Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[Tulse]

zapkitty wrote: An FF transport would not even be as fast as a 747… mach 0.72 as opposed to mach 0.85… but the transport gets the chips to ITER before any other commercial carrier could because it does not stop. Does not refuel.

That’s a very good point — for long-haul flights the time saved avoiding landing for refueling could be significant.

Does not have to transfer the package to another aircraft.

And that’s an especially interesting point — FF might make it economical to fly cargo with smaller planes more directly to smaller airports, avoiding stopovers and the mess of larger airports, and the need to use long-distance ground transport.

So here’s the question: how small can a plane be and still use an FF powerplant? Does it have to be large passenger-jet sized, or could one make a smaller cargo plane using FF?