Fly from San Francisco to Tokyo in just five and a half hours

Imagine being able to fly from San Francisco to Tokyo in just five and a half hours — half the time it normally takes. More than a convenience, it would literally add hours to one’s productive life, converting a tedious business flight into a simple day trip. Thoughts like this are what have kept the quest for affordable, faster-than-sound flight alive, and this time the dream looks about to come true. …

It’s a change that is long overdue. The first half of the 20th century saw remarkable progress in aviation speeds, going from the Wright brothers’ historic first flight at 7 miles per hour to breaking to the sound barrier just 44 years later. Yet aviation speeds have stagnated in the years since, and by some measures they have slowed…

The ban on civil supersonic transport overland looks increasingly obsolete given that the intensity of a sonic boom can be greatly attenuated by shaping the aircraft differently. Indeed, the next generation of supersonic passenger jets will likely produce less of a boom and more of a thump. In Boom Technology’s case, they are anticipating a sonic boom 100 times quieter than the Concorde, while NASA, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, is building a prototype with a boom that’s 1,000 times quieter than the Concorde.

So-called “low boom” supersonic passenger jets are still several years away, but as long as the ban on overland supersonic remains in place, the private sector is on standby about how quiet of a sonic boom they should shoot for. Replacing the ban with a reasonable supersonic noise standard would bring regulatory certainty to the industry and spur the private sector into a race to be first to market.

Fixing Congress is in the details

Casey Burgat for the R Street Institute:

It is becoming more widely acknowledged that Congress has a staffing problem. While the executive branch employs more than 4 million people, the legislative branch has only about 30,000. This number includes personnel toiling for agencies that do not readily come to mind as legislative, such as the Government Publishing Office, the Architect of the Capitol and the U.S. Capitol Police.

While congressional capacity advocates shout for more funding and personnel to be allocated to the legislative branch, political scientists Russell Mills and Jennifer Selin examine the use of an often-overlooked stream of expertise available to congressional committees: federal agency detailees. Detailees are executive agency personnel with a particular policy mastery who are temporarily lent to congressional committees. The typical detailee assignment runs one year.

Hill operators and observers have long known policy expertise resides primarily in congressional committee staff. Compared to House and Senate personal office aides, committee staffers typically have more experience and narrower portfolios, both of which enhance the abilities of committees and their members to conduct oversight, draft legislation and develop fruitful lines of communication with relevant agency stakeholders.

How not to fix student debt

Kim Dancy and Alexander Holt for the New America Foundation:

[In 2016, Hillary] Clinton incorporated a vision similar to the legislation introduced in Congress in 2013 by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., which would allow existing borrowers to refinance existing student loans, thereby opting to lower the interest rates on their outstanding loans to current, historically-low rates. In a surprising moment of bipartisan consensus, President Trump has also suggested that borrowers should be able to lower their student loan interest rates, though it was not included in his first budget proposal.

The popularity of refinancing proposals is a result of the unique way in which interest rates are set on federal student loans. Private loans, including mortgages and other personal loans, carry interest rates determined by the dollar amount and time horizon of the loan, as well as an assessment of the level of risk involved in lending to a particular borrower. In contrast, interest rates for federal student loans are set by the U.S. Congress and are not differentiated for individual borrowers. This means that a student with bad credit and a low bank balance enrolled in a low-quality program with poor earnings potential can borrow with exactly the same terms as an independently wealthy straight-A student at Harvard….

Refinancing advocates argue that they are leveling the playing field for student loan borrowers. However, many students are unable or unwilling to refinance for a lower rate. Private lenders are able to chose which borrowers they offer refinancing services to and at which rates, and these lenders often only want to refinance borrowers with high, stable incomes. Furthermore, borrowers themselves often do not want to refinance in the private market because doing so eliminates the generous protections, including income-based repayment plans and loan forgiveness, that come with federal student loans. Allowing students to refinance through the federal government would make the benefit much more widely available, and it would allow borrowers to retain federal protections. In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that if implemented, Warren’s plan would cost taxpayers just under $60 billion over a three-year period….

Although many households would be eligible for refinancing, a large portion of the benefits would go to a small number of households with high debt balances. Furthermore, increased outreach to low-income borrowers about the benefits of income-based repayment plans would be more beneficial than refinancing for the population of borrowers most at risk of default.

Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.