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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

#481

Post by MichaelCollins »

ahh wrote: post #246
jseutter wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as has ever been discovered - no, this won't work. You can think of a fan as just a prop enclosed in a housing (jet engine). A prop loses effectiveness at the speed of sound because the air passing the prop gets a high pressure shock wave that effectively makes the prop not prop-shaped, so it can't move air. Picture it as using a hammer on glass instead of pushing on glass with your hand, one works way better…

What about the Tu-95? It's famously loud due to (says Wikipedia) supersonic propeller tips. Do you know why they're still effective?

I believe they're sacrificing efficiency for performance.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#482

Post by thombat »

fedorareis wrote: post #466
galgot wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still there are not much other routes you can go supersonic in one flight but trans-atlantic, which Concorde could do. Trans-Pacific which could have been the big money making route, like LAX to Tokyo, you need to be able to do 4737 nm... which makes the 4250 nm just short to make it. They would face the same problem the Boeing 2707 team had (or even Lockheed with the L-2000 project), no matter how they tried, too sh…

Seattle to Tokyo is only 4144nm so that might be a viable route especially for routes that would have already had a layover in LAX and/or Tokyo.

In part that will depend upon its ETOPS capabilities, i.e. how far it can be trusted to fly after an engine fails. The Great Circle mapper is fun for playing "what if" games with potential routes: e.g. here's the direct Seattle-Tokyo routing with dark shading showing parts where flying for 60 mins at 410 knots wouldn't reach an airport. So if that was the ETOPS performance for a Boom aircraft (and I've no idea; I just picked a B777 as an example) then the route would have pass a little closer to Alaska and Sakhalin to keep the possibility of a safe diversion at all times, and that in turn might make the route too long.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=KSEA-RJAA&MS=wls&DU=mi&E=60&EV=...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#483

Post by Retric »

notahacker wrote: post #469
Retric wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile a one way ticket cost US$975 in 1977 or inflation adjusted about 4,700$ today. Which increased faster than inflation so by mid 90’s your talking around 6,000$ which is something like 12,000$ today. Thus fuel while expensive wasn’t a deal killer over most of it’s history as long as they could keep most seats filled.

The "as long as they could keep most seats filled" was a deal killer though. There was enough demand for one return flight a day carrying a small proportion of the overall passengers on the immensely-popular with wealthy people JFK-LHR and JFK-CDG routes. That wasn't enough to utilise the 14 production aircraft properly, never mind enough demand for it to have been viable as an airframe programme ...

They both also used it for private charters which was apparently quite a profitable business. Anyway, the exclusivity was presumably more profitable than simply maximizing occupancy.

That said, boom is building a significantly smaller aircraft which should again open up more possible routes.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#484

Post by thombat »

standardUser wrote: post #473
Fomite wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 super…

Agreed - if it could stroll right across the Pacific it would be compelling. But unfortunately Boom needs to stretch its legs a further 25% to manage LAX - China, or about 10% for Tokyo. An A350 takes about 9 hours to fly as far as Boom's range, which is a longish but not utterly brutal flight.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#485

Post by cannaceo »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #300
cannaceo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you value that over speed, why not take a oceanic cruiser? More lounges, more service, you can stretch your legs way more (or take a swim), better meals (and more of them).. Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.

It's not as much of a tradeoff as you think. I've been on cruises and would rather be first class on Emirates or Qatar Airways than on a cruise.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#486

Post by bogomipz »

jandrese wrote: post #380
Retric wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem to have dramatically reduced fuel consumption, but fuel wasn't the issue for the concord the limited number of viable routes where. Going from the Concrods 3550nm range to 4250nm should help with that as it opens up several new routes and longer routes see a more significant drop in travel times.

Fuel prices were absolutely an issue for Concorde. BA struggled immensely with the Arab oil embargo and the per-seat cost for the Concorde shot up into the stratosphere and ticket sales collapsed.

The Arab Oil Embargo was 1973-1974 and the Concord didn't go into commercial service until 1976. While it sounds like the oil crisis had an effect on airlines placing Concord orders it didn't overlap with the commercial service being offered to the public. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#487

Post by dmz73 »

alphabetting wrote: post #3

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,250 nautical miles. Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in t…

Melbourne to LA flight is currently 13-16 hours. This plane would cut it to around 8 if they could extend the range and it would make the flight bearable (I find that first 8 hours are OK but anything after that slowly turns to agony). But the distance between Melbourne and LA is 6883NM and even Brisbane to LA is 6246NM. So, Australia is still out of reach. One could do Brisbane to Honolulu at 4088NM and then Honolulu to LA but with the layover total time will probably be the same at best or much longer. Maybe one day...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#488

Post by samstave »

adolph wrote: post #480
ahh wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Thank you all TIL so much.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#489

Post by bluGill »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #451
bluGill wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those statements are false: synthetic fuels exist now. Last I checked you could buy synthetic fuel for about 2-3 times what regular fuel of the same types cost. Germany was doing synthetic fuels in WWII. South Africa did them when under embargo for their racist policies. Now they are mostly used by racers - where allowed they are enough better to make a win against regular fuel (assuming great drivers and wel…

The statement was sustainable synthetic fuels. Synthesizing from other fossil fuels like coal or natural gas definitely doesn't qualify.

Maybe, but all you really need is a source of CO for the process to work. Coal or natural gas are easy sources, but with some energy input we can make it from CO2, Photosynthesis is the most obvious way.

Sustainable really depends on how much we need. There is probably enough wind energy for the process, so long as we only use it for things where high energy density is needed. That means drive an EV car or electrified transit, but we can use synthetic fuel for airplanes. Maybe, this last is mostly my guess, it is a real problem to work on.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#490

Post by janef0421 »

These planes are utterly pointless. The cost and experience will never be competitive with an overnight flight in business class, and the combination of the ongoing environmental crisis and the low efficiency make fuelling it practically impossible. Functionally equivalent to a Ponzi scheme.
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