I like supersonic jets from the perspective of commercial air travel, but knowing that it uses considerably more fuel bothers me as someone who cares about the environment.
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
55 points (98.2% liked)
Civil Aviation
486 readers
28 users here now
News from civil commercial and noncommercial aviation, videos, discussions, and more.
Basic rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. No posts about military aviation
Avoid any and all posts related to military aviation.
3. No meme posts
No meme posts. Those should go to !aviationmemes@lemm.ee.
4. Instance rules apply
All lemmy.zip instance rules listed in the sidebar will be enforced.
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The faster you go in any transport, the more energy it uses. It's not just about the sound barrier. Kinetic energy follows the square of the velocity. Every doubling of the speed requires 4x the energy
Power necessary to counter air resistance also varies with velocity cubed, so... yeah.
Do I even want to know what that equation looks like
P ∝ v^3^
What if I made a vehicle that for every bit faster you wanted it to go, it would dump mass at a fixed speed? Like, if you needed to go 80mph, it would calculate how many seats you'd have to throw out the back per minute.
Do you mean dump mass or forcefully eject mass? The former would do nothing except make future acceleration easier, while the latter is the same principle behind a rocket.
I was implying ejection when I wrote "throw out" to make this exactly a poorly-described rocket, but I can see where my humor fell flat on its face.
When I learned as a child that rockets accelerate by ejecting mass, I used to chuckle at the idea of a rocket with a high-value payload, but not enough fuel to maneuver towards Earth, so it launches hardware like seats and beds, bleeds oxygen, and then boots the astronauts.