Boom Supersonic
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John Thomas8
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Re: Boom Supersonic
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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RTH10260
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Re: Boom Supersonic
Due to the infamous dragging carpet of the boom when passing speed of sound the Concords were limited to use supersonic speeds only over the oceans, banned from use over the continental landmasses. Not likely that this prohibition will be lifted by the authorities.
Re: Boom Supersonic
'With 500 viable routes, Boom suggests there could be a market for 1,000 supersonic airliners with business class fares'. The link to that quote on Wikipedia no longer works, however.RTH10260 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 1:31 pm Due to the infamous dragging carpet of the boom when passing speed of sound the Concords were limited to use supersonic speeds only over the oceans, banned from use over the continental landmasses. Not likely that this prohibition will be lifted by the authorities.
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Sam the Centipede
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Re: Boom Supersonic
Sounds like overblown bullshit to me!
Lots of sneering at Concordes but then they admit that all they're really doing is building a rehash of Concorde but using modern materials and technology. Concorde design started in the late 1950s and the prototypes flew in 1969, which is not far off halfway back to 1903, the year the Wright brothers made their first successful powered flight. No carbon fiber in the early 1960s, commercial jet engines only 20 years old. Of course with 60 more years technological progress they should be able to do much better! Yet all they offer is an unimaginative modern remake of Concorde.
They talk about the "mistakes of Concorde" but fail to enumerate those beyond weak insults. Concordes were no more an environmental disaster than any commercial planes of that era or now. The stuff about sustainability is all bullshit; that's about using biofuels or other greenwashed fuels which still contain the same carbon and perform similarly to Jet A (or whatever is used now) after minor engine adjustments or modifications, just with carbon from greener sources. That's not about the aircraft, that's about the source of the fuel.
As Boeing and Tupolev discovered, Concorde was difficult to replicate or better. Boeing tried to produce a larger version with their SST, but that took it ouside what the design would tolerate with the material available. I think they considered having variable geometry wings, an absolute nightmare in weight and performance. They had to give up. Concorde is smallish because that's as large as they could make it in a viable design. Tupolev (in the USSR) used espionage to obtain design information and drawings of Concorde and produced the Tupolev Tu-144, which was a mess and a disaster, and was abandoned after two crashes: the first at the Paris Air Show, in 1973 the second in 1978 when shoddy Russian engineering led to 3 of the 4 engines failing and the program was abandoned, a technological and economic failure.
Of course with modern engines, modern fuselage materials, modern computational fluid mechanics calculations and modern structural mechanics calculations designers must be able to produce an aircraft closer to 737 size than the boutique snugness of the Concordes. That's not much to boast about.
Flights for $100? Really? Nonsense.
And where from and to? Supersonic flights produce booms and people on the ground don't like them, hence Concordes were only allowed to open up the reheat and pour on the sauce when over the sea.
Concordes were noisier than other airliners, but not unbearably so; back in the 1980s I worked for a while near London, and at 4 pm the Concorde flight to New York passed overhead and one could recognize the sound without looking — but it was always a joy to see that sleek profile knifing through the air.
As for selling lots of their new toys, let's see the order book first. Concorde had many, many orders after its world tour, but all of them fell through, and only the national airlines of France and the UK (Air France and British Airways, as it is now) completed purchase, and they had no alternative. Concorde operations did become economic, after executives worked out more clearly where the paying market was: people wishing to cross the Atlantic as smoothly and quickly as possible, regardless of cost, and an additional minor market of people happy to hire the plane for excursions, such as trips over the Bay of Biscay (south of France) where the pilots could open the throttles and crank it up over Mach 2 while the cabin crew made sure everybody enjoyed their magic day.
Lots of sneering at Concordes but then they admit that all they're really doing is building a rehash of Concorde but using modern materials and technology. Concorde design started in the late 1950s and the prototypes flew in 1969, which is not far off halfway back to 1903, the year the Wright brothers made their first successful powered flight. No carbon fiber in the early 1960s, commercial jet engines only 20 years old. Of course with 60 more years technological progress they should be able to do much better! Yet all they offer is an unimaginative modern remake of Concorde.
They talk about the "mistakes of Concorde" but fail to enumerate those beyond weak insults. Concordes were no more an environmental disaster than any commercial planes of that era or now. The stuff about sustainability is all bullshit; that's about using biofuels or other greenwashed fuels which still contain the same carbon and perform similarly to Jet A (or whatever is used now) after minor engine adjustments or modifications, just with carbon from greener sources. That's not about the aircraft, that's about the source of the fuel.
As Boeing and Tupolev discovered, Concorde was difficult to replicate or better. Boeing tried to produce a larger version with their SST, but that took it ouside what the design would tolerate with the material available. I think they considered having variable geometry wings, an absolute nightmare in weight and performance. They had to give up. Concorde is smallish because that's as large as they could make it in a viable design. Tupolev (in the USSR) used espionage to obtain design information and drawings of Concorde and produced the Tupolev Tu-144, which was a mess and a disaster, and was abandoned after two crashes: the first at the Paris Air Show, in 1973 the second in 1978 when shoddy Russian engineering led to 3 of the 4 engines failing and the program was abandoned, a technological and economic failure.
Of course with modern engines, modern fuselage materials, modern computational fluid mechanics calculations and modern structural mechanics calculations designers must be able to produce an aircraft closer to 737 size than the boutique snugness of the Concordes. That's not much to boast about.
Flights for $100? Really? Nonsense.
And where from and to? Supersonic flights produce booms and people on the ground don't like them, hence Concordes were only allowed to open up the reheat and pour on the sauce when over the sea.
Concordes were noisier than other airliners, but not unbearably so; back in the 1980s I worked for a while near London, and at 4 pm the Concorde flight to New York passed overhead and one could recognize the sound without looking — but it was always a joy to see that sleek profile knifing through the air.
As for selling lots of their new toys, let's see the order book first. Concorde had many, many orders after its world tour, but all of them fell through, and only the national airlines of France and the UK (Air France and British Airways, as it is now) completed purchase, and they had no alternative. Concorde operations did become economic, after executives worked out more clearly where the paying market was: people wishing to cross the Atlantic as smoothly and quickly as possible, regardless of cost, and an additional minor market of people happy to hire the plane for excursions, such as trips over the Bay of Biscay (south of France) where the pilots could open the throttles and crank it up over Mach 2 while the cabin crew made sure everybody enjoyed their magic day.
Re: Boom Supersonic
If you look at their puffing on the website, they admit that the '500+ routes' are transoceanic...so you can't LITERALLY fly 'anywhere' in the world (at least not at Mach 1.2 or faster).Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:00 pm
And where from and to? Supersonic flights produce booms and people on the ground don't like them, hence Concordes were only allowed to open up the reheat and pour on the sauce when over the sea.