Smells like vaporware
I used to work with people who were involved.
Yhe real killer for the Concorde was fiber optic undersea cables, and the low cost communications they enabled. Why go through all the hassles involved in flying there when you can Skype in from your desk?
I’ll believe in the hype when they start using phrases like sub-orbital, otherwise sounds like just a faster arctic circle route.
Declan
Concorde was a British/French airplane designed and produced in Europe. How could American political lobbying significantly influence its success or failure?
It could not fly supersonically over land in the US, but this had nothing to do with lobbying – any US civil SST also could not. Concorde had limited range, a small passenger capacity, could not fly long trans-Pacific routes, and was very expensive to operate. Its useful advantage was basically limited to super-premium tran-atlantic routes.
If a US air carrier wanted to buy some Concordes they would have bought them, just like they buy Airbus today. Concorde had insufficient compelling advantages to offset the cost and limitations, so US carriers didn’t buy them. I don’t see how what lobbying has to do with this.
If nothing else, “Boom” seems like a really poor name for an aircraft manufacturer.
–Mark
And, yet, the number of passengers traveling globally by air keeps climbing. Here’s the Bureau of Transportation Statistics if you want to take a look at the data.
I don’t know if Boom is going to succeed. It’s probably a long shot. But suggesting that there’s no market, or that the failures of the Concorde will necessarily repeat seems off base. The world has changed a lot since 1980.
And guess what: they were much in demand at the time. But American aerospace companies successfully lobbied to prevent landing rights. The problem was that it wasn’t American. It was a competitor to which American aircraft manufacturers had no answer. Had the plane been at least part-American then there wouldn’t have been a problem.
They did, but cancelled their options.
OK, so the only possible engines mentioned so far are the GE J85, it’s a 1950’s design so I can’t imagine it’s particularly fuel efficient. Are there any other engines available for purchase by civilian companies that could possibly push this thing to mach 2.2? They do clearly say “existing engines”.
The other thing that’s odd about this is they are going straight to a 40 seat version designed for scheduled flights. It would seem to make more sense to me to first make a smaller 10 seat model as a private jet. There’s certainly at least 40 or so billionaires and heads of state globally that would buy one just for the status symbol and don’t care too much about running costs. There’s a bunch of other companies aiming for this market but they all seem to be taking many years of development or are put on hold indefinately. On the other hand boom was formed in March this year from what I can tell and claims they’ll have a prototype by end of next year ???
Yes, that seemed to me to be disadvantageous to me from the start.
-Carnivorousplant.
It’s doubly bad, not only because of association with crashing, but also because it makes people think of the sonic boom, which is the part of supersonic flight you want people to forget about. I guess they knew all this and think its “edgy”.
Quartz, this is GQ. You’ve stated this more than once, and I’d like some proof. And no, “I talked to some people one time” isn’t a cite.
it’s not that the J85 is the only thing which can do it , it’s that a supersonic aircraft needs a turbojet (or low-bypass turbofan) engine with re-heat (afterburning) to get the job done. Turbojets and low-bypass turbofans are inefficient enough as it is; add afterburning and they’re little more than fuel-sucking rockets. Airlines live and die by “asses in seats,” so it’s in their best interest to shuffle people around in big, sub-Mach planes with enormous, slow-spinning turbofans. Supersonic aircraft burn so much fuel and carry so few passengers that they’re not worth talking about.
Well yeah that was the consensus last time this was discussed in GQ, but look at the list of names involved, these guys should know what they are talking about. Is it possible they are trying to make a design that could supercruise super sonically without having to use after burners at all, even during take off and when passing mach 1?
I’m wondering if the picture in the article is entirely accurate. To carry enough fuel, I presume the fuselage would be a large tank too. Much like the 747 where the center between the wings is a big tank (and has exploded at least once) I wonder how confident passengers will feel sitting on top of an extremely large tank? Toward the end of the flight I presume it will be a giant air tank at flash-point vapour density?
the real question is - has supersonic jet engine development made a decent amount of progress since the early 1960’s? Possibly it has.
As for getting a prototype in two years - maybe by then they’ll have a decent number of engineering drawings.
Well Scaled Composites timeline for SpaceShip one was three years from full time development until it’s successful flights and then retirement. A flyable prototype is a long way from FAE approval, but seems like it’s possible in practise.
But with $2 million in funding, all they can pay for is a handful of engineers shooting the shit at a conference table for a year or two. Their “senior staff” can be payed only with the promise of future profits. I’d be surprised if they could even get a wind tunnel model with so little money…
Concorde’s first European commercial service began on January 21, 1976. Within a few months it was approved for US commercial service to Dulles airport on May 24, 1976.
A group of environmentalists in league with the New York Port Authority (not aerospace companies) tried to ban Concorde from New York until 1977, when the US Supreme Court overturned this. Even with that delay Concorde was flying to NYC in 1977, one year after its first commercial service anywhere.
So there were forces trying to prevent Concorde US landing rights but these were not predominately American aerospace companies but environmentalists and municipal officials. This is documented in the book “Concorde Conspiracy”, by Graham M. Simons.
Ultimately they only slightly delayed these landing rights, allowing Concorde to fly to the most profitable US it could reach. Thus Concorde was mostly free to succeed or fail on its own merits.
The problem is Concorde had a short range and very limited passenger capacity. It could barely make it across the Atlantic. No supersonic civil airliners – US or otherwise – were/are permitted on US overland flights. That restricts any SST whether Concorde or a US design to trans-oceanic supersonic flight. Concorde was a high-priced, niche product with limited range performance and a very high fuel cost per passenger mile. It began operations in an era of oil supply crisis and organized rabid environmentalists looking for a rallying point.
A key opponent to Concorde was British citizen Richard Wiggs who started the “Anti-Concorde Project”: Anti-Concorde Project - Wikipedia
It is when the people to whom I talked were the ones involved in designing, building, selling, etc the plane.
What are the kerosene-per-passenger-mile costs for super- versus sub-sonic travel? Is this a business plan that depends on continued cheap fuel?
Interesting 1977 Atlantic article on Concorde politics and challenges, written closer to the events in question but of course without whatever benefit hindsight provides us today: