I heard there is talk of a SST flying at twice the speed of today’s (late) SST, IIRC. I must wonder just how much acceleration can one bear? Surely there is an “upper limit” to commercial flight?
- Jinx
You do know there’s a difference between “speed” and “acceleration”, right?
The upper limit is set in the atmosphere by aerodynamic heating of the skin of the aircraft. It’s very hard to design aircraft that can go much faster than 2.5 times the speed of sound.
So if we’re ever going to see aircraft faster than the Concorde, they’ll probably make suborbital jumps outside of the atmosphere.
The problem with the Concorde was ticket price. It was just too expensive.
The ticket price was only part of the problem. I understand the Concorde was also about as cramped as a medium sized commuter aircraft. There was also the whole noise polution thing.
Supersonic airliners are no longer needed. Telecommuting ended the need to be anywhere quickly. Why pay humongo bucks to fly, when you can teleconfrence and never leave the comfort of your office, or home.