You mean, can you start an all-supersonic scheduled airline, with soon-to-be-built equipment, and get enough customers who are willing to pay enough to cover your costs?
No one’s planning to try, are they?
By the way: “cover your costs” means including paying for the aircraft’s development. That’s what Concorde didn’t do.
If I were a gambler, I would bet we’ll see supersonic bizjets before airliners.
I’ve flown corporate jets for years and what was said earlier in the thread is true - for many people with the means to fly private, there are very few limits. I’ve seen astonishing amounts of money spent (or wasted, many would say) on flying rich people around. If there were a supersonic equivalent that cost significantly more, there is a section of the market that would go for it.
Enough to make it a viable segment of the industry? I don’t know. But I’d wager my lunch money on it happening in my lifetime.
I don’t know, that’s why I ask. But it seems these folks are. Velocity posted this link earlier:
I know that’s CG but it’s a beautiful idea.
Well, maybe. I have no doubt that the über-wealthy would be willing to buy or lease a 8-12 passenger supersonic bizjet even at a large premium over the costs of a super-midsize, but is there enough of a market to justify the engineering, safety testing, and facilities costs that would be required to support such a system about to operate out of regional airports? Conventional bizjets are largely just downsized commercial jetliners in terms of technology and engineering, and they can leverage a lot of development off of those systems without doing much in the way of novel development. Supersonic aircraft, on the other hand, have a lot of conditions that they experience that are outside of experience with conventional commercial and business jets. The special requirements of the Concorde fuel system are instructive; fuel wasn’t just an energy source but also movable ballast and coolant for that aircraft, and frankly probably even more critical for a smaller supersonic passenger aircraft.
Stranger
Does size matter for sonic boom? For instance, would a bizjet about 1/3 the size of concorde emit a smaller/quieter sonic boom? If so, it could be viable.
The sound pressure intensity of the sonic boom roughly corresponds to the power that goes into forming the shockwave, and the effective ‘length’ of the shockwave (i.e. the duration over which the pressure wave is distributed) scales to the length of the aircraft by a factor of 3/2. That means that while smaller aircraft will have less power in the shockwave, it will also be more intense (all things being equal) because it is delivered over a shorter period of time. The intensity of the wave as it propagates to the ground will depend upon the altitude of the aircraft and whether the aircraft is designed to deflect the shockwave upward (which, I think will result in some increased inefficiencies in addition to the energy that is lost into forming the shockwave). Supersonic aircraft will typically fly at higher altitudes anyway (the Concorde SST had a cruising altitude of ~60 kft) but even a lower intensity shock will still produce a pronounced ‘thumb’ or ‘bang’, that if you have to experience it multiple times a day is adverse sound pollution even if it doesn’t do physical damage or exceed occupational noise limits. Anyone who has lived downrange of a military airbase and had to endure fighter jets engaging afterburners during takeoff can attest to how this affects qualify of life.
Stranger
If they could get enough range to fly across the Pacific it seems like there could be some real possibilities. Those cushy lie flat seats in business class look nice but take up a lot of room. They are not hard to justify for a 12 hour flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. With a six hour flight, even rich executives would settle for traditional but nice seats. You could put more seats on the airplane that way.
Yeah, I’m not sure why the Boom Overture was designed to have range that falls short of being able to do cross-Pacific.
My grad school advisor held a number of leadership positions under the aegis of NASA and various university consortia, and was constantly flying complicated routes between many different conferences, meetings, and such. He also had a pilot’s license. He often joked that it’d be easier to just issue him a trainer jet (I can’t remember which model he said), rather than trying to schedule all of his travel through airlines.
So they can propose a quick fix of AI-controlled aerial refueling stations in continuous suborbital flight. Also useful for your global surveillance and mass assassination program.
Stranger
Is there a reason the new breed of SST can’t fly sub-sonic over land at high altitude and (thus) higher cruise speeds and then, once over an ocean, go supersonic? Not as fast as supersonic the whole way but still makes a discernible difference in flight time (especially over the Pacific assuming it has the range).
Vehicles designed for supersonic flight are generally not very efficient at transonic and lower speeds. In dog breeder terms, it is like trying to breed for a dog with the speed of a greyhound and the burrow-flushing ability of a dachshund. Variable wing geometry used on planes like the F-111, F-14, and B-1B can give better capabilities in different regimes of flight but come with their own high maintenance costs and risk of failure.
Stranger
This is more likely. As was mentioned, the time to get through the airport checkin, security, loading etc. and need to be early to not miss the flight - plus waiting for luggage afterwards, etc. - adds enough to a transaltlantic (or trancontinental) flight that saving 3 hours is not that notable. Being able to drive up to the aircraft on demand, and depart as soon as all the party are aboard, with customs and transportation already waiting when you arrive, beats scheduled flights any day.
Boom is allegedly building their prototype full aircraft now, they finished the factory (to produce 33 plans a year) last year. It’s hard to nail down more recent details, bu they did plan tests of the full aircraft in 2027 in an earlier timeline(!).
I think the designed range is the best tradeoff between fuel capacity and load capacity. It’s enough to go almost anywhere in Europe, and Vancouver to Tokyo, and barely from Seattle - the problem, I assume, is that the fuel demands are such that you are trading passenger capacity for fuel capacity.. A few hundred extra miles would do San Francisco or LA to Tokyo. Or, Hawaii to Sydney Australia. I would not be surprised if they design a longer range version once it works. So a quick refuel stopover in Hawaii or Tokyo would make most of eastern Asia accessible. The question is whether 7 hours instead of 12 for LAX to Sydney really matters… or 8 with refuel in Honolulu. Or from NYC where it would be 16 hrs vs 9.5 plus 2 refuels.
The overall parameters of the Boom aircraft look a bit on the marginal side to me. Not that I am anything more than a random punter who will likely never be able to justify a flight.
The claimed range is slightly lower than the Concorde, cruise speed is Mach 1.7 versus Concorde’s 2.0. Compared to a 787 (0.85) and 737 (0.63), Boom is between 2 and 2.5 times faster.
The big claim is that they will have business class level of seating at current business class ticket pricing. The illustration is of a nice seat with lots of AV goodies. But not modern top tier international business class seating comfort. To make this work the aircraft will need to be pretty fuel efficient, and not cost Concorde money. And it will need a sane maintenance schedule. Technological advances in the decades since Concorde would reasonably be expected to help a lot. But there are without doubt a lot of areas that have languished in the era of sub-sonic passenger jets that will need sorting out. Heat management is one that one might guess holds all manner of unknown unknowns.
The question of boom-less flight is interesting. NASA has done work on this, however my very limited understanding is that this mostly only works for speeds up to Mach 1.6, and is dependant upon atmospheric conditions - and thus can’t be guaranteed. Lack of guarantee might make for some very unfortunate logistic implications. If an aircraft is forced to travel subsonic on part of a route that is usually supersonic, the fuel efficiency may become so poor that it cannot complete the journey, and will need to divert. How scheduling manages those sorts of events, and how they affect market perception; that is not going to be a trivial question.
Another big market that didn’t exist in the days of Concorde that now directly competes is the new standard of first class and business class international travel. When first class offers a private cabin, obsequious service, full size bed, shower, really good food and general pampering, and even international business class offers privacy screening and a flat folding seat and bedding, the allure of just a faster journey is harder to market. Jet lag remains no matter how you travel. For tourists that can afford it, pampering may win over speed.
Once a journey requires multiple refuelling stops, the advantages start to fall away. A route where all passengers are end to end without the aircraft pulling up to a terminal might get a short turn around. Even then the time impost of slowing from cruise, landing, taking off, and reaching cruise again is eating into the time, even for zero time on the ground. At a busy airport the time lost queueing on the ground can be bad enough. Every additional stage adds risk that the journey will be delayed, and the raw speed advantage becomes less compelling.
There are clearly routes where the extra speed works. The Concorde showed this. Dropping a full day’s journey down to half a day enables different choices. But whether there are enough of these scenarios is not clear.