Yesterday at the White House during remarks on infrastructure, President Joe Biden talked about a future where planes fly at 21,000 miles an hour:
“. . .if we decided to do it, traverse the world in about an hour, travel 21,000 miles an hour. So much is changing. We have got to lead it.”
That’s not a typo. From the official White House transcript:
And here’s National Review’s Jim Geraghty with the much-needed fact-check of this complete nonsense:
Yesterday, Biden said, “We’re going to talk about commercial aircraft flying at subsonic speeds — supersonic speeds. To be able, figuratively, if you may, if we decide to do it, traverse the world in about an hour, travel 21,000 miles an hour.”https://t.co/RnG96VYegi
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
The first part of this vision is relatively realistic. The old, retired Concorde plane had a maximum speed of 1,354 mph, more than twice the speed of sound.https://t.co/RnG96VYegi pic.twitter.com/7TaUfcJJz4
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
The Soviet version of the Concorde, the Tupolev Tu-144, had a top speed of 1,600 miles per hour, and that sounds really appealing, as long as you can overlook the fact that 12.5 percent of all the Tu-144s ever built crashed.https://t.co/RnG96VYegi pic.twitter.com/j2MqpmkZ5t
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
The crash of a Concorde jet just outside Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2000 didn’t help, but what really forced supersonic passenger jets into retirement was that they wasn’t cost-effective. Fuel costs would often exceed the revenue from the passengers.https://t.co/RnG96VYegi pic.twitter.com/vkYguLvp5m
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
Recommended
Oh, and supersonic flight over U.S. land is currently banned because the sonic booms can break windows. However, we might be able to mitigate that through improvements in technology. https://t.co/RnG96VYegi
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
But Biden’s vision of a passenger aircraft that can “traverse the world in about an hour, travel 21,000 miles an hour” is a strong argument for mandatory drug testing in the White House.https://t.co/RnG96VYegi
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
The fastest jet in the world is the SR-71 Blackbird, perhaps the most famous spy plane in the world, and it travels at 2,100 mph.
Biden envisions passenger airliners traveling ten times as fast as that. pic.twitter.com/tncvTP5WyH
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
President Biden might as well have promised warp speed, a hyperdrive, or teleportation. It goes well with his promise to cure cancer if elected president.https://t.co/RnG96VYegi
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 8, 2021
***
Join the conversation as a VIP Member