Australia Joins the Race for Supersonic Flight
simpleflying.com
simpleflying.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Fast_Train_Joint_Venture
I hope that I am very wrong as Australia needs a fast air link to the rest of the world.
Anyone who knows anything about aircraft development stops reading now. That's a ludicrous timeline with no possibility of success. I suppose it's in the name, but all this article tells me is that "simpleflying" has no ability to judge credibility.
And it's not "Australia" joining the race, it's just some guy. Not worth your time.
At least as long as virtual is not a better experience than physical, faster travel will benefit them.
When you can go point to point anywhere on earth in about 30 mins, and only have to worry about the sonic boom during Re-entry, may be the more likely solution.
Especially in a world where super sonic passenger aircraft are flying.
If Starship does suborbital passenger service, I expect it will be limited to a handful of routes.
I still suspect that the number of issues for overland super sonic is going to have similar issues as starling landings…
1. It will be pricey. Counter-point - having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing; and perhaps it's not so expensive with new tech.
2. Environment. Counter-points - "if it were up to you, you'd ban air travel entirely"; let them purchase carbon credits or fund electric flight; is the marginal environmental impact that bad?
3. General comment about speed of innovation, regulations, where smart people these days are working, etc.
In the days of Zoom and soon stuff like Starlink, what population groups is this the case for?
The kind of stuff you need to be in person for tends to be the stuff that doesn't give you the advance timing to plan travel.
Singapore is 8h nonstop from Sydney. Tokyo is 9h. Los Angeles is 13h. Qantas was considering launching a 20h nonstop to London before COVID.
It‘s a much better value prop than halving transatlantic travel time, which is 6h, the smaller side of a reasonable sleep.
I work at a place that doesn't pay for anything beyond basic economy for business travel, which isn't that uncommon of a cost-cutting measure. I'm definitely not going to be able to expense expensive in flight wifi. To say nothing of work productivity on a cramped tin tube.
At least one of the startups working on it has promised comparable or lower per-seat mile cost, and has orders on book: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36952/boom-rolls-out-i...
There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc. And some types of business like sales also work better in person.
Which is why I mentioned Starlink.
> There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc.
I have family in Australia, and visit them without supersonic flight.
Going from weeks to a day - not to mention cheaper - makes a whole lot of sense. Going from a day to half a day at a higher price and likely a less cushy aircraft does not.
Additionally, the fact that Australia is a day away and Europe is half a day away is a major factor in why I have visited Europe a number of times and never been to Aus/NZ. I am almost certainly not the only person like this.
[0] https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/the-first-trans-atl... $375 flight vs $159 first class by boat https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/1930s-sailing-to-france-fr...
With things like airport security, weather delays, ground stops, etc., is going down to 3h worth several times the cost?
The Concorde found the answer is largely "not really".
If you actually believe that, you might want to look deeper into the environmental impact of the lifestyle of the super-rich. A very large percentage of aircraft emissions comes from frequent flyers already and an even more disproportionate part is by charter flights and private aircraft.
Case in point: bottled water costs a fortune compared to the equivalent amount of tap water (despite being basically the same or worse quality in many cases) and yet people are more than happy to pay the premium. The CA surtax on plastic bottles is but a blip on the radar for most consumers there.
It's similar to the discussion about how one side says having recycling programs makes over-consumption forgivable, but in practice, everything breaks down because manufacturers meld different recyclable materials together in such a way that makes the package unrecycleable, or use plastic types that cannot be sold by recyclers due to low demand, or consumers contaminate their trash, etc, and we just end up trucking mountains and mountains of unusable bales of materials to landfills somewhere instead.
The "let people do whatever as long as someone else picks up the externalized costs" is exactly how we got to the situation where the US was exporting plastic waste to China only to realize we now have a microplastics clusterfuck in our hands. So you'll have to forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical about the assumption that carbon offsets work 100% efficiently by merely looking at the amount of money transferring hands.
These people need to sit down and shut up for once.
And in this case, I think this would be a valid complaint. This is just an announcement that some people might look into some things. It's also a company that has wanted to build a spaceport in Australia for 20 years, and... hasn't.
For the space port venture they are planning to launch Ukraninan made Zenith rocket (which was used for Sea Launch back then). Looking into their top people - there are also Canadian based Ukraine immigrants, etc. One can see the pattern here. It is a pretty typical style of venture in immigrant communities with its natural advantages and disadvantages.
Wrt. SST to Australia - the best trajectory is ballistic, and Starship 1 hour flight LA to Sydney, 100 pax business or 500 cattle class is the future I think.
With hypothetical hype I mean the assumption this will be used for ballistic pax transport.
What would be the differentiator, if the ballistics dictate a full seat/couch anyways? The cattle in a mesh net, the bizniks in full divan? Would it make sense when any conceivable trip would be three hours max? Not to mention constraints mandated by entities like FAA for ... I don't know ... spatial arrangement regarding speed of evacuation to the emergency chutes, whatever?
edit: Thinking about it, would they even bother? Or would it rather be something like one seat fits all, after the applicants have sworn their fealty to their elonzniak overlord by opting into NetJets style access card? Similar to how Starlink is 99 universal credits everywhere?
i believe in the almighty symmetry breaking power of the price differentiation (or like it was said in one Soviet movie "There is no goal when the society doesn't practice differentiation based on the color of one's pants")
>ballistics dictate a full seat/couch anyways?
technically you're right, and thus instead of 100 (i used 500/100 just based on ballpark comparison of Starship payload volume vs. 747) there would be more like 300+ business - good for SpaceX :)
>applicants have sworn their fealty to their elonzniak overlord by opting into NetJets style access card?
and 1000000 credits gets you around the Moon, couple 00 more - around the Mars. The future is bright. To some.
Uncounted supersonic aircraft startups went bust trying to make own engines (and that with making turbojets actually being easier than modern turbofans)
For everything else, it's sixties-seventies materials, and technology.
In fact, it's much easier for example to get steel, and aluminium alloys withstanding 200C°-300C° than in sixties.
Strong actuators for control surfaces are both better, and easier to make now because of aircraft electrification.
Internal structure can be made easier with composites today than with complex forged parts 60 years ago.
And of course, supersonic aerodynamics is now much easier with computers.
For a supersonic jet, a lot of the compression is done by the intake, so the compression in the engine must be much lower, around 10-20. This is why off the shelf engines don't work very well for supersonic.
The concorde used a pressure ratio 11.3 from the engine, but combined with the intake it was 82 when at cruise. This actually made it very efficient at 43%. During taxi and climb-out however, the low pressure ratio made it a real gas guzzler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Range
And you're right, the ballpark fuel consumption for Concorde says your hourly rate is not that dissimilar in subsonic than in supersonic so you better fly fast quick...
I guess they could wait until they've very far away to actually go supersonic, though, and slow down while still really far from the landing strip, but if they're flying over populated regions at all supersonic, it's going to mini earthquake everyone underneath the flight path.
So the whole "business" argument of having a full work day flying east doesn't really work. Unless you can fly really really really fast which none of these planes do.
The only gain flying east is less flying time.