271–280 of 531 posts
IMHO a better title would have been: "American Airlines to buy 20 Overture aircraft from Boom Supersonic" When reading the original title, I had the impression that the company was going to be acquired by AA. Instead, it's "just" an order of 20 aircrafts. Note that this is not a new move by Boom, they played this card when raising money when they pitched at YC demo day, and they're doing it again. The problem I have…
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> When reading the original title, I had the impression that the company was going to be acquired by AA. Same... at least they should put an S to aircraft... but then again maybe they hit the strict character limit...
The plural of aircraft is still "aircraft".
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Biofuels is ecological fraud. It is not sustainable. And is there a synthetic fuel plant with zero impact at any scale already? No, this is just wasting more fuel for the heck of it.
Are you saying that sustainable synthetic fuels can't exist? Or don't current exist? Because those are two very different statements.
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> over water All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way? Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?
A bunch of replies say that wouldn’t be allowed, but I heard sonic booms regularly while living near an Air Force Base in California. It didn’t seem to affect the hundreds of thousands of residents nearby. Is there an actual reason why we can’t have one every day at 10am or on some other regular schedule?
A crosscountry scheduled supersonic flight will have to overfly populated areas twice a day - booming all the way.
(Something that causes a lot of confusion - people often think a sonic boom is an instantaneous thing that happens when the plane breaks the sound barrier - it is not, it’s a continuous shockwave that travels with the aircraft while it is flying above Mach 1; anyone on the ground who the shockwave passes over along the flight path hears a sonic boom)
If you’ve ever heard thunder from lightning 15 miles away compared to thunder directly overhead, that might give you some framework for figuring out the difference.
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I fly first class a fair bit, and I struggle to get anything done on the plane (in the terminal is fine, though). For me, there's no way to take a good break on a plane. I can't really get up and stretch my legs (unless you try to pace the aisle), and any kind of distraction is going to be on a screen. It is more comfortable than coach, but it's still not really comfortable. Coach is actively uncomfortable, first cla…
I fly business a few times a year and almost always treat it as rest and relaxation. The chance for quiet downtime that I won't get on the trip and rarely get at home as well. 10 hours of extra sleep, reading, and podcasts. It seems like most passengers do the same thing. Trying to smash actual work into the flight is miserable.
If I have a lie-flat business class option with decent food, getting to my destination a few hours early with less comfortable seating isn't a clear win. Like most people, I'm not jetting over to London to have lunch and sign a deal and heading home to sleep in my own bed.
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Turbofan (what's on most commercial jet aircraft), not turboprop (jet engine driving a propeller, generally on smaller commercial and some private aircraft).
r/noStupidQuestions ; Can these be 'stacked' - Can you have a turboFan in line with a turboProp such that the output of the wash of the Fan feeds into the Prop, but with a portion of the wash spinning to thrust on the outer ring of output.=, via a design in the cowlings which is hyper directed thrust vents (think the grid of straws used to funnel water into a cohesive column, which can be directed) Imagine a small di…
You might be interested in reading this stack overflow answer about differences between turbo prop, jet, and fan. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/71301/what-is-t...
Another aspect to consider is changing engine characteristics for different conditions. An example is changing the structures guiding air into the engine.
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Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.
As someone who flies first class there is no way I'm flying coach to save time. Flying business is about the lounges, the meals, the service, and the ability to stretch out your legs.
Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…
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Boom were previously targeted a cruising speed of Mach 2.2, I wonder why they lowered it to Mach 1.7 with the latest design update. Might be related selecting an engine. The previous version of the design had a fantasy engine that didn't exist (I think the specs came from a military engine that they couldn't use due to export restrictions), but now they are working with Rolls-Royce, and appear to have actually select…
Export restrictions are not just messing cryptography!