Post

Pedestrian in the Age of Planes: a (cope?) 🧵. I grew up walking and biking to go places. My whole training, and later professional life, was done accordingly: I don't go really far, nor really fast, but I have a good sense of direction, and developed very specific muscles. Now we have planes. 1/

Understand how incredible this sentence sounds. We made machines which can FLY. We can go to places unreachable before, incredibly fast! This was unthinkable even a few years ago. Even well educated people are mystified by how they work. Again: metallic tubes. Which fly. With us in them! 2/

This is completely magical. And yes, there were reasons to be skeptical, but at this point, it is pretty clear planes can, in fact, go to faraway places in mere hours, where even boats (our best boats!) would have taken months—forget about walking. Planes exist! Is there any point in walking? 3/

There are a few wrinkles of course. These miracles of physics engineering, are quite expensive, and right now only a few select companies can build them or lease them, even wildly subsidized. The tickets ain't exactly cheap, and you may not always get your flight, or seat, even paying for it. 4/

And honestly—flying a plane is not very easy, no matter what some say. It takes years to know how to actually fly well, with the proper training. Again, miracles of engineering. But they're expensive, subject to a lot of constraints, and they do require a lot training! 6/