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Originally Posted by babyblue 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. |
In my opinion it does not seem odd, as tdol suggests too.
It`s not the case of future here. On the contrary, "This flight wouldn`t have taken long hours..if you had flown by a plane equipped with "jet engines". However, it happened or this is a previous experience lived by those in the plane.I do not know the whole text to make it out.This sentence might be related to the author`s or other people`s experience or dreams. Have you carefully read the whole text related to this part?
It might be a kind of "stream of counscioussness" like in Virginia Wolf`s novels[or James Joyce], when the explanation[s] come[s] later on by suggestion or the reader understands it through the lines.
I maybe go too far with my imagination.