Flights from New York to Beijing in just 2 hours! (This offer is currently limited to billionaires)

[LuckyTheDog]

Members of the 0.1 percent have long used their vast wealth to obtain yachts, armies of servants and even laws of their choosing. But the ability to bend space and time to their will has proven elusive.

Until now.

In the not-so-distant future, the global elite will be able to zip between practically any major city — London to Sydney, New York to Beijing — in a mere two hours or less.

While common travelers bump knees in economy class, chugging along at a sluggish 500 miles per hour, the extremely wealthy will travel at eight times that speed. They will blast up through the thermosphere — an atmospheric layer where gravity is far weaker — and then plummet smoothly toward their far-flung destinations.

MORE HERE: http://wonkynewsnerd.com/coming-soon-flights-new-york-beijing-just-2-hours/

[Skidmore]

1. Well. to be fair, sometimes you need to go visit your money

quickly.

[hobbit709]

2. "Gravity is far weaker"? Who wrote this crap?

[LuckyTheDog]

3. Gravity IS weaker in the thermosphere ...

... than at lower altitudes.

[hobbit709]

4. Weaker yes, far weaker NO!

[LuckyTheDog]

5. Whatever the difference...

... it's great enough that the International Space Station maintains a stable orbit in that layer and does not crash to Earth.

[hobbit709]

6. You obviously do not understand what a free fall orbit is.

[LuckyTheDog]

7. Why are you so stuck on this?

You are missing the point of the article because you are focused on just a couple words.

[hobbit709]

8. Look in the mirror.

I object to a poorly written article based on a lack of scientific understanding-evidently both on the part of the writer of the article and you.

[LuckyTheDog]

9. No reason to be insulting

Sheesh.

I'm not wasting any more time debating the difference between "weaker" and "far weaker." I also don't feel like taking any more abuse. You could have seen this as a chance to explain a few scientific concepts. Instead, you saw a chance to be pompous and abusive and went that route instead.

[zipplewrath]

11. Speed is everything

The ISS maintains an orbit because it maintains an orbital velocity. The whole "gravity is weaker" is really just wrong. It has nothing to do with why this form of travel gets there faster. These are merely suborbital trajectories. They fly up there because drag is much lower and aerodynamic heating is limited (until it becomes time to re-enter the lower atmosphere).

I've heard of these plans before. The best question I've heard asked is how long people are going to be willing to wait for their luggage. The plane is going to be quite hot. And it will be for a while. It took the better part of an hour to get astronauts off the shuttle.

[KamaAina]

10. Robert A. Heinlein predicted this

he called them "semi-ballistics". He also predicted the waterbed, and noisy cable "news", in Stranger in a Strange Land.