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Comment by tonyedgecombe | Hacker News Reader

My life improved so much once I decided to stop flying.

While it might be environmentally friendly to fly, or cosmically irrelevant, my life is enriched by visiting places. You don't like far off vacations?

I'd love some Matrix-like virtual reality in the future though.

Last flight I was on, I took my friend's mini-geiger-counter, and the radiation level at 35,000 feet (over Oregon, not the Arctic or anything) was fifty times the background radiation at the airport. Obviously it's not acutely dangerous, but you have to wonder how many, say, cigarettes that's equivalent to as far as cancer risk.

Answer: For each flight, you get 2.3 cigarettes worth of radioactivity.

You would need to fly 4572 East-West coast flights per year to reach same dose as from smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes per day.

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Data points:

Smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes per day is equivalent to between 60 and 160 milliSievert per year http://mathscinotes.com/2014/01/radiation-exposure-from-ciga... With 20 cigarettes this means 10958 cigarettes. At about 160 milliSievert, we get 0,014601205 milliSivert per cigarette.

You would be exposed to about 0.035 mSv (3.5 mrem) of cosmic radiation if you were to fly within the United States from the east coast to the west coast. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html

I think that's 345 banana equivalents. (Since you can't smoke on the plane.)

Indeed flight crews have an elevated cancer risk: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20031021/flight-crew...

But the risk is 50% more than normal, which is not extremely high compared to how much more radiation exposure they get.

EDIT: Flight crews working on intercontinental flights have higher yearly exposure than nuclear workers apparently (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/11/27/radiation-exposu...)

If the laptop ban comes into force, I doubt you will be able to bring that Geiger counter on board either...

Doesn't include cigarettes, but shows a NY to LA flight as equivalent to 2 chest x-rays: https://xkcd.com/radiation/

No, I've become somewhat sceptical about the 'benefits' of travel, mostly it seems to have become more about one-upmanship than anything else.

That is definitely a thing, but you only have to care about what you bring into it. I don't care about travelling for show, but to places I find interesting. But if you don't get anything out of it other than the stamp in your passport then I guess it's not for you.

Goole street map + htc vive + order food from Chinatown

Probably 50% of the experience without the risk of being used as a battery.

You don't really have a choice if you need to travel between Europe and the US. Travelling by sea would take far too long.

The time it takes is one thing, the other I expect is the cost. Is there really an alternative still running ocean transport between Europe and the US? (and not getting on a container ship Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days style)

Yeah QE2, costs about the same as an airline ticket last time I checked. For some people who are terrified of flying this is how they manage to visit the US/Europe.

I'm not sure about a regular ocean transport, but you could take a cruise ship between Southampton, UK and Key West, Miami or New Orleans. They're not particularly regular, on top of the additional cost/time constraints.

Cunard. Prices aren't as too terrible, basic rooms are ~£1000 per person one-way.

Even if you had the time (five days on the QE2 from Southampton to New York) there's not a lot of choice with schedule.

I'm curious where you saw that figure of 5 days. Everything I've seen is 7-8 nights, e.g., depart 9/9 and arrive 9/16. That doesn't substantively change your point; I was just surprised to see 5 days.

They can do it in 5 days, but most of the time they want you on there longer. It means they can both conserve fuel, and have you spending money for longer once you're captive.

Source: I worked on cruise ships for a couple of years. FWIW the crossing I did with Holland America took 6 days.

Cool, thanks for explaining.

With a travel time of 5 days I assume you won't arrive jet lagged? I think that compensates for lack of schedule choice.

With the plane you can spend 2 days recovering from jetlag and still come out ahead.

They change the clocks an hour daily, so it is pretty easy on the body clock. More so in one direction than the other, of course, but still better than flying.

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