81–90 of 283 posts
The biggest time sink when traveling between continents is the jet lag. A faster jet doesn’t fix that, it only costs more and pollutes more.
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That's not the issue. It's the third supersonic airliner, not the second; the Soviet Union had the Tu-144.
Which is what I meant - it was designed and built by the state, not a private company, so the careful wording is probably correct. Although come to think of it, Sud Aviation/Aerospatiale was also a state-owned company, and the BAC wasn't private either, so the nitpicking can go on forever.
> first privately built supersonic airliner and the second ever after Concorde
In this sentence, do you think "second ever" refers to "second ever privately built supersonic airliner"? Or "second ever supersonic airliner"?
If the Concorde was the first privately built supersonic airliner, what airplane is "first" intended to refer to in Boom's marketing?
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To address the "empty Concorde" problem, Boom is explicitly targeting a 50-seat business class layout with similar seat cost per mile. Filling 50 comfortable seats is an order of magnitude easier than filling 100 uncomfortable ones.
Umm... ask every 'business class only' airline that has come (and gone...) about that.
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The traditional solution was to only allow supersonic flights on the coasts where the jet could fly out over the ocean for the boom.
There is a common misconception that the boom happens once while accelerating through the speed of sound. In fact it happens continuously while traveling supersonic. The Concord mostly (only?) flew transatlantic mostly for that reason. The US military hasn’t always been shy about continental supersonic flight. I grew up near Beale AFB where the SR71 was stationed and hearing a sonic boom was not an uncommon occouranc…
If I recall correctly the Concorde used about 2 tonnes of fuel rolling on the ground alone.. I wonder how this new aircraft fares for fuel consumption? I believe the Concorde is a marvel. You could travel faster than the rotation of the earth in it! However I don’t think we need more environmentally unsustainable travel.
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Seems to me that everything is nonlinear in the domain of aircraft, particularly when concerned with "efficiency". There is an equation [1] which makes it clear that the power required to maintain flight is a function of air density, drag coefficient, lift coefficient, wing area, and -- velocity cubed. All things being equal (which they never are), double the speed and you need 8 times the power. So in the most simpl…
> Seems to me that everything is nonlinear in the domain of aircraft, particularly when concerned with "efficiency". The same physics applies to fast trains and other modes of transit. Fast electric trains have the advantage of not having to lug their fuel along with them at speed. > consider that energy is a function of both power and time applied; if you double the speed to fly from say London to NY, would you cut…
If I recall correctly the Concorde used about 2 tonnes of fuel rolling on the ground alone.. I wonder how this new aircraft fares for fuel consumption? I believe the Concorde is a marvel. You could travel faster than the rotation of the earth in it! However I don’t think we need more environmentally unsustainable travel.
Yeah, much more excited if there were talk of high-speed rail criss-crossing the U.S.
As a (pre-Covid) extreme frequent flyer, supersonic and other rapid point to point initiatives are thoroughly unenticing. Part of the reason I loved long flights was the ability to put away the laptop and zone out to a book or movie with some wine before landing, dealing with immigration, hotels, Ubers, and days of frenetic, high stress meetings afterward. The prospect of trying to optimize how fast we can jump from…
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I trust Boom has smart people working on these things, but... model aviation doesn't scale up[1]. It's interesting they're going with a scaled-down model instead of a full-scale testbed. The article seems to incidate they're wanting to go from the scaled-down model as a PoC, then onto an actual airline that JAL want's to fly. I'd think they'd need a full-sized PoC first... > “They want to enjoy a first-mover advantag…
Quadcopters don't scale up. Flyable scale models have used extensively in other aviation research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDRkNseNxU
This would be a super cool project to work on. Their website has a fun tour of all the engineering components of it: https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build