asia, on and so on, I think there is no need to make a drawing.

regards

luis

yes, we (I think) understand. you mean flights from LA to NYC (for example), ie within a continent; not NYC to London (intercontinental).

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

You got it! rb1957

good luck

luis

Thinking on this, the Trans-Siberian railway is actually intercontinental; between Europe and Asia.

Even in this last case a grid of high velocity trains between Asia and Europe IMO makes sense. It already exist because we can go from Mascow to London or Paris by train in 24 hours or maybe less

luis

It's 4 hours by most flights; from Moscow to London. Basically able to go for a weekend and be back fresh Monday morning instead of spending the entire weekend on a train and no time actually in the destination city. It only makes sense if walking was the alternative.

It is about 2500Km from London to Moscow if you arrange a direct train from London to Moscow your time will be reduced to 7 or 8 hours. 4 hours by plane if you count the time of check in, the waiting time for your lagage and the rules of the actual pandemic, 4 hours will be easely transformed in 8 so the diference is not too big.

luis

The rules of pandemic would also apply to trains, would they not?

Moreover, unless you purchase a private compartment, you'll be sitting with a bunch of other people for at least twice as long, which means your probability of getting COVID-19 might be significantly higher on a train

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I have nothing against planes, we are just argueing points of view. In the covid19 pandemic with the low cost planes the proximity between passangers is much more closer in planes than in high velocity trains.

luis

I didn't pick the travel time. An expert in trains did. There seem to be flights leaving throughout the day. I cannot imagine that many trains leaving when a person wants to leave; so much time lost because the train is not available when one would like to leave.

Whatever times there are on the ground for a plane are similar for a train. It's only when those ground-times dominate the trip and the trip meets a traveler schedule that it works; which is why the Northeast corridor Amtrak routes are the ones that make money.

According to Russiantrains …
"Since there's no express train from Moscow to Paris, you spend one and a half day onboard a well-equipped night train, taking you through half of Europe. You can choose one of the 3 travel classes, each offering different package inclusions, but all of them promise a comfortable bed with a table, air-conditioning, and lockable doors."
"comfortable" … yeah, right ! (consider the source !!) I don't see a bunch of people lining up for this train, for possibly $700 … but I couldn't get the booking site to work !? (SNAFU ?)

But we're imaging something different … possibly a bullet train like they have in Japan and China ?

But in the US, this from wiki …
"Plans for high-speed rail in the United States date back to the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965. Various state and federal proposals have followed. Despite being one of the world's first countries to get high-speed trains (the Metroliner service in 1969), it failed to spread. Definitions of what constitutes high-speed rail vary, including a range of speeds over 110 miles per hour (180 km/h) and dedicated rail lines. Inter-city rail in the United States with top speeds of 90 miles per hour (140 km/h) or more but below 125 mph (201 km/h) is sometimes referred to as higher-speed rail.[1]
Amtrak's Acela Express (reaching 150 mph (240 km/h)), Silver Star, Northeast Regional, Keystone Service, Vermonter and certain MARC Penn Line express trains (all five reaching 125 mph (201 km/h)) are the only high-speed services in the country.
As of 2017, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is working on the California High Speed Rail project and construction is under way on sections traversing the Central Valley. Phase I is planned for completion in 2029, and Phase II is estimated to be completed before 2040."

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

And so rb1957? If planes keep going on poluting 2,5% of world greenhouse effect they have to look for another combustible. FOR the moment, jet fuel could be reduced to intercontinental flights, continental travel will be with great advantages done by hight velocity less pollutant trains. Otherwise this will be a never ending story.

luis

should "We", the whole collective/society, look to reduce a 2.5% contribution, or would attacking a, say, 40% contribution be more effective ?

"All" I think we are saying is that trains (conventionally powered) are not a very superior transportation over airplanes as regard to pollution when you have low volumes of passengers and long distances. Trains are very effective at moving long volumes/weights of freight over long distances.

Of course, part of this is what we are used to, our normal. maybe we have to adjust to a new normal in the future, when people/governments take our choices away.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

Ten carriages plus 50 passengers each, means 500, which is not an average plane lotation. what do you meant by conventionally powered, trains?

luis

conventional powered trains = diesel trains like we're running today. even the high speed trains.

You proposed electrically powered trains, electricity from renewables. Possibly in Europe, possibly China, unlikely in the US.
Europe has an advantage in a high concentration of people, with an extensive rail network (and a more socially conscious society), although not much of the rail network is suitable for high speed trains (particularly very high speed).
China has an advantage in a more authoritarian government and a vast population.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX32XzKXd6M

luis

yep, conventional diesel, no? In Europe trains and airplanes compete, not so much in the US. This example looks to be conventional hi-speed train (125mpg = 200kph). I think their "1.5hr" trip is the "on train" time, like saying it's a 0.75hr (0.5hr ?) flight.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

3 or 4 day work week, or reasonable amount of vacation. makes long distance rail a lot more attractive to US people. The netherlands are there at an average 29 hour work week. Right now a lot of the travel I'd like to do by train, Buffalo NY to NYC/New Jersey area for track meets or the beach is about $300 for 4 people, and not affordable compared to say, $150 for gas and tolls.

There's also a 2 week enforced quarantine if you're coming into NY from 'YOU CAN'T MAKE ME WEAR A MASK' states.

And according to my drs. Fusion has been achieved in my spine and my foot for some time already.

Fusion is easy; but does your fusion have net positive energy production without something blowing up, that's the question.

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Enjoy with the top 15 fastest world High Speed Trains 2020

luis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGdhI2gTVdM

The MAGLEV TRAINS

LUIS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIwbrZ4knpg

yes, sure … but at what cost (to create a magnetic levitation track) ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

how doest it costs an A380?

luis

much less than a maglev track !

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

An A380 costs about 446 M dollars

You can compare it with the costly MAGLEV infrastructure costs in the site below

https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/maglev-bullet-train

luis

yep, one track, 200 miles long, is expected (estimates always go up) $55 billion.

Chinese maglev track costs $40million per km.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

How about meeting half-way: https://imgur.com/gallery/a8T34jr

Above a certain speed, trains don't make much sense, since their fuel efficient will go to pot.

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Above a certain speed, trains don't make much sense, because of fuel efficiency. IRstuff We are speaking about electric trains aren´t we?

luis

"Advantages of Maglevs

The foremost advantage of maglev trains is the fact that it doesn’t have moving parts as conventional trains do, and therefore, the wear and tear of parts is minimal, and that reduces the maintenance cost by a significant extent.

More importantly, there is no physical contact between the train and track, so there is no rolling resistance. While electromagnetic drag and air friction do exist, that doesn’t hinder their ability to clock a speed in excess of 200 mph.

Absence of wheels also comes as a boon, as you don’t have to deal with deafening noise that is likely to come with them.

Maglevs also boast of being environment friendly, as they don’t resort to internal combustion engines.

These trains are weather proof, which means rain, snow, or severe cold don’t really hamper their performance.

Experts are of the opinion that these trains are a lot safe than their conventional counterparts as they are equipped with state-of-the-art safety systems, which can keep things in control even when the train is cruising at a high speed.

Disadvantages of Maglevs

While the advantages of Maglev Train System may seem quite promising in themselves, they are not enough to overshadow the biggest problem with the maglev trains: the high cost incurred on the initial setup. While the fast conventional trains that have been introduced of late, work fine on tracks which were meant for slow trains, maglev trains require an all new set up right from the scratch. As the present railway infrastructure is of no use for maglevs, it will either have to be replaced with the Maglev System or an entirely new set up will have to be created―both of which will cost a decent amount in terms of initial investment. Even though inexpensive as compared to EDS, it is still expensive compared to other modes.

If the advantages and disadvantages of these trains are pitted against each other, it can be a bit difficult to come to a concrete conclusion. While the high cost of initial set up is something that a developed nation like the United States won’t have to worry about, the fact that the entire infrastructure has to be replaced with a new one will be something that will have the experts in a catch-22 situation. But obviously, we will have to do away with their disadvantages if we are to invest in maglev trains. If the commercial success of the Shanghai maglev train is to be taken into consideration, these trains can be surely considered the transport system of the future."

There are some experts who report that because of the decarbonization of the planet the trips of airplane flights up to 600Km will be banned. This reinforces the increment of high velocity electric trains up to 1000 or 1500Km distances.

luis

there are some experts who report the world is flat … but anything can happen and trying to guess what will be flavour of the month a month from now is IMHO fruitless.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

rb1957 do not deny at first, a science that you do not know, ostriches hide their heads in the sand, this is dangerous for their survival, be careful.

luis

I might want to see some empirical data to support any of the claims related to availability and costs of any of the technologies discussed here, before I believe that any of this is more than conjecture, fantasy, or maybe just cognitive dissonance. I keep seeing "There are some experts..." I'm pretty sure "There are some OTHER experts..."

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

I heard in Portugal a very credible guy say that flights up to 600 to 1000Km will be banned in the short time due to the need for descarbonization. As in EUROPE and other continents the most of the travels are of 600 to 1000km dimention, if this flights were banned they represents lots of carbon emission reduction. In that case electric high velocity trains start being atractive because they pollut much less and 1 or 1,5 hours in time waste makes no sense compared with a flight burocracy turning a travel diference time between a high velocity train and a plane almost the same.

luis

I heard Tupac and Elvis are alive.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

Bullet train is profitable in Japan and probably China, because they aren't obsessed with driving, as in the case of the US. The US has never been that enamored with trains, after the development of the automobile. People on the east coast might be more amenable to train travel, particularly those who normally ride the subway to/from work.

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Politicians in Europe might be dumb enough to ban such flights, but no chance it happens in US.

a little off-topic.... Anyone watch Sci-Fi Show 'SnowPiercer'?

UGHHHH the engineering Impossibilities/improbabilities portrayed were so mind-boggling I had-to step-away from the TV in disgust... I couldn't suspend my beliefs for the show's premise.

A 1000 car train speeding indefinitely around a snowy [semi croyogenic temperatures] mountain-side track. Hmmmmm

For starters assume each train car is 80-feet [24.384-M] [avg] long connection-to-connection... The train is only 80,000-feet [15.15 Miles] [24.384-km] long.

Then the mechanics of rolling stock on rails at -100F [-74C], for years... using a power-source of...?

It ain't gonna happen.



Regards, Wil Taylor
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o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]

Look for the YouTube reviews of SnowPiercer as a sequel to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. At first it seems that the jump is impossible, but then the details come one after the other and, as ridiculous as the mechanics of the movie are, the themes line up in a horrific way.

In the movie version there are spaces to work in too small for adults. Who would design such a thing? One would if one depended on Oompa-Loompa labor, but then they died from the cold, so children were forced to labor.

Anyway, those reviews put the story into a better perspective of purely speculative fiction rather than science fiction.

(fixed movie titles)

The train is just a prop to set up a story that's about power and class struggles.

Jennifer Connelly is as awesome as ever

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If you search for maglev trains, you find a lot of 'technology demonstrators' licensed to carry passenger short distances that have since closed.

1979 Hamburg Germany
1979 Moscow USSR
1984-85 Birmingham UK
1984-2012 Emsland Germany (1984-2006 for passengers. Strictly a test train after 26 passengers killed in 2006)
1986-88 Vancouver Canada
1986-88 Hamburg
1989-92 Berlin

These are the maglev trains operational today. Only two have significant track length.
1993 Daejeon Expo Maglev, South-Korea - Length 1 km (0.62 mi)
2004 Shanghai Maglev, China - 30.5 km (19 mi)
2005 Linimo Maglev, Japan - 8.9 km (5.5 mi
2016 Incheon Airport Maglev, South-Korea - 6.1 km (3.8 mi)
2016 Changsha Maglev Express, China - 18.55 km (11.53 mi)
2017 Beijing S1 Metro Line, China - 8.25 km (5.13 mi)

More magleve trains have been shut-down than are still operating. Maglev trains carrying passengers began 41 years ago.

Let's compare 41 years of development with the airplane. The Wright brothers first flew in 1903, and 41 years later in 1944 the use of aircraft had dominated the world for passenger, commercial, and military uses.

Lets compare 41 years of development with the steam locomotive. The first working railway steam locomotive was built in the UK in 1804 by Richard Trevithick. 41 years later in 1845 most major countries had train networks.

Using historical comparisons, maglev technology has failed to be anything more than a expensive side-show.

"The Concorde was famously loud: a take-off at Washington airport in 1977 measured 119.4 decibels.

By comparison, a clap of thunder hits 120 decibels while the pain threshold for the human ear is around 110.

When the jet broke through the sound barrier, it created a "sonic boom", a huge crashing noise which led many countries to banish it from flying over their territory.

Fuel guzzler

Another black mark was the Concorde's high fuel consumption. Its four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines together guzzled on average 20 tonnes of kerosene per hour of flight and 450 litres (nearly 120 gallons) per minute at take-off.

The fuel consumption per passenger was 14-17 litres for every 100 kilometres travelled—four times more than for an aircraft today."

luis

Fuel consumption is not surprising; air resistance increases as the square of the velocity.

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how's supersonic flight relevant to this discussion ? commercial transports are sub-sonic.

mind you there's a lot of interest in supersonic business jets, which IMHO is a waste of carbon/energy.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

SpaceX launch technologie can be adapted for long distance earth passengers transportation within fifteen years?


luis

it "could", but I doubt it … mind you I would've doubted landing a rocket but they do that, so what do I know ?

Whilst it may be reliable, it is still awfully prone to single source failures with catastrophic consequences … not something you want in a commercial transport.

I don't know the accelerations during launch, but not something I see 60 year old, or highly unfit/obese, people putting up with. Also deceleration on landing. Mind you they could probably redesign the trajectory to accommodate, possibly a 3g limit … even that is quite a lot … a sustained 2g turn is quite something !
Then the effects of sub-orbital reduced g (zero g ?) in the cabin would be "interesting", but for less than 1/2 hour ?

Then you've got the infrastructure to build, fuel depots etc.

Again, would these trips use less fuel than current (or future) airliners ?

It'd also "only" replace intercontinental flights, those long enough to justify a suborbital launch

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

If you're not trying to get into orbit, the acceleration can be much less. Nevertheless, the amount of fuel burned for brute-force lift an vehicle straight up is gigantic; a typical ICBM lifts a payload that's less than 1000 lb, so 5-ish passengers. 4 Minuteman II ICBMs are about as long as an SST, so carrying 20-ish passengers, compared to the SST stated capacity of 128 passengers.

The faster and higher you go, the more fuel you burn per mile traveled.

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sure … time saved = more energy expended

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

If it were linear, that might not be so bad, but it's way worse, something like 12 mi/pass/gal for SST vs. 107 mi/pass/gal for a conventional plane. Since drag goes as the square of velocity, that's a big chunk of it.

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the transition to supersonic flight kills the v^2 relationship

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

It breaks the constant drag coefficient, which increases dramatically, and then slowly drops down to something that's still larger than the subsonic coefficient. Nevertheless, the drag coefficient is still multiplied by velocity squared to get the drag force.

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yes I know drag is proportional to v^2, except that the constant of proportionality takes over as you go trans-sonic.

if you double speed from 200 kts to 400 kts (still subsonic) you'd expect drag would increase by a factor of 4 (assuming spherical chickens in a vacuum).
if you double from 400 kts to 800kts drag will increase significantly more than 4 time (assuming cubic chickens in an inviscid liquid).
the () expressions mean a host of simplifying assumptions not grounded in reality.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

Sure. I agree with that; either way, the Concorde's fuel efficiency is a factor of 2 poorer than a straight v^2 relationship would give us, but that was a given, because the drag coefficient would have been different anyway.

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"Passenger planes could be flown without a pilot in the next decade, according to a new study.

The research was conducted by investment bank UBS, which found that new technology is being developed that would make remotely flying an aircraft feasible in the near future."

Aibus has allready made some experiments on this subject from airport of Touluse.

luis

Yep, bankers are airplane design and cert experts. Right. Another fantasy.

Drone planes and cars are not a fantasy.

you are quite correct "passenger planes Could be flown without pilots in the next decade" … "could" being the operative word.

the likelihood is, IMAO, vanishingly small.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

probably we are not there to see.

luis

There is already a mechanisme called automatic pilote is it usefulness?

luis

yes there is an automatic pilot … set by the guys flying the plane. It isn't "robotic" in the sense that it could fly the plane. It has different modes, like auto-land, set by the guys flying the plane.

sure, you could set it up to remote piloting, as in the military drones and UAVs … but I don't see this being used for passenger transports any time soon.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

The bigger the risk, the higher the likelihood of requiring a human at least monitoring the controls.

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yes, even though "pilot error" is probably the leading cause of accidents, we still rather have two (error prone) self-interested people (highly motivated to continue living) in the pointy end of the plane so that when things go bad …

and yes this is not rational … pilots probably cause more accidents than they recover from … but people are not entirely rational.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

A plane, because of gravity force, never stays up there, but some of the times it lands slowly with the automatic pilot, that the passengers don´t even feel the danger of a forced landing.

luis

If it was a pilot great one!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KlPPHXdkcI

you do realise that's not real ? (but computer simulation)

there are plenty of real scary landings without looking at sims.

What I say is, this landing was done by a real, pilot or by automathic pilot?. By sims you mean simulators?

luis

the clip you link to is from a flight simulator … it is not real.

There are plenty of real "hard" landings on YT.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

How can you watch that and not know it's not real. Pan Am went out of business 30 years ago.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

Population density of Europe is ~3.5X (people per sq km) than the US. High cost infrastructure investment is directly dependent on potential users of that system to recoup the investment cost. Any project in the US for rail travel already starts at a huge disadvantage from the population density alone (excluding large, close-by cities, most of which already have some form of rail existing or planned). The most you will ever see is major city-to-major city railway (i.e. Washington DC to NYC) over short distances.

To eliminate intro-continental plane travel would require an extensive train network (in order to avoid replacing planes with car travel, which is less efficient). That just isn't going to happen in the US naturally.

The only way to implement that would be through an enormous taxation effort (ala the Green New Deal), which would be...unpopular...to say the least.

do you mean that the US (ie NA) is different to Europe ? No, say it ain't so ...

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

17000 aircraft, constitute the world aviation park. During the peak of the pandemic, 64% of this total has parked and a portion of it will never fly again. 600 commercial aircraft are shot down every year in the U.S. 115 seats is the largest aircraft parking in Europe, located in Teruel Spain, which registers full capacity and is providing expansion. 55% less passengers flying is the post-pandemic estimate. With less demand many planes currently stationed will not return to make trips. The deserts of Arizona and California in the USA and Teruel in Spain bring together most of the planes stationed on land. 95% of the components of an airplane are used by maintenance companies to be used in appliances still in use. (The morning post)

luis

"600 commercial aircraft are shot down every year in the U.S." … what ?? where does this statistic come from ? (not who's reporting it, which I guess is "The Morning Post", but where did they get it … from the FAA ?)

yes, aviation has taken a downturn with the pandemic … what's the point ? Are you suggesting that other forms of travel will take over ? … Haven't you noticed you could write the same piece for cruise ships ? … All travel is down, very little recreational travel is happening (as is shouldn't, in this pandemic).

I expect aviation will return. I think it may take some time for the low costs to return, but there's obviously some market force pushing for volume.

I notice that several airlines are still ordering planes, sure many are deferring or cancelling orders ('cause they have no/little income to provide the funds).

There is a global contraction in aviation. I note that China seems close to opening up it's domestic networks, and I think this puts Chinese airlines in an interesting position when things open up.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327011/H...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavirus-airplanes-s...


luis

The OP either cannot type or doesn't know that "shot down" = anti-aircraft guns or anti-aircraft missiles destroying aircraft mid-flight.

Also doesn't know that close-quarters transport of all kinds is not used during a pandemic, especially passenger trains, where periods of contact are even longer.

I mentioned before seeing a 2 hour plane trip would have taken 36 hours and cost more by train; the plane flight I had several departures per day to choose from; the train was several per week. US passenger rail competes too much with heavy freight and routes are too inflexible in comparison to flying.

I have nothing against planes and aerospace guys! Instead of shot down , I would say shutdown, excuse me my friend! Don´t get offended!

luis

this whole thread is the difference between Europe and NA.

Europe has a well developed train network which competes well with aviation (in normal times).
NA doesn't and has much greater distances to travel.

Europe has limited high speed trains, which has helped trains compete with planes. But I don't believe we'll see aviation replaced with ultra high speed trains "in the near future". The investment is staggering.

The pandemic doesn't change this. The pandemic has shutdown most inter-continental (and much intra-continental) travel .. plane and train.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

Not offended. Just amused. It's a funny idea, that trains, with 2 centuries of development that failed to dominate, will take over from a generally superior transportation method.

Bless your heart.

you are welcome 3DDave

luis

Right on time the future is whatever you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AtE54HpXBM

I prefer to get my fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

Several decades ago me and a buddy were with our girl friends in a Chinese restaurant, maybe in New York city someplace.
My fortune cookie said, "you will marry the one you are sitting next to."
I married the girl, but never read another cookie fortune after that.