It will take longer to go thru the security grope than to fly from New York to London.

^ yeah, the friendly skies get a little TOO friendly these days! Happy St. You's Day, Pat! 455

If Antipode is built, it will take 10 passengers from NY to London in 11 minutes traveling at Mach 24!!!

You write that it would take 11 minutes for Antipode to travel from New York to London. Would you be looking at a clock in the plane from the ground, or would you be looking at a clock on the ground next to you?

Intriguing. I could go from NY to London get a bite to eat and see the sites, then return back in less time than mall shopping with my wife and kids! I'm all for it!

You said it, Ralphie boy, and you'll get older slower.

Two questions: 1) any teacher volunteers for Antipode first flight and 2) do we get to hear these words again, "Antipode you are clear for throttle up"? Or as in Concorde's demise, any hotels nearby to demolish?

^^ It doesn't work that way, friend. If you took Antipode once a week from NY to London and back you would shave approximately 32 hrs a month off your life which is 1.33 days a month which is almost 16 days per year. Over 10 years this is 160 days and in 20 years would be 320 days which is almost a year. If you took Antipode more often, you would lose more time, perhaps a few years. Concorde lasted 30 years which would be 480 days or 1.315 years. The more you took Antipode, the more years lost. You wouldn't live any longer. Daylight Savings Time would also be a bear! While true you would just be losing air time spent on a slower plane, that time also equals potential interaction with other human beings which could mean losing a future wife or husband, not having children, missing potential lifetime friends and career changes or affecting critical life decisions. You may end up losing your life early and you'd mess with human existence without these interactions. Some would of course live a bit longer due to not making bad decisions or having bad relationships but most would suffer loss not gain. I am against this aircraft. I met my wife on a flight out of Denver and had four kids. We moved to a better state when my career changed and had more opportunities. All of us are alive and well. Antipode is evil, from Satan.

OMG this is like a Twilight Zone adventure! Someone needs to make this into a major motion picture. Antipode: Time Stealer! Stallone can't decide between taking a slow 787 or Antipode. Although his heart tugs him towards the slower aircraft, he blows $30,000 and mankind suffers an apocalypse as a result! Now, he has to go back in time and get on that other flight!

I may be a lowly sewer worker, but I know this: If I were in an aircraft whose velocity approached the speed of light, the clock next to me and my bodily functions, AS VIEWED FROM EARTH, would slow down noticeably. (Also, the aircraft's length in the direction of travel would approach zero, and the mass of the machine would approach infinity.) To me inside, everything would be normal. If I were airborne for a significant period, and then landed, I would look (and be) significantly younger than my identical twin who'd be greeting me.
I was joking about this application of Special Relativity to the Antipode. The effect of relativity on this tortoise-slow airplane is vanishingly small. Haven't you seen "Close Encounters Of the Third Kind"? When the alien spacecraft lands, rescued WW2 fighter pilots emerge, looking as they did 30 years earlier. Referring to the super-advanced space creatures themselves, one human spectator says to another, "Einstein must have been one of them."
I have no idea of Mathematician's conceptualization and his numbers. In space programs, calculations are based on Einstein's equations for motion, which have superseded Newton's. As for the future social consequences of long periods of space travel at hyper speed, I leave these to the imagination.

Antipode's speed is 12,430 mph, nowhere near light speed which is 186,282 miles per second! Antipode also is an aircraft, not a spacecraft. It travels through the air at Mach 24 at 40,000 feet using booster rockets for takeoff and then a single supersonic ramjet the rest of the way. It uses advanced metallurgy and sonic wave dampening technologies.

Exactly! Antipode, whether you call it an aircraft or a spacecraft, would have a speed of only Mach 24. Again, that is why I was joking when I said, "You'll get older slower." I was exaggerating the "vanishingly small" relativity effect of its velocity which, though great in our mundane experience, would still be a mere order of magnitude greater than that of the old Concorde. Look for light speed in particle accelerators.

who are these idiots who think that song was even worth reading

^ classic Concorde hater. Bet he's a liberal who tried to have SSTs banned due to noise levels. I love the Concorde and saw it twice in my life. The most beautiful civilian aircraft in history. I also saw the majestic Avro Vulcan as a youth. So, Mr. Hater, I care!

I liked the news aspect and the tech stuff doesn't bother me at all. But the hypothetical mumbo jumbo about time is all wrong. If you are waiting for one of two buses to get to the same destination and one comes hourly and the other every 15 minutes, you do indeed save time taking the latter bus. But you don't lose any time as far as your life is concerned. You took a faster bus is all. And as far as interpersonal actions go, who is to say that riding Antipode wouldn't lead to something life-changing? I can pick up a girl in 11 minutes or less downtown anytime. Who knows if or when one will get pregnant? Or we take our relationship further? ;-)

"Nice, but" and "Mathematician" need to be slapped around. In no sense does traveling by bus, plane, train, etc., waste, shorten, lengthen, or in any way affect life span, social chances, or useful time. Last week, we set our clocks ahead one hour. You must be worried that we shortened our lives 60 minutes. Don't be concerned. You'll get that hour back next Fall when we set our clocks back. Unless we die before that, which of course means that our premature demise is a result of being aged by Daylight Savings.
You think traveling affects that thing called "time" and we could lose the girl of our dreams? What about sleeping? Six to eight hours lost forever! Three cheers for insomnia!
Save time by riding on a bus that comes more often? Save it for what? Go pick up a girl at the bus stop. Read a newspaper while waiting. Time marches on! Life proceeds apace. The only time wasted is the three minutes I used up to write this!

My clock melts! Tempus fugit the same, whether you're here or there, now or then, where or when, switching time zones, or being transported by vehicle — except if the vehicle is a light beam. In our allotted cosmic space, time cannot be saved; it can only be expended. How it is spent is completely dependent on human decision and fortune.

You guys forget to mention that smoking, hard drinking, drug abuse all shorten life. No airplane needed!!!

It is absolutely frightening that a country of scientific illiterates, governed by their chosen faith-based politicians, and who are incapable of participating in a democracy which decides on matters like human-induced climate change, get to cast ignorant votes which determine the fate of the planet.

It is absolutely frightening that a country of liberal, pseudo-intellectual, misguided, PC SJWs, led by their chosen secular humanist and atheistic politicians, and who are incapable of honoring our constitutional republic which decides on matters like abhorrent insane abortion, get to cast votes which seek to obstruct Republican and national patriotism, justice, and morality. May they burn in hell forever with Hillary & Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Elizabeth Warren, John Podesta, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the demented Democratic Party circus.

^ BRAVO!!!

I disagree with Ed above. What about all the people who at the last minute changed their travel plans by bus, plane, or train who lived because those transports all crashed and were killed? I am the grandson of a grandmother that had a bad feeling and didn't take a flight that crashed killing all onboard. Her life was extended and she gave birth to my mom who had me. And FWIW, taking a hypersonic superplane traveling at Mach 24 is just asking to die. Imagine any engine failure or bad weather scenario in that thing at speed. No thanks, I'll go by slug transport.

"Scared too" unaccountably turns my observation into a politically partisan attack against Democrats. Therefore, I must assume that he identifies scientific illiteracy (see the astonishing irrelevancy of Claude's remarks), irrational minister-politicians, sheep-like following of a narcissistic demagogue, and ignorant voting with the various mad-dog factions of the new Republican Party. So be it.

Ed, Salvador, and Scared belong to the ever-dwindling Thinking Class. Power to them!

Let me translate Thinking Class for you historically: blind, cowardly, no common sense tools of the enemy. The type that sought to appease Hitler. We all know how that ended. Russia, China, North Korea, and ISIL all seek the destruction of the United States as well as western democracy. Peace is not in the cards. Democratsand their liberal ilk are fools to the core.

I wish I had your brain: mint condition, in original wrap, like new, never been used.

A protest sign vs an incoming nuke? Gee, which will prevail?

Mr. ? — What has your comment to do with supersonic transport or the concept of time? You are the perennial fool among fools. Is time a wave phenomenon or is it manifested by particles? Is time inextricably wedded to space? Can an upgraded SST avoid the economic pitfalls that befell the first generation if it can carry only 20 passengers. Can you think?????

Concorde 2:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00952/inline_5d67427c-3ad_952483a.jpg