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American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

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Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#471

Post by ArtWomb »

jandrese wrote: post #368
galgot wrote: post #200

So they went from scaled down Concorde configuration : https://www.airway.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Boom_Ov... to a very scaled down Boeing 2707-300 configuration : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707 (that tiny fin tho...). While reducing cruise speed to 1.7 mach. I see no visible changes to deal with the sonic booms problem. So operation would be like Concorde I suppose, subsonic (or hi-subsonic) over…

And they still have not solved the problem that ultimately sunk the Concorde. Fuel costs made it unprofitable to operate whenever the price of oil went up. The small niche of customers willing to pay a significant premium in order to save some travel hours is not big enough to sustain an entire industry of specialized mechanics, parts suppliers, pilots, etc... Basically you need a critical mass of people riding these…

>>> Miami to London in just under five hours

I know I would pay a premium for this experience. Simply because it fits into my imagined jet set lifestyle phenomenally well. Maybe once every two years for a special occasion or treat ;)

I also think the economically limiting term is still the turbine blades. Lifetimes for commercial service turbines run 100k+ hours. Supersonic is maybe 1/10 that. And have higher rates of oxidation, cavitation, catastrophic fatigue, etc. We need a new Alphafold! For phase stability of alloys exhibiting high strain resistance at high temps and fast cycles...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#472

Post by reaperducer »

acchow wrote: post #393
jandrese wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they still have not solved the problem that ultimately sunk the Concorde. Fuel costs made it unprofitable to operate whenever the price of oil went up. The small niche of customers willing to pay a significant premium in order to save some travel hours is not big enough to sustain an entire industry of specialized mechanics, parts suppliers, pilots, etc... Basically you need a critical mass of people riding these…

I wonder how much larger the population of people is today (vs Concorde's era) that are willing to pay for these supersonic ticket prices. 3x? 10x?

I wonder how much larger the population of people is today (vs Concorde's era) that are willing to pay for these supersonic ticket prices. 3x? 10x?

At least.

Even if you think price is a barrier, think about how many more millionaires and billionaires there are in America and Europe today than there were just 20 years ago.

Tack on our society's rediscovered fascination with conspicuous consumption ("influencers"), and I don't think filling seats will be the problem today that it once was.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#473

Post by standardUser »

Fomite wrote: post #458
standardUser wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a 1970's mindset that is wildly underestimating how much air travel has changed and how many more hundreds of millions of people can now afford semi-frequent air travel, with hundreds millions more in the pipeline.

Most of whom have demonstrated, time and time again, that price is the primary factor by which they decide who to fly with.

Business travel, which continues to explode between the West and Asia, is far less price sensitive and far more time sensitive. And of course the number of wealthy air travelers continues to increase rapidly as well.

Plus, it's just f*cking exhausting to fly 10-18 hours, so people may well be willing to spend more on those extra-long-haul flights just to spare their mind and body. I don't believe any commercial supersonic jets were even able to fly trans-Pacific in the past, and ties between those regions were a tiny fraction of what they are today anyway. Faster trans-Pacific transport simply seems inevitable.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#474

Post by reaperducer »

wmeredith wrote: post #434
delisam wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the founder say he envisions supersonic tickets to be $100? I can't even buy any subsonic tix for less than $120.

This is hilarious, if true. I flew on a shitty subsonic flight from the midwest to Utah earlier this year and it was $450/ticket when I bought them 6 months out.

I flew on a shitty subsonic flight from the midwest to Utah earlier this year and it was $450/ticket when I bought them 6 months out.

I flew 2,000 miles between the Midwest and the west coast last week. $109 each way, with checked baggage, booked three weeks out.

I like Utah, but let's not pretend that your flight (or mine) is representative of anything.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#475

Post by notahacker »

indecisive_user wrote: post #383
stickfigure wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet tells me that there is only one ocean liner left (Queen Mary 2), which travels only between the UK and the US east coast.

There's only one left because there is no demand for that kind of travel, which is good evidence that people value time over comfort.

Still, that solitary transatlantic liner carries more people across the Atlantic in a typical week than Concorde did when it operated scheduled services on that route, and not because the other Concordes were busy elsewhere...

In any case, the lack of senior business executives choosing seven day trips in plush private cabins as their preferred mode of transatlantic crossing isn't much of an indication of whether people in that price bracket will tend to prefer pay more to spend four hours in discomfort rather than eight hours mostly asleep.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#476

Post by qazxcvbnmlp »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #385

If TSA is abolished or scaled down significantly then this plane is dead on arrival. 7hrs London to NYC are more than acceptable, too bad it ends up being 10hrs

It already is if you fly business class. I’ve done drop off to gate <10 minutes at LAX & SEA multiple times.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#477

Post by matwood »

rootusrootus wrote: post #436
matwood wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On those lengths you start to go a little crazy. I've done Atlanta to Tokyo and back before, and those are 13+ hours depending. You sleep and wake up and sleep and wake up, watch movies, and then wonder why there's still so many hours left to go. It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth…

> On those lengths you start to go a little crazy 100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really…

> order seems to break down a bit

Haha, yes. At some point people stop caring. You see people mulling around, getting their own food and drinks - just anything to pass the time.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#478

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

cortesoft wrote: post #214
tedivm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone claiming you are wrong hasn't bothered to google. Literally the first response for "overture turboprop" is a series of articles confirming what you said. > The Overture supersonic aircraft will be powered by three turboprop engines, which includes two that will be mounted under each wing, while the third engine will be fitted at the end of the fuselage. https://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/overture-…

There is no way you could go supersonic with a turboprop

You can, it's just so loud it becomes health risk to even share a runway with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#479

Post by rocket_surgeron »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #224

I'm surprised by this... I'd imagine that all of the BS we've added to airport procedures (under the guises of "security", mostly), would sort of help negate the typical "Concorde" case. In a universe where you still need to show up umpteen hours early for check-in, baggage, security, does having a plane that may cut a fraction of the time of the trip really seem compelling?

Getting from curb-to-gate today is easier and faster than it was pre-9/11.

That's just domestic. For international travel it has been a literal exponential decrease in hassle.

Of course, this all depends on whether or not the airport you use (and it is 100% dependent on the airport itself) has deployed all of the automated systems being used to lower terminal transit times.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#480

Post by adolph »

ahh wrote: post #290
adolph wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tu-95’s props are paired for counter-rotational torque balance. The second prop does not add additional thrust.

The supersonic speed was the question, not the contrarotation.

Well, samstave's original question was one of adding power with an inline stack. As I understood it, that isn't the purpose for he Tu-95's pair of props since they share a power source. The below explanation [0] has some interesting analysis based on Russian language documentation about how torque is divided between the prop pairs. Additionally the paper linked from the Wikipedia contra-rotating prop page "Analysis of a contra-rotating propeller driven transport aircraft" [1] has a great section on fuel savings, which probably has contributed to the Tu-95's success.

Thus, the front prop gets almost 20% more torque than the rear prop.

0. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74787/why-dont-...

1. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showatt.php?attachmentid=281...

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