The future for long-haul travel sure is exciting. Have you heard of ET3’s plans for an Evacuated Tube Transport? It’s a high-speed tube system that uses magnetic levitation, which will allow passengers to travel at speeds up to 4,000 miles per hour. The founder and CEO of ET3 says it will have you in LA from New York in only one hour and in Beijing from New York in just 2. Read all about the tube travel future here.
Let’s go a step further…can you imagine reaching any location on the planet in less than an hour? It may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but according to space.com, the U.S. military hopes to have a hypersonic rocket jet with such capabilities in as little as four years. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) confirmed that they are working on the X-plane, a rocket plane that will be capable of flying at Mach 20 (20 times the speed of sound) or 13,000 mph!
For comparison sake, the Concorde was capable of flying at Mach 2.04 or 1,354 mph and had a range of about 4,500 miles. The average flight time between London and New York was just 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Writing this entry got me thinking about redeeming miles on the Concorde. Unfortunately, I had just gotten into the miles game as the Concorde was being retired from active service, but wow that would have been the ultimate redemption. Did you know you were able to redeem AA, Delta, Continental, US, and SPG miles and points amongst others for a trip? Considering these were considered first class seats, the rates weren’t that bad…especially with the SPG Qantas trick –
125,000 AAdvantage Miles
100,000 SPG Points
200,000 OnePass Miles
160,000 SkyMiles
125,000 US Airways Miles
200,000 Membership Rewards Points
Westbound
BA173 LHR 0930 JFK 0829. Daily but not operated in August
AF001 CDG 1100 JFK 0845. Daily
BA171 LHR 1115 JFK 1014. Daily
Eastbound
BA172 JFK 1015 LHR 1900. Daily but not operated in August.
BA170 JFK 1215 LHR 2100. Daily
AF002 JFK 1300 CDG 2245. Daily
Finally, maybe your ready to take the slower but more scenic route? Check out this post on the plans for a train from London to Beijing in just 2 days.
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6 comments
Still waiting for my flying skateboard from back to the future. Definitely don’t believe the 4 years estimate!
I don’t get it… How can you do a 1 hr from LA to NY versus 2 hour from NY to London 3 hours…. It London to NY takes more time than LA to NY… I’ve fly before, kinda odd if do the math.
I however is skeptical about the price it will cost, and safety. However, the train is interesting though 🙂
Haha, I’ll believe it when I see it.
My wife and I redeemed on AF Concorde. What a memorable trip. BA and AF jointly announced the end of service the day we returned home to NY.
Forget about showers in the air…flying is all about speed. Plenty of time to take a shower when you arrive 4 hours earlier than an A380! 😉
Not a new idea, as its been around for a while. It would be cool to have it built and functioning, though. Seems like it would be a good investment, too, for our government to build a few tubes, rather than squandering it on all the no return ways they do now.
Link the top 20 metro areas, and let other types of transportation handle the last legs of the trips. I wonder what the estimates are for constructing and maintaining/operating the infrastructure would be. The actual travel would save tons of money, as the energy required would be a fraction of air travel.
[…] out the full article here. Anyone remember the award rates for Concorde redemptions? They were available using AA, CO, DL, US, MR, and SPG points. Check out this p… for a stroll down memory […]