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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

> While it's true that the 747 was originally meant as a cargo carrier

I was surprised by this so I consulted Wikipedia. Apparently when the 747 was designed they were convinced enough that passengers in the future would not want to travel subsonically, so they designed the 747 to convert to a freighter, to not have to throw the design away when it's hard to attract passengers due to the "low" 0.8 mach speeds!

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In general there was a time when supersonic flight was considered the future evolution that will displace the existing tech, like jets displaced propeller aircraft. The Concorde was supposed to be the first one, and it was designed as a general use plane, it wasn't until much later British Airways and Air France thought about marketing it for business/first class "luxury" experience.

For a myriad of reasons ( Boeing failing to make their own supersonic airliner which helped the US Congress banning supersonic flights over the US being one of them), we never got there though, and it seems we never will since the currently planned crop of supersonic airliners ( Boom and co) are specifically targeting the business niche.

> Boeing failing to make their own supersonic airliner which helped the US Congress banning supersonic flights over the US being one of them

You sure about that order? I thought supersonic domestic flights got banned in the US and then the Boeing supersonic airliner was doomed. I’m not positive, hence asking.

Nope, government funding of Boeing's SST was cut in 1971, while the SST ban over the US was enacted in 1973. It's fairly certain that had Boeing made an SST there wouldn't have been any ban.

Thanks! I only knew the oft parroted version of the story from family members who worked at Boeing. I guess the detail I didn’t immediately recall was “plane over budget” (which likely lead to the government funding you mentioned being pulled). I still believe that the biggest reason for the ban was NIMBYs though, if you’ve ever been around sonic booms you know how intrusive they are. I lived just far enough away from a military base as a kid that we happened to be near where pilots would occasionally go super sonic as part of their training. After living in California years later and experiencing multiple earthquakes, I’d say the sonic boom was about like a magnitude 6, but only lasting for a couple seconds.

Isn't the main reason the amount of fuel required to fly supersonic?

The designs did burn a lot of fuel, but sonic booms were also extremely unpopular.

The FAA picked Oklahoma City (without asking them first) for an experiment to subject a city to regular sonic booms. It, uh, didn’t go well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tes...

Right, but what I meant was that it'd be difficult to have a sustainable supersonic flight business given the fuel consumption required at those sppeds. My understanding is that even though Air France and British Airways were charging twice the price of normal first class for Concord, they were losing money on them.

I'm surprised there aren't supersonic business jet though.

> My understanding is that even though Air France and British Airways were charging twice the price of normal first class for Concord, they were losing money on them.

They weren't, the Concordes were quite profitable until 9/11 and the following slump in international travel ( due to fear, increased controls and inconveniences) and increase in oil prices.

> I'm surprised there aren't supersonic business jet though

There are companies trying to build supersonic business jets, like Boom.

It was a novelty. The market was small the expectation that it costly but still profitable is easy.

But I wouldn't care for sonic travel besides the novelty.

Price wins

Admittedly for a unique minority Concorde wasn't a novelty at all: the very few journalists who covered Washington and London global political developments (and who were indulged the budget) used Concorde more often than any red eye shuttle. I actually associate the atrocious decline in public US - UK understanding to this absurdity. The absurdity being how much we needed a humanist perspective on transatlantic relations after 9/11 but got informationally waterboarded instead by sheer volume of grade school quality wire release. The cost of running Speed Bird even a little longer for diplomatic corps reporting should have been a mutual national priority.

Also, that happened to be right around the end of their lifespans anyways, and no one wanted to invest in a second generation plane.

If curious what a sonic boom sounds like. I found this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_KbZON5sW0

The normal caveat about how microphones are really unable to capture sounds of this magnitude probably apply here.

For example, I once went to vandenburg to see a rocket launch and that was the biggest sound I have ever heard, not the loudest, we were five miles away, but the way the sound shook you impressed the hell out of me.

Indeed, the 747 is quite popular amongst cargo carriers.

In comparison, part of the A380’s short life is that it’s useless as a freighter since a minimal amount of freight would bring it to “too heavy to fly” territory.

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