In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy pledged that Americans would go to the moon and develop a supersonic commercial airliner. By the end of that decade, the country witnessed in awe Neil Armstrong’s “small step for man.” It was the idea of supersonic intercity travel that proved the unattainable “moonshot.” A half-century after Kennedy’s promise, with the European Concorde in retirement and no American supersonic plane ever cleared for takeoff, airliners still travel at the same speed as did President Kennedy’s 707 Air Force One.

We like to talk about the dizzying rate of technological change these days, but when it comes to intercity travel, we’re stuck back in 1959, when the 707 made its inaugural transcontinental flight. Why is that? And are we now on the eve of startling innovations in flying, or will it still take five hours to fly across the country in 2059? Join Future Tense for lunch in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, May 11, to discuss these questions, and the future of aviation. The agenda is below; for more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

Lunch will be served.

Moderator:
James Fallows
National correspondent, the Atlantic
Author, China Airborne
Author, Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel

12 p.m.: Intro: Living Large and Flying High in the Jet Age, Circa 1959

Andrés Martinez
Editorial director, Future Tense

12:10 p.m.: What a Drag That Supersonic Boom: The Impediments to Supersonic Flight for the Rest of Us

Dava Newman
Deputy administrator, NASA
Apollo Program professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Greg Zacharias
Chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force

12:40 p.m.: I’ll Sell You a Futuristic Plane, if You’re Willing to Pay for It

Richard Aboulafia
Vice president, analysis, Teal Group Corp.

David Lackner
Vice president, head of research and technology for North America, Airbus Group Innovations

Leik Myrabo
Founder, Lightcraft Technologies Inc.

Blake Scholl
Founder and CEO, Boom Technology Inc.

1:40 pm: Cleared for Takeoff? Our Strained Aviation System’s Capacity and Design

Diana Pfeil
CTO, Resilient Ops Inc.

Justin Powell
Associate principal, Arup Group

Michelle Schwartz
Chief of staff, Federal Aviation Administration

2:30 pm: Parting Thoughts: Air Travel, Circa 2059

James Fallows