No more Sonic Cruiser

It's being reported that Boeing's Sonic Cruiser project is being canned. I have to say, I'm not really surprised.

Sustained flight in the transonic region, as this airliner was intended to do, is damn difficult from a technical perspective, so it would be expensive to develop. I can't see any obvious improvements in running costs over a conventional airliner (quite the reverse, in fact - the transonic region is the worst place to be for fuel economy). The speed advantage over regular airliners wouldn't be that big. To cap it all, it looked radically different from most other airliners, and big-budget civil aviation is ridiculously conservative about appearances¹. Overall, I'm not sure they ever stood much chance of making a good economic case for it.

Still, it was possibly the most innovative major civil aircraft project I've seen in donkey's years, so I'm a little sad to see it cancelled.

¹This conservatism is probably the main reason airliners STILL have forward-facing seats, despite study after study showing that backward-facing seats make a substantial difference to passenger survival rates in accidents. It's the whole "but car owners don't want seat belts because that reminds them that they might crash" argument all over again.

[Link: slashdot]

immigration arrests follow up

A Brit attempting to become a permanent resident of the US has posted some details of the difficulties in getting everything right when applying. They're arresting muslims for messing up a process that's difficult for educated native English speakers.

[As an aside, there are still no accurate numbers on how many people were arrested, because the INS are refusing to even talk about it]

[Link: BoingBoing]