The Sst Bizjet

ENOUGH OF the sainted Barack Obama starring in “The Fall of the House of Clinton.” Enough of the end of the Romney campaign. Or is it the mean-spirited John McCain and his Straight Snark Express.

Let’s talk about guy stuff, like a new $80 million business jet that’s designed to carry 12 important executives at Mach 1.6 non-stop for up to 4,600 miles.

Of course, it is nothing to do with prestige and getting there before the ordinary hoi polloi in their airborne Greyhound buses. As Ben Webster reports, it has nothing to do with that. At least that is what the chaps at Aerion say.

“There is a saying that you can tell the men from the boys by the price of their toys,” said Brian Barents, Aerion’s vice-chairman and a former supersonic fighter pilot for the US Air Force. “But while prestige is a factor, this is primarily a timesaving tool to make executives more productive.”

Yes. Of course, no ego stuff here, merely hard-working executives trying to be more productive!

To get a flavor of the design, you should go to Aerion’s website. But think about this. First of all, this 12-seat plane will have Pratt and Whitney JT8D engines. That’s the turbofan that powers the twin-jet100-seat MD-80! Got enough power, chaps?

Length	148 ft
Width	62 ft
Max Speed	Mach 1.6
Max Takeoff Weight	90,000 lbs
Max Fuel Weight	45,400 lbs

Imagine that! The plane is half the length of a football field. Half of the takeoff weight will be fuel. Well, when you strap on a couple of 20,000 lb thrust engines, what do you expect?

How soon will it be when everyone who is someone will have to have one of these?

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

mysql close 0