Originally Posted by
kb9522
Of course they have. The Ferrari Daytona had a top speed of 174 mph. The Veyron can reach speeds of 268. It's nonsense to suggest cars haven't gotten faster since the 60s.
On the other hand, as pinniped points out above, aircraft have gotten slower!
Its nonsense to interpret "change much" as "at all".
The veyron is an outlier. Almost all other hypercars (laferrari, p1, 918) and other ultra exotics (f12tdf, Aventador, etc) don't move too far off the speeds established by the 959...sustained by the xj220,
Formula one hit 200 in-race in 1980s and haven't gone much higher since.
Obviously there are tons of factors (regulations, purpose, etc) that affect these, but did you expect some constant , linear increase?
My point wasn't that speeds haven't increased. In fact the opposite - they do increase, but at slower pace as they've been hovering around the practical ceiling , as opposed to the theoretical /no-holds-barred ceiling.
Jet fuel costs a lot more and per/pax revenue is a lot less. There's no point in designing or operating a commercial plane at faster speeds.
Just like there is no point in designing an f1 car to reach 300 when tires and fuel capacity won't sustain that speed