Ordo…@aol.com (John Ordover) :
> > What fast package delivery / sub-orbital delivery offers
> > is *much* faster delivery. Say we’re considering delivery
> > across the continental US. Ground takes maybe a week.
> > Air takes a day or two, if you use a courier or special
> > delivery on the ground maybe within the day. Sub-orbital
> > would take less than a day and depending on pickup and
> > dropoff or the use of special ground units, could take only
> > a few hours.
> Uh – Fedex routinely delivers overnight, and has same-day service
> already (on the sender’s end, you have to drop it off at the airport,
> because the flight time isn’t the problem, it’s the ground-time and
> sorting. If you go to the airport yourself and put it in the right
> bin yourself, no problem getting it across the US the same day).
However, it does not give same day service from the US west coast to Toronto,
Canada. HP JIT shipping offers a fast routing of repair parts for an
additional fee. We have thousands of times received goods the following
morning after placing the order in the late afternoon this way, but if we
order in the morning we still have to wait to the following day.. Time to
order to delivery 16 hours or more. But even with our customers willing to
pay a upfront fee of hundreds of dollars we have not been able to get the
same day delivery that has been requested.
For our small computer store this happens atleast six to ten times a year.
There are alot of service stores in the Toronto area. This type of request
must be happening every day, if the faster service was available I know that
it would be used by the computer industry atleast.
> A flight from CA to NYC -already- takes only a few hours, usually
> around 5, plus or minus a little depending on weather, which way
> you’re going, etc. Paying a higher price to cut the five hours to
> 2.5, say, or even 2, cutting the delivery time from a same-day ten
> hours to a same-day 8 hours, isn’t likely to be worth it to anyone
> often enough to make the advance in technology worth it.
But same day ten hours does not exist for most points in the US or Canada.
And the time cut is not 5 hours to 2.5 hours or 1 hour. It is less than 30
minutes! This means with rush handling of 1 hour at both ends I can order a
part and receive it in three hours time. That means I can go out check a
customer’s machine, call in a parts order. Fix another customer machine. Do
lunch and get the first customer equipment running, giving him at least than
half a day’s use.
> If there are billions of dollars at stake because a factory is missing
> a part, it’s a simple matter to hire a high-speed private jet to get
> you what you need. Heck, with that much money at stake, you can -buy-
> a private jet. 
When I worked at GM in the truck plant every hour down costed GM 1.5 million
dollars. If a rocket shipment saves even one hour over the jet you bet you
are going to use the rocket. Also note Union rules state that if all the
workers have been in the plant for even two hours they get a full day’s pay
even if you have to shut down the plant, it is always in GM’s interest to get
the plant running as soon as possible.
> That is, in the end, the problem with the Concorde as well. There
> simply weren’t enough people who wanted to pay between 10 and 20 times
> the fare just to cut three hours off a six hour flight.
Sorry, what was wrong with the Concorde was it was not allowed to fly
supersonic over land. So instead of doing a six hour flight in two hours or
less it made it in four hours, the time saving was not big enought. And you
keep leaving out the point that with rockets, that six hour flight now become
30 minutes, that is a big savings. It means having breakfast in NYC, doing
business and lunch in London/Paris, and being back in time for dinner. No
jet, not even the Concorde let you do that.
Earl Colby Pottinger
PS. Note: Advanced rockets will even do CA to London/Paris in 30 minutes too.
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