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Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

forbes.com

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Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#151

Post by Theodores »

why_at wrote: post #101
imglorp wrote: post #7

If you really want to make an impact on the noise floor, ban gasoline leaf blowers.

I have a special seething hatred for leafblowers. The noise to utility ratio is so high.

But imagine if you were fantastically rich and you could pay people to do leaf blower things at the crack of dawn. That would be true luxury, bossing around 'little people' that depend on you for a job waving around a leaf blower, or else they will starve, and die.

If it was your slave doing the leafblowing then I am sure it would be music to your ears. You could imagine your place to be Mar-a-Lago. You would also have people washing your many cars at an absurdly early hour, so they looked shiny and leaf-blown.

Your problem is having a poverty mindset. If you had a billionaire mindset then you would see that noise to utility ratio very differently, it would be proof that you had so much money.

I wish I was joking, however, I have had bosses lord it over me where leaf blowing and car polishing is what matters most to them.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#152

Post by GordonS »

WalterBright wrote: post #114
foobarqux wrote: post #8

0.11 pound per square foot is what is being proposed. That's 108 decibels. Which is between standing next to a lawn mower and standing next to a car horn. I don't see how anyone will tolerate that in practice. https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/db

Back in the 1960s (!) the military would fly supersonic over the town I lived in. I always enjoyed the boom. I would also open the window during a thunderstorm or go sit on the porch because I enjoyed the incredible electric display and the booms.

Back in the 80's the British air force would fly ridiculously low over the rural village I grew up in, certainly lower than they were meant to be allowed to - everyone hated it. You'd be minding your own business and then just about shit yourself out of nowhere!

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#153

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #118
ranger_danger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to start somewhere before you can build towards an economy of scale that makes it affordable. If people used your same logic about regular airplanes, we wouldn't be using them today.

I'm still waiting for Tesla's plan to come true where the rich paid for development before scaling up brings the prices down. The luxury economy of scale is about as realistic trickle down economy

[deleted]

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#154

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dylan604 wrote: post #118
ranger_danger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to start somewhere before you can build towards an economy of scale that makes it affordable. If people used your same logic about regular airplanes, we wouldn't be using them today.

I'm still waiting for Tesla's plan to come true where the rich paid for development before scaling up brings the prices down. The luxury economy of scale is about as realistic trickle down economy

> still waiting for Tesla's plan to come true where the rich paid for development before scaling up brings the prices down

The low-volume, high-priced rich-person toys (Roadster) finance the scaling up that enables lower-priced mass-manufactured product (Model 3).

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#155

Post by JumpCrisscross »

foobarqux wrote: post #61
Robotbeat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re no longer sonic booms under the appropriate conditions. They still make some noise, as does, for example, high speed rail.

They are in fact the same. 108dB loud.

> They are in fact the same. 108dB loud

There is a tonne of progress in atmospheric modellingn that lets us predict how the thump will be refracted to and reflected from the ground. So yes, you still have the same energy being dumped into the atmosphere. But less of it turns into audible sound, less of it arrives in one go, and less of it ever reaches the ground in an audible form.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#156

Post by ghaff »

inglor_cz wrote: post #135
yborg wrote: post #119

This will free manufacturers to build supersonic private jets for the superwealthy to cruise over flyover America. With normal steerage air travel becoming increasingly unaffordable for the average person, I can't see airlines buying supersonic airliners given fuel costs, they couldn't fill them for what they would have to charge.

How big is the market of supersonic private jets for the superwealthy? Can someone like Boeing or Airbus live off that indefinitely, instead of ye olde passenger jet production? "With normal steerage air travel becoming increasingly unaffordable for the average person" I am 47 and during my lifetime, air travel has moved from the "quite a luxury, plenty of people never experience this" to "you may pay more for the ta…

I'm not sure what a ticket for me from Boston to NYC would be these days as I essentially always take the train. But airline tickets in the US have been hundreds of dollars in my experience as is my transportation to and from the airport. To say nothing of hotels in major cities being hundreds of dollars per day--and that's not anything especially fancy. But, yes, air travel is cheaper in current dollars than it used to be.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#157

Post by redsocksfan45 »

xnx wrote: post #129
yieldcrv wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of do have that faith. Sean Duffy's reality TV career hasn't really hampered the transportation agencies I think staff at the agencies as well as industry staff are very passionate about what they do in their respective domains, and even with the agency heads being industry plans or uncredentialed susceptible to regulatory capture, I still think I can appreciate the willingness to revisit old prohibitions in c…

The same Sean Duffy who took a vacation paid for by the companies he regulates? ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/13/... ). I expect that guy to put enrich "Sean Duffy" as priorities #1, #2, and #3.

[dead]

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#158

Post by naturalmovement »

michaelmrose wrote: post #76
dstroot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was 100% in your camp until my neighbor bought an electric blower. The loud, high pitched whine is somehow louder and more ear piercing than a gas blower.

Gas blowers pollute which is the primary reason to ban them.

[flagged]

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#159

Post by randallsquared »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #130
WalterBright wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the military ones were infrequent. I'm sure it would get annoying if it was too often. > Military gets away with things that private industry doesn't. For good reason. You cannot train for hedgehopping to avoid radar detection without flying low with firewalled throttles.

Overland private supersonic travel should not happen, it would just be a massive unpriced negative externality. The lower the plane flies the fewer people end up hearing the boom. The denser air also requires an absurd amount of fuel to fly through. Commercially uneconomical. Even the military only uses low level supersonic for a last dash to the target.

When Boom was testing last year, the sonic boom never reached the ground, as I recall. That can be arranged at higher altitudes, but doesn't work at low ones.

Re: Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban

#160

Post by atoav »

asdfadsfgfdda wrote: post #81
foobarqux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not accurate to convert .1 psf to dB because it’s an impulsive shape, not a continuous tone. And human loudness perception depends on how smooth (low frequency) the shape is Sorry can you explain more? It's just the definition of dB (?) And it's less impulsive than you imagine, go to youtube to listen to the sonic boom + continuous roar. The FAA has no criteria about the "texture" of the sound and there is no…

On a typical day, the atmospheric pressure varies by maybe 150 Pa, or 3 psf. By definition, that’s 137 dB. But it’s imperceptible because the rate of change is so low.

Yeah nah. For all relevant level metering you use a A-weighting curve (weighting the frequencies by human ear sensitivity) so that is not how any of that works.
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