Complex Numbers

Mach It So

There are complex questions with simple answers. I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure they exist. At the very least, the answer is "a large quantity of plastic explosive." But today's article, from Thrillist, is a simple question with a complex answer.

    How Fast Can Airplanes Go, Exactly?  
An aviation expert breaks down how fast the answer beyond "really, really fast."

Science and human ingenuity have given an innumerable number of gifts to society: indoor plumbing, medicine, electricity.

And most importantly, beer.

Sure, it's also given us drone warfare, AI, and those weird Amazon Go stores—but let's focus on the positive.

Those are positive. They generate positive cash flow for a small number of individuals, which is positive for them.

One of the most exciting advancements of the modern era is the commercial airplane, which has made traveling around our massive planet in less that 180 days a true possibility.

And you'll experience maximum discomfort while doing so.

Also, editing is dead. Not only did they use "that" instead of "than," but the famous Verne novel was 80 days, not 180. Now, ISS astronauts circle the globe (for it is, indeed, a globe) twice in a bit over 180 minutes.

Now that I've called that out, I'll probably commit a massive blunder in this entry, if I haven't already.

The first flyers traveled at max speeds of 31 miles per hour, back in 1903. Now, 104 years later, planes have gotten a little faster. But just how fast? It turns out the answer isn’t so simple—it's a lot more complicated than getting a basic miles per hour answer.

Even more complicated are the various units used to describe speed. Miles per hour, sure, but there's also km/s, knots, millimeters per day, etc.

Thrillist spoke with Luciano Stanzione, who leads AviationExperts.org, an aviation consulting agency, to better understand how fast the modern commercial airplane is capable of flying.

I'm of the considered opinion that everything on the internet now is either paywalled, or an ad. I didn't hit a paywall here, so I wonder what the ad is for. Certainly not an "aviation consulting agency," right? Possibly Thrillist itself, based on the blurb at the bottom of the page.

“The airspeed is measured in KIAS (indicated air speed in knots) and in Mach speed (reference value to the speed of sound, used in higher altitudes)," Stanzione tells Thrillist.

Oh, yeah, the Mach number, too. I imagine it'd be fractional for subsonic flights, but I don't recall any instance where it's like "this airplane has a top speed of Mach 0.8." At least, not until I read this article. But all these different units make for opaque comparisons, like if your car's efficiency is in miles per gallon and you're looking to compare it with one whose efficiency is listed in kilometers per liter. Or whatever.

Speaking of complicated, the speed of sound changes with air density, which as I understand it is generally correlated with altitude.

The speed that airplanes can reach in the air can’t be as easily determined by the same metrics in which we measure the speed of objects on the ground. So bear with Stanzione for this scientific breakdown for a second.

There follows said "scientific breakdown," which I think is easy enough to follow, but I won't quote it here. Essentially, there's airspeed and groundspeed (no mention of whether the plane's carrying coconuts, though).

How fast will airliners be able to go in the future?

"That is impossible to determine but manufacturers are working again on high-speed jets, above sonic speeds," Stanzione says. "For a few decades now, improvements on speed have not been major. Let's see if new supersonic developments change that."

All the science fiction I've read indicates that it won't matter, because we'll have suborbital ballistic flights, or teleportation. Given the constraints of physics and capitalism, I don't see either of those things happening anytime soon, if at all.

Whatever the actual future of air travel is, though, at whatever speeds, you can bet they'll continue to find ways to make the process more degrading, uncomfortable, humiliating, and dehumanizing.