X-Message-Number: 25625 Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 07:21:34 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #25617 - #25623 For Mark Plus: You have made this statement before (international air travel stopping because of the price of fuel) and it remains just as faulty as before. 1. Forgetting what happens with airlines in the US, lots of other airlines can simply raise their prices and go on as before. Once international air travel was more expensive than now, so that fewer people paid for it. We may simply see the same situation again. 2. If NO US airline can make a profit with international flights, that will not be because of the price of oil but because of bureaucratic anticapitalist restrictions imposed by government agencies in the US. For what it's worth, I am optimistic that either such restrictions will be revoked or modified so that even US airlines can take profitable international flights. 3. THE major Australian airline, Qantas, seems to feel the problem of the price of fuel much less than many large US airlines. Qantas still flies to the US, too. Perhaps this is because the Australian government owns part of Qantas and so doesn't want it to go out of business; it may be simply that government restrictions on Qantas are less than those on most big US airlines. In the long range, of course, we'll all stop using oil as fuel. Other alternatives exist, after all. Before South Africa gave up apartheid, they had no source of oil, so they made their own. A large airliner could probably be easily designed to use hydrogen instead. Then we have such things as ethyl alcohol (no doubt laced with something so that it ceases to be drinkable). Please don't repeat yourself as you have done. If you wish to argue that air travel will become impossible or even very difficult and costly, then come up with new rather than old arguments to that effect. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25625