Is any super sonic flight truly commercially viable/sustainable or is this just a skunkworks front?
$1000 vs $2400 to get to Europe in 6 hours instead of 12? A lot of people who just hate those long flights would pay for it, especially given that flights are only a portion of total vacation cost, together with hotels, etc.
Or for a flight inside the US, $1000 rather than $400, but to get from coast to coast in 3 hours rather than 6, may be very worth it for some people.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/107206/how-clos...
After all, concorde design started almost 75 years ago, surely we've learned a thing or two on how to design aircrafts with lower maintenance & operating costs in that time.
The only reason it kept flying for 33 years is a vanity project for national airlines.
Which it was excellent at. Actually viable business? Not so much.
It was able to coast, eventually, but that’s some very fancy accounting.
“French Transport Minister Daniel Hoeffel, saying France ''will not and cannot abandon Concorde,'' signed a new agreement with Air France this week. The French Government, which with Britain had spent more than $2 billion developing the world's first supersonic passenger aircraft, will pay 90 percent of the plane's estimated operating losses for the next three years, compared with 70 percent in the past.
Under the new pact, the French taxpayer will contribute $66 million this year to the cost of Air France's champagne-and-caviar service linking Paris with New York, Washington, Caracas and Rio de Janeiro. In 1982, when losses are expected to decline slightly, the subsidy will be about $64 million, and in 1983, $59 million.”
If California High Speed Rail loses a little bit of money, I won't be too upset by it. Unfortunately the up front costs are much higher, but at the same time, massive, massive infrastructure development is happening in California all along the length of the state, and the government is acquiring the rights to develop public transportation both now and into the future on that land. Again, there are worse ways to spend the money in my opinion.
Bad for climate. Bad for the people below enjoying the noise. Bad for all the other things you could do with 2 billion. (A lot)
Only good for people who want jetting quickly around the World.
And it is good for material research, but that's the same argument for military development.
> The only reason it kept flying for 33 years is a vanity project for national airlines.
Something that loses money, but not so much money that it can't be justified as a vanity project, seems like the sort of thing that could be profitable with tweaks and improvements.
Like it didn't work, but it was close enough to working that reasonable investors could say: second time will be the charm. Especially given how much more mature aeroplane technology is now vs the 1950s.
To put it in perspective, we first broke the sound barrier in 1947. People started designing the concorde in 1954 only 7 years later. It is now three quarters of a century later. Technology has improved a lot since then.
Boom is talking about "Boomless Cruise" being up to mach 1.3. they are trying to bounce the downward going sound waves off the atmosphere, bouncing them back up. It seems to be significantly speed dependent? https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/boom-supersonic-ann...
A sonic boom is what you get when a traditional solid, largely flat-ish airfoil pushes air smoothly through the transition to supersonic flight. Very ELI5, but during the transition the energy/noise being put into the air basically stops dissipating from the aircraft at the point of transition, and so all that noise clumps together into a shockwave.
The shape of the X-59 makes it such that the transition doesn't happen uniformly over the air surfaces of the plane at the same time. It does get a little noisier around the transition, but it not a shockwave at all.
And TIL I learn that it's even possible to break the sound barrier without a boom of some kind (assuming NASA haven't found otherwise and adopted Boom's strategy in the years since you were hearing about it from them). Cheers for the interesting comment!
Edit: although I hope somebody can answer sroussey's original comment of «What happens when there are 1000 flights over land all having sonic booms, and 1000 reflecting sonic booms, and the 1001 plane flies through all the sonic booms?», since if Boom are successful I assume they're more likely to have thousands (or at least enough to have overlapping flights at times) of planes in the air than NASA. Unless, I guess, NASA do such a good job of demonstrating that you can actually get rid of the boom rather than just redirecting where the sound waves go that Boom change their strategy to that and/or get outcompeted by rival companies doing the NASA way. ("Just" is a little unfair, since Boom's technique seems incredibly clever to me.)
It's a bit like stealth tech: early "low observable" fighter planes did things like switch to unibody cockpits so there were fewer reflective interfaces and therefore a smaller radar cross section. Then the F-117 and B-2 went with "be fucking invisible to radar" (or approximately so). Totally changes the game.
A "sonic thump" will be noisier than normal operating engine noise. You will hear it and it will be noticeable in the sense that unlike regular airplane takeoff and landing, it will be a distinct transitory sound.
But in terms of absolute noise levels and mechanical properties, the "sonic thump" of a commercial airline would probably be considerably quieter than, for example, the regular takeoff/landing noise of a military jet. It needs to be characterized and understood to see what the effect would be on communities living near supersonic airports, but not a real engineering concern.
Your question is valid with respect to Boom though, and that is part of their challenge to getting regulatory approval for supersonic transition over land.
It was also far less pleasant a ride than even most economy class tickets for long hall flights. The space was more cramped and it was much louder inside the cabin. Personally, Id rather spend more for nicer seats on a longer flight than worse seats on a shorter flight. And a lot of people with money felt the same.
Design changes might help with the passenger comfort problem but when the plane is already running at a loss, it’s a hard sell asking for more R&D costs (which would be massive) to redevelop the concord.
I used to be really impatient with travel and tried my best to save travel time, and never took the train. Then I forced my self to change my ways.
Nowdays, I find thst plan the train travel days as part of the trip: Sure, it takes me a whole day to get somewhere, but I allocate that time for hacking on the laptop on a side project, reading a book, or playing a game on the Steam Deck, things I normally don't find that much time for. I find e.g. my vacation satisfaction actually has gone up.
Train travel is also easier with (my) kids than air travel despite the longer duration, because you can roam the train more, change location to the restaurant, etc.
Everything about air travel is rushed, stressful, and unpleasant. Yeah, I can get there in 3 hours (if you account for the "show up two hours early in case we understaffed the check-in desk" thing), but by the time I get there I'm _wiped_. Plus I'm probably going to end up either leaving or arriving at some ungodly hour that means my sleep schedule's screwed and that's basically all I'm getting done that day anyway.
The train I take instead runs every 30 minutes. You can rock up 6 minutes before the train leaves and walk right on after someone scans a QR code. You can bring a drink! There's tons of space for people and luggage. The seats are huge. Your legs fit. The tray is big enough to actually work on. You can get up and go for a walk. There's a water fountain and water bottle filler. The washroom is bigger than some bedrooms I've had.
If you're traveling with kids you can actually book seats at a full-fledged table and have lots of room for activities and colouring and such.
And it takes 5 hours. So sure, in theory it's two hours longer. In reality, I've got back almost 5 hours of my day. And I can arrive at a reasonable hour and not tired and stressed to shit and actually do things with the rest of my time.
Last trip I used the way there for some relaxing. Did some reading, played some games, generally just wound down. On the way back I was able to get some work done effectively so actually got paid for my travel day. Either way, it was a much better experience.
Also, concord is still louder and more cramped than economy on a typical long hall 747.
The ones at air shows felt more specious than the commercial ones. Or at least that’s how it was from my admittedly very limited first hand experience.
I was fortunate to fly an Air France Concorde between JFK and CDG and, while the seats were leather (which was not the case in economy at the time), they were no larger than economy seats.
The windows were tiny and the cabin itself was also quite small. It definitely felt cramped.
The price difference between direct and connecting flights, for example, already shows how much more expensive the convenience can be.
The Concorde was a loss for the manufacturer, though.
Don't those people already have access to private jets?
LA to NYC first class (lie flat) on American = $3k LA to NYC on a super-midsize PJ (seats 8) = ~$50k
Even empty legs cost way more than this:
Miami to NYC on a Citation X = $24k
Not only that, but on a cross-country flight, the commercial first class is more comfortable than a midsize.
But yes that's what I meant, with a private plane you pay for the plane not per seat. I guess chartering a netjet would be cheaper than say 8 first-class seats.
And yes, private jets tend to fly faster. Yes, commercial jets can fly faster, but they don't as they have determined the most fuel efficient cruising speeds. Private jets are less concerned about that. You can see the same thing with your car. The faster you drive, the worse your MPG.
I’ve looked at it a few times and flying private is just tantalizingly out of reach for a private vacation with a large family. Far less cost than you would expect (but still a 1% privilege).
Did I mention private jets aren't subject to the TSA?
Boom the only company trying to seriously do it, and they are facing a major uphill battle and will need many billions more.
And this NASA project doesn't really solve the problem, because its primary way to avoid the noise, is to reduce what would be cabin space for the already limited space. So that makes commercial viability even worse.
https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/breaking-the-sound-barrier-...
Boom claims to have completed their Overture facilities and plans to unveil a completed aircraft this year.[0]