NASA says it will build quiet supersonic passenger jet

Quote: Nareed

I don't see the airlines braking with their business model that far.

Airbus filed a patent last summer for a 20 seat aircraft that could fly NYC to London in one hour.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/engineering/11782446/Concorde-Mark-2-Airbus-files-plans-for-new-supersonic-jet.html

Weighing in just for the fun of it. All my opinion/experience.

SST/Concorde design was very limiting in pax/revenue. Banks of seats were on rollers to allow for the expansion and contraction of the fuselage, which changed by a bout 14" longer in supersonic flight due to external heating. Heat dissipation and effective weight capacity are serious problems.

FAA regs on domestic supersonic was and is an issue; the sonic booms from military are either over open water above a certain deck to minimize impact, or having to be explained/justified in terms of emergency or critical defense response. Full booms in normal air traffic over land are a serious problem.

Concorde has very long, heavy-stressed runway requirements as well as very small landing gear and obstacle flare requirements. Every runway had to be inspected for random debris before any arrival/departure, even before the fatal accident, in the US, for the very reason that the accident occurred (we saw that coming to some extent). The runway then had to be sterilized until their operation was over. They also required extra airspace and spacing, both to slow down, and to protect their frequent go-arounds. Their operating envelope at lower/subsonic speeds required special handling because it was so narrow. They did not play well with others (not talking about attitude, talking about traffic flow).

All that said, it is 50 year old technology, and recent advances in engines, airframe material composition, CAD, and especially military advances in supersonic flight (both classified and non-) make feasible a long-range larger fuselage commercial operation. Cost-prohibitive from what I hear, but feasible. Problems remain in what airports are willing to serve such an aircraft, and whether the operating envelope can conform better to traffic flow. I can see them operating in LAX, PDX or SEA, JFK, IAD, MIA, where they have the runway necessary and the airplane would have the range to let down over the ocean before entering the flow in a reasonably cost-effective way. I don't think SFO, for example, has the capacity available, so that's a major service area that would have to be served by connection. It takes them long enough to get up to supersonic over-land that it would not be cost-effective to serve ORD/MSP/DEN other major hubs, though I could see IAH working.

IMO, the money banked towards reviving the concorde fuselage would be better spent towards a modern super-sonic model. But not my money, and to my knowledge, the newer design hasn't left the drawing board. Had 9-11 not happened, which depressed the commercial market for more than a decade, it's possible we would already have it in at least prototype form, if not commercial service, but the financial scope of the airlines changed drastically with the impact of 9-11 followed by the recession; they are just now in most respects comparable to early 2001 in demand, though the multiple mergers in that time has changed the landscape for good as well.

I think the most likely US sponsor for supersonic service is someone like JetBlue, who works with niche markets, or ExecJet or a similar high-end business leasing enterprise. More likely than any US sponsor would be someone like Emirates or Qantas, with isolated distances from other world business entities and large purses. But short of someone who wants to spend a couple billion on a single airplane (just because it's the first; hopefully it would become more cost-effective as they built more), I don't see it happening.

The biggest change that made the Concorde desirable then, and not a factor now, is satellite communications. The issue was 4 hours London to NYC vs. 8+, with your critical people out of communication. That's no longer the case; a simple satellite enabled smart phone and a laptop makes that executive more effective than if they were in their own office with the distractions around them, so it's no longer a 4+ hour penalty to have them aloft. Makes the G650 or other bizjet a very cost-effective mode when compared to the price of any supersonic development. So that alone is likely to stall any serious investment; it would almost have to be a billionaire vanity exercise to make it happen.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Weighing in just for the fun of it. All my opinion/experience...

This is a great write up BBB! Thanks!

I can see the same interests building private spaceships reviving this area as well. My money is on Richard Branson and his Virgin Airlines, or some billionaire oil sheik in the middle east.

Quote: Ayecarumba

I can see the same interests building private spaceships reviving this area as well. My money is on Richard Branson and his Virgin Airlines, or some billionaire oil sheik in the middle east.

Branson's Virgin Galactic is a dead-end, high-priced joyride for the wealthy "airline."

There's noting wrong with that, but it's all it is. A suborbital "space plane" is indeed a good point to start really ultra-long trips in record time, albeit at very high cost, negligible payload and an uncomfortable ride. It's easy to visualize: ICBMs use suborbital trajectories. The first space launchers evolved from early attempts to use missiles to launch nukes far. It's all connected.

Quote: Nareed

Branson's Virgin Galactic is a dead-end, high-priced joyride for the wealthy "airline."

There's noting wrong with that, but it's all it is. A suborbital "space plane" is indeed a good point to start really ultra-long trips in record time, ...

Well maybe long distance travel for the wealthy will be combined with one orbit to make it a combination trip and joyride. It may prove more comfortable than sub-orbital, and the wealthy may be more willing to pay big bucks.

John Glenn : February 20, 1962
Mission duration 4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds
Orbits completed 3

==============
We discussed several times the aborted attempt by Singapore Airlines to fly nonstop to the USA on an Airbus A340-500 that began in 2004. The planes were reconfigured in 2008 for 100 business class seats. United is going to pick up the route out of SFO in a few months.

15,345 km Newark to Singapore: 28 June 2004 - 23 November 2013
14,114 km Los Angeles to Singapore: 3 February 2004 - 20 October 2013
13,592 km San Francisco to Singapore: 1 June, 2016 United Airlines using Boeing 787-9

United 789 configuration Seats:48 BusinessFirst 116 Economy 88 Economy Plus

It is possible United chose SFO since it was 522 km shorter, or they just didn't want to compete head to head with Singapore Air's 5th freedom flight from LAX via Tokyo to Singapore.

Perhaps a LAX to SIN suborbital flight the long way around the earth would be just the combination of joy ride and transportation that people would pay for.

14,203 km Auckland to Dubai on an Emirates Boeing 777-200LR is the current longest distance commercial flight

Quote: Pacomartin

Well maybe long distance travel for the wealthy will be combined with one orbit to make it a combination trip and joyride. It may prove more comfortable than sub-orbital, and the wealthy may be more willing to pay big bucks.

Definitions can get tricky. If you manage one orbit, you wouldn't be "sub orbital."

For celestial mechanics, I think the most useful definition concerned speed. That is, orbital is anything that goes fast enough to stay in orbit until it loses enough speed to drop from orbit. suborbital is anything that falls short of that.

Now, in theory you could go fast enough and far enough that you might take a full circuit around the world before re-entering the atmosphere, yet at no time have enough speed to maintain an orbit. I don't think anyone's done this.

BTW, and ICBM can accelerate at higher rates, and achieve higher speeds, than a suborbital space plane. Thus you might hit Moscow after only flying 15 minutes from North Dakota, but only because nukes are not as fragile as people. Suborbital passenger flights would still take hours.

But going from, say, LA to Sydney in 2.5 hours beats taking 14+ hours to do so.

Quote: Nareed

Definitions can get tricky. If you manage one orbit, you wouldn't be "sub orbital."

Of course

I am just saying that if you want to pay first class from Heathrow (London) - Changi (Singapore) 10,900 km
It is 13:05 westbound, and 13:30 eastbound
First Class Price £8,440.95 (=$12K) per passenger round trip ($24K for two passengers)

Now to fly on Etihad for a 2 passenger cabin you would pay $40K one way for the cabin. So round trip for two people would be 333% of BA price.
You would take much longer because the plane must stop in Dubai. But the passenger doesn't care as much about time as he does the pampering.

While a sub-orbital round trip flight of 22,000 km may offer extreme time savings, people may be willing to 400% of the above ticket price. But it is highly unlikely that they will pay dozens of times as much. Concorde tried to keep their price on par with First Class tickets on subsonic planes.

But, it is generally believed that people will initially pay over a million dollars for orbital tourism. It may be more profitable to offer a 60,000 km round trip flight that combines tourism and transportation. We know that people are willing to pay 1/4 million dollars for suborbital flights of very short duration.

A new company in Colorado, called "Boom" (no kidding), claims to be developing a 50-passenger Mach 2.2 jet. t also claims to have orders from an unnamed European airline, and from either Richard Branson or one of his Virgin airlines (I forget exactly), as well as to have support from Branson's Virgin Galactic engineering teams.

I don't really know whether to be even a little bit hopeful, or to yawn.

Claiming to have orders sounds good. But the same claim has been made for a few other SST projects. Remember, too, Concorde had orders from several airlines before it was even built, as did the joint program developing the US SST.

Placing orders for a paper airplane (one in the design stages) costs nothing. Placing orders on a plane without even a firm design costs nothing, either. It's not like orders for, say, A320s or 737s, where the planes are in production, have been tested, are certified, etc., and clearly the customer negotiates a price per unit and possibly plunks down an advance payment first.

Further, Boom (and that's an unfortunate name) is aiming for fares comparable to first class travel along the same rout. Concorde was more expensive than that. That's not entirely out of the question, given improvements in engine efficiencies over the years, but it's not easy. Also it has not commented on overland routes.

We'll see.

Trivia time! What two airlines flew the Concord? As always, please put answers in

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