The End of Aviation?

[JBI]

I recently watched a documentary called "The End of Suburbia" http://www.endofsuburbia.com and thought it was a very interesting topic. Basically they talk about the continuing scarcy of oil and how the North American system of suburbs and the automobile society will become less and less feasible.

Surprisingly, they didn't touch upon aviation. Reading AVweb, or listening to reports from various industry sources, many predict that aviation will increase drastically in the next few decades. But one must wonder if this is predicated upon the current oil prices. The simple fact is that although there are debates as to how much oil the earth really has and how long it will last, it's generally agreed upon that there is a finite amount of fossil fuels on the planet.

Any thought as to how this will affect aviation? We've already seen in recent times that the cost of doing business is rising while consumers want lower and lower prices. There seemed to be general public complaints about WestJet and Air Canada raising their prices to sustainable levels after the demise of Jetsgo. The fuel surcharge is something that is often added to the cost of a ticket, but really, shouldn't a surcharge be for somethign that is temporary? I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand the complexities of how OPEC and the free market help determine the price of crude, but if looking at it with the basic supply and demand principles, we can see that supply is decreasing, demand is increasing and thus costs are going to increase.

Will the public still fly? At what point will flying become so expensive that itis no longer feasible? Will it again become a service that only the elite can afford? Alternative energy can be used in place of some fossil fuels, but aviation seems pretty dependent upon them.

So this seems very much to be doomsday prophesying, and I'm not trying to convince everybody to quit flying (although I've [temporarily?] done it but for different reasons) and go live in a bunker somehwere (I haven't done that), but I do think it is something that should be looked at when choosing a profession that will hopefully provided a means of living for someone for the next 30-40 years.

Thoughts?

yes, I realise that this thread is not as exciting about complaining about Jetsgo or Skyward or Transport :p

[desksgo]

It's all about supersonic monorails...now THAT is the way of the future.

[KAG]

With the next generation of AC engines - (Pulse generation engine) PDE, they run at around 30% the fuel of todays most efficent engines, and they are supersonic capabile. They are still in development/testing stages, but it may be the saving grace of aviation in the future.

Cheers.

[ahramin]

You will notice that in that documentary they claim that we are running out of oil, but don't actually show any indication that we are running out of oil. Obviously the amount of oil left is decreasing, rapidly. But when will it hit bottom. No one in the know seems to think we are going to run out of oil in the next fifty years. Just a couple months ago i spoke to Andrew Weaver from the UN commitee on global warming, who has looked into this extensively with lots of money to back him, and he still says there is not going to be any shortage in our lifetime.

Is it going to get more expensive? Probably. Most if not all of the cheap sources of oil have already been found. And will run out someday. But as for the rest, who knows? How much oil is there in Alaska? Will the next administration support Bush's decision?

Pound for pound gas has more explosive power than dynamite. Just about everyone i know complains about the price of gas, but why do you still buy it then? Because you are still getting a huge return for your dollar. The ability to go where you want in comfort and ease is worth far more to you than you are currently paying. Read Friday by R.A. Heinlein. What if it was cheaper and easier to have a horse and buggy than a car?

But what about when the oil actually starts to run out. What about $10 a litre for regular gas. Certainly suburbia will be changed, but wiped out? Doubtful. It will just have to become more efficient. Mass transit as desksgo pointed out. High speed trains are far more efficient than airplanes, and often are faster. Sure they cannot outrun a Lear 45 (yet), but some can already outrun a king air. Nuclear power plants producing hydrogen fuel in one step. Suburbia is in no danger, in fact grouping the residential areas together makes it even easier to mass transport the people. I just don't see everyone living close to work as a possibility.

As for aviation, it is here to stay. Certainly world travel will decrease, due to the increased cost. People will still spend the same amount of money per capita on air travel, but that money will equate to far less travel. And it will be cheaper to set up a widget factory in each region rather than one big factory that ships widgets all over the world. At some point air transport may become so expensive that the majority of the population can no longer afford it. No more vacations, no more flying to the other end of the country to visit grandma, and no more shipping $20 presents either. People will have to learn to live with limited travel/transport.

But this will not kill aviation. There will always be people who can afford it, there will always be a need for it that nothing can replace. It will always be cheaper to spend big bucks to fly a replacement part for a gas compressor than to let that compressor sit idle. And by the time we run out of jet fuel something else will have replaced it.

[ScudRunner]

As far as oil goes their was a similar school of thought 20 or 30 years ago about running out of oil by 2000, But new sources of oil are discoverd all the time. Now we can tap the reserves in the places that where not fesible some years ago. I heard that their is still around 4 trillion barrels of oil in the Alberta Oil sands and that doesnt include places in BC or other areas of Canada.

As far as flying goes I just came back from overseas and theres noway im taking a boat, But the monorail sounds like fun! Mono Doh!

[Wilbur]

There are many efficiencies still to be achieved in aviation that will keep costs down. The biggest being ATC. We have fully automated airplanes flying around that still depend on humans to keep them from hitting each other. How much efficiency could be gained through a fully automated system that integrates everything from traffic flow to winds to individual A/C performance and fuel burn? The basic technology exists and it won't be that many decades before it's operational.

Flying is a popular form of mass transit that will continue to get cheaper with time.

[Cap'n P8]

The future is very scary my friends. Go to google and type in "Peak Oil" and read some of the stuff they are talking about.

The gist of it is this. There's still lots of oil left, but production has or is about to hit peak. After it does the cost of recovering oil will continue to go up. Economies, especially like the US are driven by cheap oil. Also demand is set to increase dramatically with the industrialization of countries like China and India while supply is waning.

[zaac]

Eventually mans progress will stop and reverse. We will have to start hunting for food again. And the planet will start repairing itself. Unless a big asteroid hits us first. May as well just try and have fun while we're here. I feel sorry for my kids though. They'll have to deal with the problems our greed started.

[oxygen on]

The most imminent danger right now is not running out of oil, but having all of the oil controled by the same people. Thus they can set the price as they want, like they are already doing.

For those who like freaky stuff, do a google search with "2012" and after removing all the links related to the olympics, take a look at what's left.

[Right Seat Captain]

This oil thing is a very, very scary thing. There's a lot of theories, and even more unkowns out there. Many models to predict how long we'll have oil, make certain assumptions, such as maintaining today's level of consumption, or a linear increase based on trends, when really it's an unkown exponential increase. They also depend on finding more oil, mostly in the new areas being discovered, along continental shelves, a few hundred feet under the ocean's surface.

Rest assured, right now there is no shortage of oil. There's lots to go around from Saudi Arabia and some new sources being found. But at the current consumption rate, the amount of oil that we know about right now is only enough to get us through a few years. We could run out by 2010, or we could run out in 2200, nobody actually knows. That's one scary aspect of the situation.

The other aspect which is the scariest, is our dependency on fossil fuels. If in one year we ran out of oil, we'd be done for. Period. Look around the room you are in right now. There is nothing in that room that was not connected to burning fossil fuel in some way. It's all about energy, its the only thing we've got that we can use in our present way of life. Even new options that people are hoping for, are not actually viable when you look deep enough. Hydrogen power? How are you going to seperate hydrogen out of water in the first place so that you can fuel cars? It takes far more energy to get the hydrogen, than you will get burning it. Even in an impossible ideal world, it is physically impossible to get more energy out of hydrogen than we are able to put in. Hydro power? Relatively easy to get and clean, but there isn't enough to go around. Maybe if we made a DRASTIC change in our way of life, some day we might be able to sustain ourselves. Same thing goes with wind.

The answer lies in Solar and hydro and wind combined. But we're talking big scale. We need enormouss wind farms. We need solar panels on top of every house, every building all connected to a power grid. The sun gives us the same amount of energy that the world uses in a year, in 40 minutes. But we need to harness that somehow. Then if we could find a more efficient way to store that power, make it portable, we could use it in transportation as well.

Sorry for the rant, energy conservation is something that I've really learned a lot about over the last few years taking Engineering, and nobody, not myself, not experts, fully understand the extent of our dependancy and troubles we will run into unexpectedly one day. I could go on for hours and hours about it.

That being said, each one of us who are tree huggers, no matter how much of tree hugger you are, as a hypocrite in us. We always turn to our gadgets, or whatever that burn up more energy. So I'm going to go burn some AvGas right now teaching someone how to fly for fun!

[Hornblower]

Sorry for the rant, I could go on for hours and hours about it.

Geez, ... I thought you did!

[Right Seat Captain]

Sorry for the rant, I could go on for hours and hours about it.

Geez, ... I thought you did!

LOL, I'll spare you the rest.

[727200er]

Of course fossil fuels are not really required for aviation. Gas turbine engines will run quite well on many different fuels. I think the saving grace of aviation in the short term Could be biofuels. At current oil prices biofuel is a very viable alternative. This would help the economies of the prairie provinces in particular, as they have some of the best land in the world for growing the crops to use for biofuel. Diesel engines are finally being introduced into the piston market and these too can run VERY well on biofuel.

[Cap'n P8]

The problem with biofuels right now (or almost every other alternative energy source)...it takes large quantities of fossil fuel to get it. That is the problem. We are way too dependant upon fossil fuels and need to start reversing this yesterday.

Also interesting to note, a few numbers for you. For every calorie you consume, ten calories of fossil fuel were consumed to bring it to you. Also when you sit down to eat, the average distance that the food on your plate has traveled is around 1500 miles.

[W0X0F]

JBI, a timely thread.

I know you didn't want Government slamming but it is one of the more significant threats to aviation. As part of the budget and Kyoto implementation, the Liberals are trying to simply declare CO2 a pollutant. Basically they want to be able to fine big polluters, take the money and send it out of the country.

http://www.canada.com/national/national ... 6f59b4e808

It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that aviation, which burns a lot of fuel, is going to get slapped with another tax. The Kyoto accord is a cruel joke. Let's be honest, we're not going to use less fuel and grow (population and economy) at the same time. The States are not on board because they realized the accord can't be made to work. Let's hope the opposition in Ottawa can defeat the provision.

[Jet Dog]

I'm surprised no one mentioned solar powered planes, or even wind powered, I mean lots of planes already have windmills on them, or props as you guys call em. As for monorails becoming faster than air travel, nope. Also remember they're working on air travel in space, so your not droming around at FL350, but rather FL950, doesn't cost a lot to cruise in space, getting up there is the current problem by a cheap means, maybe a catapult? or back to my previous intellengent ideas?

[Wilbur]

Development of alternative energy sources will not really be a priority for anyone until the oil supply actually begins to decrease. It's all driven by dollars. Big money will only go into R&D when the resulting technologies will generate profits. Oil is still too cheap to make most other energy technologies viable.

As for Kyoto, the UN and the Liberals. If wreaking havoc on the Canadian economy through Kyoto will buy the Criminals enough left wing votes to hold onto power, they will do it without a moment of hesitation.

[JBI]

Interesting thoughts.

A couple things came to mind when reading most replies.

With reagrds to the new maglev trains. I read a really interesting article about the train that runs to and from Shanghai (I think) airport. When it gets to full speed, the train travels at approximately the same speed as a Beech 1900 in cruise. I do think better forms of mass transist will play a large part in development in the future. This however poses two problems. The first being that suburban development is generally not dense enough to support feasible public transit. You don't see a subway extension into Vaughn, Mapoe or Mississauga (Toronto suburbs) because the population density is lower than that of areas closer to the downtown core. Secondly, as noted by other posters, these 'alternative' fuels still require vast amounts of energy to be extracted or produced.

The thing that I am thinking though is that depending on how much oil we do have, at some point OPEC will realise, Oh Crap, we've peaked. It seems to me that they are smart and greedy (not a bad necessarily a bad thing) and that they will start raising prices quite drastically therefore extending the amount of years that the oil reserves will be available. Although this will mean higher prices at the pumps and for airfares, it will also hopefully decrease the dependency on oil more gradually. ie. first people will get rid of the SUV's and move to using smaller more fuel efficent cars. In the documentary they prophesize massive violence and an end to democracy. I think that that's getting a little to Brave New Worldish.

WOFOX makes an interesting point. Can the economy and population of a country grow but use less fossil fuels? Obviously today the answer is no, but in the future it seems to me the answer will have to be a yes or else there will be serious consequences. And is current economic growth more important than evironmental impacts or possibly future resources of energy?

[LH]

OPEC controls ONE of the supplies of oil in the world......not all of them. There are a ton of oil-producing countries that are not members of OPEC. The price of oil is determined by the cost of refining it and less by the supply. So who has the best oil to refine then?.....Nigeria. The Saudis produce 13% of the worlds' supply of oil....and that's IT! If the Russians increase their production, which Putin has threatened to do, then they will pass the Saudis as the biggest producer and the Norwegians are also crawling up the Saudi's asses and aren't far behind either. Putin has "threatened" and not done so, only because Russia is also a member of OPEC and he wants to"play the game" still. As of recent, the second-largest KNOWN oil reserves in the world are right here in Canada....at Ft. McMurray, AB. The conservative estimate of KNOWN oil and gas reserves in the world is enough to last the world for 80 years ......and that includes the demands of countries like China and others on the Asian sub-continent. Considering what has transpired in science over the last 50 years, nobody needs to get all excited about running out of oil because we'll be using other methods. We'll still need the oil though. Everyone thinks of transportation/heating fuels when they speak of oil, but they better sit down and make a list of other ways that we use oil and what is made from it because even if we get a substitute for transportation, we'll still need tons of it still. I'll start with Coffemate, but the list is longer than your leg.....literally. lastly, if anyone thinks that they have seen smog anywhere in North America, make a visit to Shanghai, China and then you'll see real smog, the likes of which LA has never seen. How many cities in North America exist where EVERYONE who ventures outside in the city wears a surgical mask because of the smog. So clean up Canada and/or the US all you want, but until those folks are doing the same, your efforts are all in vain folks.

[mantogasrsrwy]

http://www.canada.com/national/national ... 6f59b4e808


Should be required reading before voting..........

[Rebel]

Guess where all this smog over China and India ends up? The human race is really not very bright..

[LH]

1.3 billion people in China and another 1.0 billion in India and Canada thinks that our industries and 31.5 million people is going to "stem the tide" of pollutants. Alrighty then...whatever they say.

[727200er]

The problem with biofuels right now (or almost every other alternative energy source)...it takes large quantities of fossil fuel to get it. That is the problem. We are way too dependant upon fossil fuels and need to start reversing this yesterday.

But you see this argument doesn't hold water. By this I mean that the very existence of a large quantity of biofuel, would allow biofuel to replace fossil fuels in it's own production. In every step, of the production of biofuel, that same biofuel could replace fossil fuels. Yes at the start of production you are correct, but in a very short time the dependence on fossil fuels could be greatly lessened.

[LH]

Then I suggest you first sit down and research what all it is that fossil fuels are used for. You obviously haven't done that and you can start with all industries worldwide involved in plastics. Before you do all that, get the Chinese convinced to change over everything so that Shanghai, for example, doesn't produce more pollutants from the smoke stacks and industry in 3 months than all of Canada produces in one year.......and that's just one tiny region of China.

[w squared]

The reality is that our addiction to fossile fuels will change only when it becomes economically necessary. Our economy and culture is so intertwined with fossil fuels that the change will only take place when they become prohibitively expensive.

Eventually, I would hope that wind and solar power will replace our fossil fueld consumption for larger applications. In places where that isn't possible (like aircraft) and power-to-weight requirements make electric power impractical, I would wager that biofuels will make their presence felt. There is hope for us...but I can only hope that we don't irrevocably damage our planet before we reach that point.