491–500 of 531 posts
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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
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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 jus…
https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...
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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
What makes the turboprop itself supersonic is the blades are traveling super sonic. Normal turboprops are limited by keeping their blade tips below super sonic to prevent booms and vibration. It is not special to go super sonic at the blade tips, this experimental plane only served to confirm that.
So it is correct to say no turboprop plane has ever gone super sonic and the idea that boom is turboprop powered is wrong on its face.
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I did not say the shortage was created by GA manufacturers, I said that GA in general is the start of the career progression for airline pilots in the US hence it serves a critical function for society. I too thought the pilot shortage was a myth until this past summer when it became abundantly clear there were not enough pilots in the world to deal with the resurgence of travel. You could also argue that US pilots h…
Those are separate issues. Even if airlines pay for pilot training, they could still have most of the syllabus done in actual airplanes rather than simulators. The FAA generally only allows up to 100 hours of simulator time to count towards ATP requirements. The major airlines are large enough that they could just buy their own trainer aircraft.
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They have larger fan blades, for one. That means they move a large volume of air relatively slowly, instead of a small volume of air moving quickly. Consider the difference between a large shop fan, and a small high pressure compressed air nozzle commonly used in workshops for cleaning, with both sized to give the same "reaction force" (i.e. the same thrust). The high-pressure nozzle makes much more noise.
The metallurgy of the fan blades has also vastly improved. Monocrystaline fan blades have very different material properties from the polycrystaline blades that (I am guessing) were used on Concorde. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/each-blade-a-singl...
One of the patents mentioned is how VerSnyder was able to grow a turbine blade in a monodirectional crystalline structure: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3260505?oq=versnyder+196... just using a special mold and a specific alloy. That would later form the turbine blades of the SR-71 Blackbird.
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Maybe Starship can turn that trip into under an hour in the future.
I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Point to point travel on Earth is one of the proposed uses for spacecraft.
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Old jet engines are super noisy. Modern jet engines are much much quieter.
Plus a significant impact of Concorde was the (very turbulent) flow from the reheat; from memory it's not really dissimilar to many modern military aircraft with reheat today. They'll get a fair gain from just not having reheat, yet alone the rest of the benefit of decades of aerodynamic design around engine exhaust flows.
(I didn't know and had to look it up)
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I do too, but I also don't have a huge amount of experience sitting in an incredibly comfortable first class seat. I imagine I'd get a lot more done than I do in coach. I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
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…
Just having somebody watching transformers in the corner of my eye... on a flight a couple of years ago I watched 2 bollywood movies start to finish cuz the lady in the row in front of me was watching it and I couldn't help just watching on her screen.
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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.
We are talking about a plane that will burn much more fuel (which they claim will be carbon neutral) and fly a fraction of the passengers per trip, on routes that are already very competitive. 100 USD will only be a heavily subsidized fare at best. In reality the cost per route will much more likely be far higher.
I was speaking with one the top managers of Airbus and asked him about Boom Supersonic and the Overture. He was skeptical of the idea mostly because of fuel consumption. He said based on their research, the future of flight is slower not faster. Open fan, hydrogen, and electrical planes all point to a slower and more efficient aviation.