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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

I don’t especially get the supersonic flight love especially from people who will never pay the $10k or whatever to take a transatlantic supersonic flight. I don’t love long economy flights. But honestly there’s not a lot wrong with modern lie flat business. A few hours of my time is not that big a deal.

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You sound like someone who doesn't live that far away from your destination. I live in Australia. Bring the boom boom flights! If I can get to London or New York in less than 20 hours, I will be very happy.

Flying trans-Pacific or the equivalent without refueling requires a whole different class of aircraft and seems very unlikely.

But parent didn't say they wanted that without any refueling. A London - Sydney or London - Melbourne flight would have several eligible refueling locations in Asia and Middle East. Australia - West Coast of the US would be more challenging I guess, but probably not impossible, perhaps some of the diversion airports in the Pacific would be able to support refueling operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversion_airport

Once you start having refueling stops, you're losing a lot of the benefits to supersonic flight. Many of the inefficiencies are in the subsonic range and now you're going to be in queues for takeoff.

Yes I see what you mean. I would be curious to see some estimates though(I'm not competent enough to try that) - how much time, if any, would you save, compared to an average flight, even taking the necessary refueling stops?

The airports where one might refuel don't necessarily have to be big congested megahubs. Boom's a small plane, I wonder what the runway requirements are?

The Boom plans to land at 185 knots/213MPH, comparable to a 737-800. They probably need a fraction of the distance to stop though, since the plane has about 1/3 of the seating capacity.

Wouldn't be so sure. Stopping depends mainly on how good the thrust reversers are. Wheel brakes will only take you so far (and being lighter doesn't meaningfully help you.. lighter weight means less traction.

Airliners are required to be able to land with reverse-thrust inoperative: reversers are useful for shorter taxi times and reducing brake wear but they aren't essential.

Rome wasn't built in a day. We didn't get to testing 17,000 km flights overnight.

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