Workable,
I looked up the current English definition or "zeitgeist" to see if we could be approximately on the same page. The seeming abandonment of the " higher, farther, faster" of the aerospace world I grew up in is certainly a reality. Reduced to an absurdity, it would have us flying around in transports powered by (if some progress was still permitted) big (but clean!) Diesel engines. After all, much more efficient than the turbojets of the '50s, if a little slower.
Would you say though, more efficient, or anyway much more efficient, than the turbo
props of the 2010s? I think this is a relevant question because Workable Goblin asked us in the Original Post to put ourselves in the bodies of people making up the aeronautical establishment of the 1950s (a bit early to say "aero
space" though a lot of work was headed that way visibly, and I suppose one topic here would be whether "space" happens at all--I'd say, yes, surely, since ICBMs were in the works although on the back burner early in the decade) and imagine, if they all had premonitions that the linear apparent trajectory of "faster, higher, farther!" was going to plateau out instead of continuing until we had interplanetary passenger liners to Mars by 2000, and instead the industry was about to redirect.
Because of course although we do not have SST coast to coast travel across the USA, or even nowadays transAtlantic, on the other hand commercial air travel has gotten so relatively cheap that some very very large percentage of the world's population has been on at least one commercial flight, probably round trip so two, they have paid for out of pocket, even some very very poor people. Air travel today is relatively even cheaper than steerage passage on an ocean liner in 1928 would have been--much much cheaper in fact.
Indeed an aerodiesel based system might be even cheaper yet--perhaps. I have read studies on the adoption of jets, or maybe it was at that stage just turboprops, by the airlines, and how retiring their piston engine fleets and replacing them with some kind of turbine engine saved them lots of downtime for repairs and maintenance, thus significantly raising their revenue margins by flying passenger loads when the previous generation piston planes would have been in the hangars for maintenance--and this factor rivaled the multiplier effect of speed increases and the trend to pack in more passengers per tonne of takeoff weight available. (Something easier to get away with when the flight is faster of course). At the same time, passengers found turbine engine noise less nasty in turboprops, and jets a lot less nasty than any plane they had flown before).
So there is something to trade off in the question of turboprops versus diesel, even if the latter gets more revenue miles per tonne of fuel. (And jet fuel and diesel are much more similar to each other than av gas too). Presumably if the diesel engine is efficient enough, it can justify replacing a turboprop engine, if the price of fuel is high enough. But turboprops will come pretty close to diesel efficiencies, no?
And meanwhile while straight zero bypass ratio turbojets of the 50s, becoming reliable enough for the military to count on them probably not failing before the mission is completed, and being already a big advance in fuel efficiency over late 1940s jets, were jet fuel guzzlers, the progress we've had since in high bypass turbofan engines combined with building massive jumbo jets for high volume routes and quite efficient smaller jets for feeder routes have I believe so much lowered the passenger-mile fuel consumption that a practical diesel/prop or even some fancy ducted fan option would be very hard pressed to match it--in other words other efficiency considerations in the turbofan engines offset the basic higher Carnot efficiency of the diesel well enough that overall, they are competitive in terms of MPG, whereas the diesel designer would have to be very very clever to make it as easy to maintain and reliable as the turbine core engine--and as I said, downtime for maintenance counts against an otherwise attractive system. Not to mention in flight reliability--I'm sure an aeronautical man of your age remembers that the four engine compound piston Lockheed Constellation airliner of the mid-50s--surely the overall best of its day--was known to wags as the "best trimotor flying," in reference to unplanned but common engine breakdowns in mid flight. Clearly the Connies had the margin to power through with an engine out, because they had to--but an otherwise competitive Diesel that has one chance in ten of failing on a routine flight of normal length with perfectly meticulous maintenance schedules kept has got another drawback to factor in against an otherwise equivalent turbofan with only one chance in a hundred of the same sort of failure.
So while I suppose from what you say, that your honest answer if asked, what if one of your fellow mid-50s designers were brought forward to be shown the cutting edge of modern aeronautics he would not be impressed because of our lack of SSTs and shuttle flights to the Moon daily, still if he could sit down and examine his options for flights to world destinations and their prices--we give him the special right to buy tickets in deflated 1955 dollars that we courteously inflate to 2017 prices, and configure his Internet browser to display current ticket prices in 1955 dollars--would that not have impression on him
Let me try this. Suppose I wanted to go from New York City, JFK, to Paris, tomorrow. Note this is an expensive ticket since I am not buying it months in advance.
The second and third entries on my first Google search give me $2795 on the second but Orbitz on the third suggests it can go as low as $299! I think that is an absurd come-on but I am searching for a Sept 10 flight with return the next Monday, and American Airlines offers just a bit over $3000 for main cabin seating--biz class is over $11 K though.
Moving my AA search over to departure November 5 and returning the next week, round trip price drops to $698, Biz class is about 7500 and first class 19,200.
Now what is the inflation rate between 1955 and 2017?
The first inflation calculator gives me a percentage drop going from 2017 to 1955 of 89.1 percent, and a $700 airplane ticket would be $76.64 in 1955 dollars if that is true. By these figures, using 1955 he could have a first class ticket to Paris in November for $2101.86, or fly cheap as AA offers tomorrow for $328.78.
If I can believe Orbitz, a round trip ticket can be had for the same days (actually it figured the other way, Paris to NYC) for as low as $340 (on WOW airlines, one stop in Keflavik, Iceland, for an 11 hour flight) or in 1955 dollars--$37.22.
Looking at short flights instead of cheapest, Norwegian Air Shuttle offers nonstop flight in 8 hours, 25 minutes direct and costs $555--or for your downtime friend from 1955, a special price of $60.76!
Now I honestly don't know if these prices compare well to the price of a Connie on the same route in 1955, though I would bet that the flight time would be longer than 9 hours, and probably longer than 11, and surely would stop at Gander and maybe also at Keflavik. To be fair these are tourist cheap seats and surely even a standard ticket payer in 1955 would probably have a lot of little services and perks from the stewardesses and the layout compensating for both the droning engine noise and the longer flight time...
So I went and searched on the off chance of finding information on flight in 1955, and lo, came up with two articles:
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/air-travel-today-is-a-damn-bargain-951705216
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3022215/what-it-was-really-like-to-fly-during-the-golden-age-of-travel
The former has way more data, mostly about American domestic flights but does include NY-Paris, the latter addresses the luxury factor as sort of a wash--more legroom, more style, more smiling stewardess service, a lot less safety (in the sense of tripping during turbulence entering the bathroom and impaling yourself on fixtures, or glass class dividers shattering) and zippo in flight entertainment except gazing at the stewardesses if the cloudscapes bore you. (I'm a window seat flyer myself, love looking out at those clouds or the moon distorted around the curve of the Earth--but a lower altitude Connie might not show me that memorable vision I had on my first transAtlantic flight on a 747).
The first article though has prices and flight times, and some of them are translated to 2013 prices. New York-Paris one way--14 hours, $300 (1955) which inflated to 2017 would be $2740.14. Recall that the $3003 for main body seating departing tomorrow on AA includes the price of coming back again the next week! And that in theory an order of magnitude price reduction can be had with several months planning ahead--indeed just to save time and not risk getting into trouble pretending to buy tickets at serious sites, I did not try to find the cut off point for when prices jump for late booking, so one might be able to get bargains with far less notice. I also don't know whether the article cited TWA prices were for same day booking or required some sort of advance notice, or if passengers could get any discount for advance booking. My guess is that they are for over the counter no notice booking and thus comparable to the $3000 today price, and thus no-notice flights today are only half the cost of 1955. But with advance notice that becomes more like a factor of 16 or so! I suppose some bargains could be had for advance booking then, but on the order of 20 percent off or something like that, not a factor of 8!
Let's look at Las Vegas to Los Angeles, which would take only 1 hour on TWA in 1955--with airport security these days the real time from parking at the LA airport (probably not LAX for this today but one never knows) to getting into a taxi or casino bus in Vegas is probably much longer than 1 hour though the flight itself might be just 40 minutes or so. In 1955 it would cost $13.70, or $125.13 in 2017, remember to double that to get round trip to $250.
For a flight booked today, Jet Blue offers a bunch of flights out of Long Beach for $277.18. It seems we have regressed then for same day purchase, but with an extra day's notice it drops to $260, then to $189 with a week's notice and a month out, $76.42. Going another month actually raises prices but it occurs to me I might be nearing Thanksgiving rates on the days I chose! The cheapest fares on this short flight are clearly a quarter those in 1955 in real terms.
Finally looking at a one month out fare on Boston to LA versus $106 for a 12 hour flight in 1955, we have $290 for a 5 hour 31 minute flight nonstop on United--that's round trip, $31.5 for 5.5 hours or less than half the time, an overall factor of 6 savings in money and at least 7 more hours not in the airport or on a plane for two flights, despite deducting 6 hours for 3 hours hassle at the airport on each flight.
Now say again, are you sure your time traveling colleague would remain unimpressed?
...That there has been a massive philosophical shift* is borne out in the realization that there have been no moonflights in what, forty five years and that transcontinental jet service is about 100 miles per hour slower now, than it was in 1961 (I fully understand the fuel efficiency of our present turbofans)....
Yes, if your friend could first skip ahead just six years, and then be told he's about to time jump forward another 56, I can see his disappointment! Not only would that 5.5 hour flight from LA to Boston be reduced by 45-50 minutes over modern flights, but his trip from the airport curbside to his seat on the new 707 jet (or is this one of those business failure Convairs, to justify the !00 mph reduction claim?) would be far easier--go to the check in station, then proceed to wait to board, no security to speak of by modern standards. He could overall save 2, maybe 3 hours, 4 hours from counter to departing Boston airport. At God knows what price of course because the jets are brand new and presumably charging premium prices, plus inflation has swept forward 6 years. Meanwhile he can read up in Aviation Week a lot of exciting other things, this late in 1961 Kennedy has I believe made his Moon speech already.
So getting to 2017, yes he is going to be in for some disappointing shocks.
Let me ask you though, as one human flight space enthusiast to another, since we are talking about philosophy, what exactly is your rational justification to a skeptical Congressional budget hawk whose district happens not to currently benefit from any NASA, DoD spaceflight, or contractor business, to explain why we should still be going to the moon? Why should the US taxpayer fund another Moon mission?
I repeat I'm greatly in favor of having them do it myself. And the argument that such a program is hideously expensive does not seem very strong in view of the tremendous expenses the US government is willing to fund; it would add a cent or so to the average taxpayer's liability to enable a robust program of Lunar exploration.
So--whether you'd want to persuade a private billionaire, a profit-making firm, a military service, a civilian governmental space program, or lobby 300 million individual US taxpayers personally for one penny each--hmm, the average, which is to say norm or median, taxpayer might only pay one cent, but clearly the top bracket ones must pay more because that is only $ 3 million! I think we need orders of magnitude more money, so really you lobby them for more like $10 each--for 6 or 8 years in advance!
OK anyway, whatever the hard numbers are you are pitching for a Moon mission--what exactly do you say to each person you approach about why they should pay something for some moon missions?
As for me, I am one of those hippie brats you blame for our failures, I suppose, though I did try for some serious training in hard subjects requiring math, and later settled for a History BA. But I was tackling complex number integration for a while there, also intro QM and thermodynamics and stuff like that. Never got to taking General Relativity mechanics from Kip Thorne though, though I did lay eyes and speak briefly to him in person in my dorm. But despite having some reservations about the wisdom of hundreds of daily transcontinental flights over CONUS each trailing a sonic boom ten or fifty times more intense than that of an SR-71, which I have heard, or F-106 which I heard a lot as a kid, I most certainly do wish we had a more active space program across the board, with lots of longer term follow up on the Moon, a permanent space station much bigger than ISS, presumably with a spinning habitat ring, and much cheaper launch to orbit prices.
So what is my pitch? Basically I just think people should explore space because it is there and we can do it, and we simply do not know what of value we will find. We won't know until we look! The honest truth is, I was born in 1965, lived on or near Air Force interceptor bases my whole childhood, came to take expensive high tech for granted, used to get up before the sun rose when I was in first grade to watch astronauts on the Moon on TV, and just plain feel entitled to a world in which space exploration and expansion of human presence in space is happening. It just seems like what people should be doing--and I think that space subjects interest a whole lot of the US public, enough that if some politician were to run on a platform including more space exploration as a major priority, people would vote for them pretty strongly.
So, I guess those are pretty hippyish and self indulgent reasons.
But you have hard headed ones. Which are?
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I honestly think that you are in a very good position to be of greatest help in this discussion Workable Goblin started, and we should listen with much respect to experiences you may wish to share with us.
Anyway, if you want to attack hippies and environmentalists for the failings of American technology you'd do better to aim at me than Workable Goblin. Standing next to me, you could see Workable Goblin is not one of those kinds of hippies. He has in fact pursued serious degrees in astronautics, and earned them too, and IIRC is working in the field, so you and he have much in common. All I've done is a couple summer internships at JPL, and that was long ago, another life ago. But I too share the dream if not the follow through.
Is it your position that in fact all the stuff Workable Goblin opened with as aspirational assumptions that we have given up on realizing is all stuff that we could have accomplished with some steadiness at the job, and that would all benefit us enough to justify the costs? That there was an inversion, it should not have happened, and happened not long after 1955 and left us worse off in every way?
I hope to encourage you and Workable Goblin to have productive conversations with each other because he's done some serious work both in real life and here on the site to support and develop a hard-headed but hopeful approach to space flight!
Respectfully yours, and very very curious about your work in low temperature equilibrium reentry,
Shevek23 the space hippie