In July, Lockheed Martin completed the build of NASA’s X-59 test aircraft, which is designed to turn sonic booms into mere thumps, in the hope of making overland supersonic flight a possibility. Ground tests and a first test flight are planned for later in the year. NASA aims to have enough data to hand over to US regulators in 2027.
We need bullet trains, not more passenger jets.
Actually just regular passenger trains that have priority over freight trains would be a great step forward
In North America.
For the EU the biggest issue is all of the national operators being insane in different ways that makes it harder and more expensive than it should be to cross borders by rail a lot of the time.
You don’t want that unless you want the cost of virtually everything to increase.
Don’t fuck with the infrastructure that keeps every corner of a country running on a day to day basis.
The freight railroads aren’t good at what they do. It would be much easier to run passenger services (and improve their own operations) if they ran trains that actually fit within their own passing loops, but they desperately want to reduce the number of people they have to pay to run their trains. Both would also benefit from better maintained infrastructure with upgrades such as electrification and more double tracking, but the railroads don’t want to spend any more money than absolutely necessary to keep their (mostly) running.
Sounds like you’ve never participated in civil disobedience. Shame.
The railroads should be nationalized and new ones built over highways.
Ok, come back when you aren’t living in a fantasy land.
It’s amazing how out of touch with reality so many people on this platform are. It honestly feels like there are a lot more kids on Lemmy than there were on Reddit. They’re smart kids, but kids lack real world experience, and it shows.
I wonder if research into sonic boom physics could translate over to high speed aerodynamics generally, to include the useful models for high speed trains.
Lack of high speed rail isn’t caused by lack of knowledge about how to do it. High speed rail exists in some places, just not the US.
Because the USA is 2892 miles wide. Even a 285 mph bullet train, which is the fastest train in the world, would take 10 hours to cross the United States, and that’s at absolute max speed, with no stops, which isn’t how trains operate. Realistically it would take a few days to cross the United States, as opposed to 5 hours in an airplane, or a couple of hours in a hypersonic jet. Trains are great, especially for more relaxed travel, or moving lots of goods, but they’re not a final solution for countries this size.
Interesting thought; I’d hope so. Maybe some material physics/chemistry research that makes some stuff cheaper for trains (I’m not an engineer so totally out of my depth here).
Efficient High-speed rails are already possible and have been since the 70s, it’s not a lack of science that stops them from being a thing, it’s a lack of desire from government officials being paid by private interests to do things less efficiently because people are getting paid.
Well you still need to figure out the sonic boom too, ffs you anti science people are fucking morons.
Price per km of track goes up exponentialy the faster you want to go, which means they will either have expensive tickets or will be unprofitable.
The rail network should be a service not a for profit organisation
Still, someone has to finance it. In the worst case you have a high speed rail network with high operationg costs that nobody uses, but taxpayers still need to maintain.
I swear if firefighting wasn’t currently publicly funded, you’d argue against making it publicly funded because it might not be profitable
If it’s there (and not terrible), people will use it. Will it break even on the costs? Maybe. Maybe not. Still worth it, however.
Just move some defence budget into the rail network.
Spain and china managed just fine. Rail costs way less than 20 lane highways.