While I can’t dispute you and perhaps what your claim may be true… this is not a reliable citation based on facts. This is only an opinion from an extremely biased group of people who, you claim, told it to you.
I’m not 100% sure that’s even possible. you’ve got to do all sorts of novel tricks at the engine inlet when you’re going trans-sonic/super sonic. I suppose you could transition over to something like ramjets/scramjets, but I don’t know what kind of fuel consumption those would entail.
I don’t know how much; I’m sure a lot of work has been wringing more efficiency out of them. But in concept they’re still the same; a stack of fans blowing air into a flamethrower, which then blows through another smaller stack of fans. AFAIK modern (supersonic) fighter jets have moved to low-bypass turbofans, which are more efficient and also provide more fresh air for the afterburner when needed.
In the Bloomberg article they claim it will be “30 percent more efficient than the Concorde was.” That doesn’t sound very optimistic…?
Why am I yet again reminded of the Moller Aircar, which has been two years and one more big investor short of perfecting all its inherent flaws for most of my life?
ETA: :faceslap: Of course. It’s on the cover of Popular Technowankers. Too.
They couldn’t justify the cost of more efficient Concorde engines so I doubt there’s much out there. There are Russian engines available commercially, I don’t know anything about them. The engines from the Concordes are probably for sale, but that wouldn’t explain any claim of improved efficiency. But there are engines made for the military that aren’t available for commercial use only because no one has paid enough money to start producing a commercial version. They don’t just start making $million+ engines because someone might buy them.
Anyway, no one is taking this all that seriously. The company is aligned with the Virgin space program and we haven’t seen those commercial spaceflights yet.
I put this list together of the general flow of how I’ve seen and expect similar ideas to mature. This is based on 2 minutes worth of thinking. Pick any big idea and see how they fit:
Big idea with wildly exciting claims
Raise money based on claims
Do some technical work
Be behind schedule from initial claims, but features still there
Raise more money
Hit snags
Claim snags not related to technology
Blame snags on haters who have an axe to grind
Try to raise more money
Fail to raise enough
Scale back technical claims
Next (less big) idea with limited capability
Produce a prototype or few
Nobody cares, don’t sell enough
Company ceases operation
Blame detractors, haters and those who have an axe to grind
You forgot the last two steps:
Rinse
Repeat
Ah. Yes. [del]Commercial spaceflight[/del] transonic airliners on the cheap by using salvage parts. That always works so well.
Oh, I dunno. Boeing seems to have done ok despite its name sounding like a piece of the plane just sprung off (boing!).
Or the frame is failing under stress.
I was always surprised that the movie “Boeing Boeing” didn’t have any legal problems using that name.
–Mark
(sorry)