Thanks a lot, sheena55ro.
Now I understand most of what you said, and still there's something that remains unsolved to me.
If someone says "If you had made this flight, it wouldn't have taken the usual 10 hours", it means "since you didn't make this flight, it took 10 hours as usual." ,which shows us it is based on a fact that you already experienced the ten hours, and you thought it was boring,and so on.
but all through the context, from the start to its conclusion as well as the part I asked you about, the story was all about the future of rocketplanes, without any description on the hours experienced in our 'old fashioned' travel in contrast to the dream planes.
In conclusion, I still don't understand why the author in the story added such a sentence all of a sudden. It doesn't seem consistent at all!
Now I'd like to suggest the sentence "But this flight wouldn't have taken ten long (usually boring) hours" should be changed to "But this flight wouldn't take ten long (usually boring) hours". - please tell me how it sounds to you.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by sheena55ro First,
Try this:
"If you approached your destination, the pilot would start the jet engines..."
The sentence acts as an If clause type II - imaginary situation [ no future here]
Secondly,
..."But this flight wouldn't have taken ten long (ususally boring) hours" if the pilot had started the jet engines[ if clause type III - but it did not happen] |