
USA USA USA
Smaller than Concorde
Slower than Concorde
Later than Concorde
Wow the USA is really excelling.
MAGA MAGA MAGA
The US civilian aviation sector has achieved what Concorde managed half a century ago – piloted supersonic flight in a domestically built jet. More than 20 years since the supersonic airliner last flew, Boom Supersonic took its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft to Mach 1.122 in the same airspace where US pilot Chuck Yeager broke the …
Not sure where you get 20% of range from. Its irrelevant for the demonstrator and Overture should have comparable range to Conky.
"Overture is designed to fly 4,250 nautical miles. At this max range, Overture can fly nonstop on routes like New York to Frankfurt or Tokyo to Seattle."
"As it should be if we want to have a hope in hell of staving off climate change." - Gordon 10.
I'm old enough to remember the climate "experts" saying there was no point building the Thames Barrier because the whole of London would be 10 metres underwater by the year 2000 due to the melting Ice Caps. Which means that the building I am sitting in, in not-quite-sunny Eastbourne, should also have been underwater by now.
And yet, somehow, photographs of Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings piers all show sea levels to be where they were TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
I don;t know about you Mr 10, but I think I see a slight error in their predicitions...
(Anon because my employer is a True Believer in the climate scare money-making machine and takes a dim view of the worker drones voicing any other opinion)
> The guys(?) talking about nanometers were referencing their reproductive appendages
If you're going to react like that to commentards having fun with misspelt/ambiguous/daft wording then you really aren't going to be happy when someone wonders how much natural gas can be measured by a nano-meter.
They did it in the US too and for the exact same reason which I'm sure you already know. Losing that limitation is one of the reasons why there is interest from Boom and NASA in significantly reducing the sound wave pressure that hits the ground. Opening up overland super sonic flights would greatly increase revenue possibilities both in the US and Europe and might even lower ticket prices (not to worry, I won't be holding my breath on that one).
Of course the real question is not "Did it do it" but "how loud was it while doing it" ?
In theory less thrust spent making noise --> more thrust pushing it along --> smaller engines on the real thing.
BTW the Firebee II drones over Vietnam were supersonic with a thrust level ~50% of launch weight (from a wing pylon on a Hercules) excluding a big-ass rocket booster to punch them through the sound barrier first.
Not an option for a viable commercial biz jet.
The joker in the pack for all of these concepts is the engine.
Time will tell if Boom can sort out a viable unit. The trouble is AFAIK no one makes pure large(ish) turbojets any more, even those on the old Phantoms and Ardvarks were low bypass ratio turbofans.
If successful they will have a true USP. X-->Y at > M1 with passenger > 1. Nothing exists in this space at this time.
This. I join John here in congratulating Boom, because this is a great step ahead, especially if, when the scale model hits M1.7, the bangs are negligible (or non-existing).
The engine is indeed the important bit, and interestingly, none of the big names in this space are interested (at least officially and openly). The Overture will have engines from an obscure name, which ought to be interesting to watch.
Looking forward to seeing more progress on this! :-)
According to their press release the "obscure name" is Florida Turbine Technologies:
Boom has selected Florida Turbine Technologies, a business unit of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc., as its engine design team. FTT has leading supersonic engine design expertise, including key engineers among the team responsible for the design of the F-119 and F-135 supersonic engines that power the F-22 and F-35.
Obscure, but maybe not inexperienced.
Has someone done the math on this? Assuming they get their 80 passenger version up and running, what price a ticket to make this economically viable? That's assuming it's even environmentally accepted as a means of transport: it'll be a tough assignment for a PR company to 'sell' this in many countries.
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From memory it took hypergalactic accounting to make Concorde profitable. And that was only by "forgetting" the untold billions spent on R&D.
A little like claiming Apollo 11 cost "a few million" to get to the moon by doing the same.
Let's not fool ourselves here. If this turns a profit, it will be because the Musks of this world are paying $100,000 a ticket.
The Olympus engines used by Concorde were also meant for the RAF's supersonic TSR-2 military aircraft, which got canned by the British Government father day in favour of the USA's F-111 (IIRC). They had a really expensive engine with nothing to put to on...
"The TSR-2 was to be powered by two Bristol-Siddeley Olympus reheated turbojets, advanced variants of those used in the Avro Vulcan. The Olympus would be further developed and would power the supersonic Concorde."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2
The Olympus was indeed used in Concorde, but as you said yourself it was used in the Vulcan and then went on to be a marine powerplant as well, powering many naval ships. It's also used as a gas turbine engine in powerplant applications, as well as a standby generator for nuclear power plants (to ensure they have electricity in the event of a grid failure to control the nuclear element still) and on oil rigs as a powerplant.
So plenty of applications really, hardly "nothing to put it on" - it's not like someone would make a whole supersonic airliner based on an engine sitting around unused anyway. Plus, I thought Concorde development started before they canned TSR-2.
Yes, the Concorde project was well under way before TSR-2 was canned. The afterburning Olympus (By Bristol out of R-R1) was picked for Concorde due to it being the most powerful domestic engine available on either side of the channel and also was already being developed with super cruise capability in the TSR-2. Concorde & TSR-2 being both Government funded basically allowed pushing the latest military engine design into a commercial airliner to (a) save a vast pile of development cash and (b) make it a viable proposition only four years after the first transtlantic jet flights! (Comet-4 & 707 in 19582)
You're also correct with the Marine & Static implementations, these were in parallel development with the aircraft engines because gas turbines can directly power anything previously using boiler+steam turbine sets plus they could go from cold start to full power in a fraction of the time.
1 Bristol & SNECMA collaborated on Concorde engine development, before R-R bought out Bristol.
2 Piston engined airliners were still carrying freight transatlantic in 1962.
"And that was only by "forgetting" the untold billions spent on R&D."
When working on a project that leads to a product/service, one has to analyze two things separately. There's the R&D and then there's the incremental cost of the product. With the Apollo program, there was a tremendous amount of basic research done (science) to be able to do the engineering. That science may not have wound up in the finished product, but still has an enormous amount of value on its own. Of course, there needs to be an ROI on the R&D, but that's different than the costing for the other half. It can even come to pass that the R&D leads to something that pays for all of it that is different than the intended product. The product still needs to earn a profit to keep doing it.
"Indeed, You could argue the entire R&D effort since the 1800s was needed to provide the Apollo program starting point."
I love the "Connections" videos. Hampster did a series as well as the ones by James Burke. Engineering is mainly standing on the shoulders of those who came before. I learned that early on. There's no point in trying to create things from first principles if you can find something that's already going to fit the bill. Just file off the serial numbers and let the boss think you are really clever.
"the Musks of this world are paying $100,000 a ticket"
What, you don't think Musk will be travelling for free on his transcontinental Starship?
The low passenger count never gets proper attention in any Boom Overture article - journalism died a long time ago and most news today is just lress releases or propaganda - even the most obvious or basic who-what-where-when-why-how questions never get asked nor answered.
While I don't understand why the Overture is designed for only ~80 instead of 300-400, the fact that it has more than 100 orders and the military sniffing around for a potential reaction force version, makes me hold back my criticism - obviously the airlines know what will work, right? And it's probably a given that the return of supersonic flight will still not include the average flyer.
It's an engineering marvel that will never be economical to run.
First, even if the ticket price were "just" 5k, there's a limited set of business and first class travelers willing to splurge on saving a bit on travel time. When you have the choice of 5 hours squeezed into a tight seat versus 10 hours in a fold-flat bed, and the ability to charge those extra 5 comfortable hours as overtime, what do you choose?
Second, you are saving significant time only on non-stop flights, and there will be few of them. If you have to connect, most of the time saved evaporates. Now the total time is 8 hours instead of 10, for triple the price.
Third, because of the factors above, only a few number of these jets will be built. Economies of scale will not apply, making the plane more expensive to build and run. All those airline options will evaporate when Boom will be unable to keep its promises -- just like Branson's pre-orders did.
This jet will certainly find a niche as a toy for the super-rich, though. "Nyah, nyah, your puny Gulfstream can't even go supersonic!"
"Third, because of the factors above, only a few number of these jets will be built. Economies of scale will not apply, making the plane more expensive to build and run."
It also means that there won't be enough flights on the schedule. If you have to wait until Tues, it makes more sense to book and leave Monday morning on a non-stop flight and be there sooner if there's a time critical need to go in the first place. I've had the same issue with Amtrak trains. I'd rather take the train, but one departure a day arriving at my destination at 3am isn't likely going to work. If there are only 3 departures each week and they don't dovetail with the reason for my travel, I wind up spending more nights in a hotel and that can put the cost too far out of reach.
A big reason for going fast is due to the need to be somewhere in a hurry and at short notice. I don't think that the comfort level is going to be anywhere near what can be had in business class on sub-sonic aircraft. The cabin is going to be tiny.
With the arrival of the information and internet, the need for high speed trans-Atlantic crossings is way down. I never did get to fly on Concorde, but it was a bucket list item strictly for fun, not business. There's a big question surrounding whether there's enough people going for fun can support such a venture. If they don't fly everyday, it doesn't work well for business since the reason to use it would be to get somebody a long distance quickly. If that's not for a couple of days, they might as well go right away on something slower. Just like me, taking a supersonic flight might be a bucket list item for many and once it's crossed off, they'd be unlikely to go again.
With the arrival of the information and internet, the need for high speed trans-Atlantic crossings is way down.
That's not actually the case. Business travel is now back to levels greater than those pre-pandemic. That's why airports are saturated again, and airlines are desperate for more aircraft. The Boeing crisis is affecting them badly.
>> With the arrival of the information and internet, the need for high speed trans-Atlantic crossings is way down.
> That's not actually the case.
Well, yes, it is. More people than ever before have learnt how to take part in video calls and other collab-at-a-distance tools since 2019. So the need has, logically, lessened.
> Business travel is now back to levels greater than those pre-pandemic.
Well, there you spot the problem. Is that business travel *needed* or is it just *desired*?
Back to the old question about whether you're sending execs out on jollies or troubleshooters out to fix messes due to bad decisions made by execs sitting around the pool with too many margaritas inside them.
More people than ever before have learnt how to take part in video calls and other collab-at-a-distance tools since 2019. So the need has, logically, lessened.
Not necessarily. Maybe those new collab tools have just replaced pure phone meetings? They certainly did for my work, but didn't have much effect on our business travel.
Was fortunate enough to tick Concorde off my personal bucket list back in the 90's when it used to participate in the International Air Tattoo - departing mid-show to go do one of its "out and back" flights over the Bay of Biscay. Whilst the passenger cabin was full, and the galleys stocked to bursting point with food and drink so that we'd be able to experience the full in-flight service, the lack of any hold baggage made the take off performance even more sprightly than she was capable of - the relentless acceleration along the runway is unlike anything I've ever experienced on any other airliner, and once we started the climb, the combination of the continued acceleration and the angle of climb made it feel like I was lying flat on my back in the seat.
After that, the bulk of the flight was notable mainly for just how un-notable it all felt - there we were cruising along serenely, munching down on a rather nice lunch, washed down with some rather nice champagne, with only the bulkhead indicator providing any clue that we were doing all of this at a speed faster than most people will ever get to travel at. That high up, with so little turbulence to contend with, and with the noisy bits of the engines so far towards the rear of the fuselage, it was a genuinely far smoother and quieter ride than I've had on anything other than perhaps a Dreamliner.
So whilst I've never been in the sort of position work-wise or personally to have been able to manage anything more exotic than premium cattle class flights in terms of journeys where I was trying to get from A to B, and would therefore almost certainly never have flown Concorde on its normal routes even if it were still flying today, I count myself very fortunate to have joined the relatively exclusive ranks of people who did get to experience what it was like to fly the big white bird, and almost 30 years later it remains utterly unforgettable.
I'll always regret never going on one of those at the RIAT, it was £400 for a quick subsonic hop and £800 to go supersonic over the Bay of Biscay. It seemed a lot back then, until they announced that Concorde was being retired, then you realised it was ridiculously cheap for something which you would never be able to experience again, as all the transatlantic flights were fully booked up, regardless of cost.
Ditto... I had several opportunities to experience Concorde betwixt Paris and New York thanks to a relationship I had with Air France, but silly hubris of youth, like "Concorde flies to New York, and I'd have to change there to fly to Chicago" stopped me from ever paying for a flight, even though it would've been a first class return by normal standards.
It used to be enormous fun and a great thrill to arrive into CDG early enough to deplane and do the bus tour from one side of CDG to the other via the Concorde gate... watching her get prepped and then, around 25 minutes later, see her taxi to the runway and roar off towards New York. I kick myself every time I see the sad BA Concorde parked at the maintenance hangar at LHR. She deserves so much better than growing algae and lichen and moss on her skin, and then getting the occasional wash from some sympathetic BA engineers.
Why is there so much negativity on that here? Jokes fine, but it is a great achievement. And great first step.
Concorde went out of usability, for one it was never profitable, and it was not safe enough. Add fuel prices and a few new technical requirements in there and you end up with a plane which was fine as a technical demonstration for two decades.
Now they go again, with todays tech, with better fuel economy, with less noise too. The sonic boom of the XB-1 seems to be less than others, including Concorde, maybe they can get is even lower with future versions.
All that negativity here is, actually, unamerican. Even as a German I find this strange, 'cause 'muricans are definitely on the "You have this idea? Looks good! Great! Go for it! I hope it will be successful!" side.
Or.... Is this just envy from non-muricans? (<- that will trigger tons of down votes, if not the first sentence triggered it already...)
Another possible advantage of the Boom aircraft is to be able to fly at supersonic speeds over the continental US due to the greatly reduced sound level of the sonic boom. This is something that the Concord was and never would be never able to do. And as far as I know it was not allowed to fly at supersonic speed anywhere over Europe either. NASA has an experimental aircraft that uses essentially the same methods, as I'm sure all of the consistent visitors to this site knows well. It is an interesting technology that will need a lot more testing to see if it can fulfill that possibility although I was also dismayed that no one word was said about the sonic boom's sound level.
I notice it's a British thing. They have an excellent idea, then go "oh this is useless" and drop it. I've never understood that.
So America has to take the idea and develop it, like the axial-flow jet engine itself, the catapult for aircraft carriers, the associated "meatball" landing system, etc etc.
more that we have an excellent idea and either the US nicks it (Computers, Jet Engine, Radar, etc) or we have a great idea and are too short-sighted or for political reasons it gets the funding cut - Supersonic Flight, UK orbital rocketry (seriously the only country to put a working satellite into orbit and lose the ability ON THE SAME DAY??).
The economics and laws are different: getting funding for the MVP beloved of Silicon Valley is almost impossible in Europe and the idea of being able to scale up quickly to dominate the market doesn't make sense. And a safety-first culture tends to lead to overengineering before any product is launched, whereas US companies will often happily pay to see things crash and burn and equally as happily go bankrupt if claims against them stack up too much. They can walk away and start a new company immediately.
>> the catapult for aircraft carriers
Err technically, yes, anything up to the hydraulic cat. was invented by the good old US of A however it was us Brits who invented the steam catapult, as used by all sensible navies from the '50s until very recently.
I guess the US Naval Institute knows what it is talking about..."Despite the leading role that U.S. naval aviation has played, the steam catapult was a British, not an American, invention"
> the axial-flow jet engine itself
Hmm, anything to do with the UK admitting the US had a larger, and less war-damaged, industrial base available? So handed over all the work so far, after agreeing that we'd get back all the fixed & improvements?
Which the Yanks strangely forgot to do.
> So America has to take the idea
Take. Good word.
This.
I believe the early German axial jets had a life barely into double digit hours before major overhaul was needed or, more commonly, total failure.
The early British jets had a vastly longer design life.
However I did love the little pull start petrol engine in the front of the early German engines.
It was unlucky for Air France that it was their aircraft that had a tyre destroyed by debris left on the runway. This was an accident waiting to happen and could have easily have been BA.
The vulnerability of fuel tanks to high speed chunks of rubber existed on all Concordes, whether overweight or the conditions or not. Or with landing gear bogies correctly assembled.
That accident is why the paranoia level of any possible debris got EXTREMLY high. They prefer to have countless "possible debris" alarm, close the runway and check and find nothing than one which could cause such an accident again.
At 300 km/h (or 180 mp/h?) anything is problematic, even a 1 inch screw. The Concorde accident was cause by a 43 cm by 3 cm piece 1.4 mm thick. No plane today could take that at 300 km/h. Only luck would decide how bad it would play out.
> Concorde went out of usability, for one it was never profitable, and it was not safe enough.
Until the Paris incident, which sealed its fate, Concorde had an excellent safety record.
Concorde was operationally highly profitable, but like all things, it was wearing out and maintenance and replacement costs were going to exceed profits…
Yes it is a scientific and engineering achievement to design an airframe (and engines) that reduces noise and increase efficiency, however, this is only a single seater version, Concorde from the outset was designed to carry 92 to 128 passengers (depending on seating configurations). Hence it is too early to say whether this will be significantly more fuel efficient and quieter. It is also too early to say what it will require operationally, which may preclude it from using many airports.
I know :D. The trick was even visible on NASA wind canal show-offs. At least for the NASA version of supersonic, not entirely sure about the XB-1 here. By making the nose even more spiky, and getting thinker in steps instead of one cone, the boom is "divided" it into multiple smaller booms. Which partly cancel out each other in math, but I cannot remember whether reality in tests followed that cancel-out math, would have to check again for the current status.
(Why AC here? You are not wrong and added something useful)
LOL! Where have I seen THIS super-duper-ultra-secretive now-almost-30 year old supersonic aircraft design before? LOL HA HA!
This is soooooo OOOOOOOOLD that I should eat a chocolate hat or three to calm my laughter!
Nobody important uses these designs anymore for hypersonic planforms! We've moved on to Terahertz waveguide-based Electrotatics propulsion and GWASER-based propulsion systems these days! Why the heck would I need to use WINGS and JET ENGINES to fly anymore? We got MUCH BETTER technology than this antiquated hunk of 30+ year old junk!
V
Here! I will give you a hint .... I have PHOTOS (one of which I took MYSELF with it's glorious high-rez photo hanging on my office wall!) of "The Green Lady" (i.e. a ZIP-fuel aka Boranes powered) Hypersonic aircraft flying since 1996. Then there is "Spearfisher" which is a 15,000 MPH (Mach 27) hypersonic running since 2003 in testing and in operation since 2006 --- Which just flew over France scaring air traffic control a few weeks ago on the way to various middle-east locales but mostly does the East Asia/Russia/NK/China recon run. There's is also the SR-75 aka "Senior Citizen" and "Brilliant Buzzard" aircraft which is the parasite spaceplane and giant XB-70-like carrier aircraft running since 1987 in testing and operational since 1989. And we have the now almost 50 year old design "The Pumpkin Seed" which is a flattened rugby ball shaped near-space plane having various engine type configurations and running operationally since the 1980's and in testing since the 1970's!
Add in "The Silent Ones" Electrostatics, the GWASER-powered deep-dark-black triangles and "The Giant Flying Propane Tanks" and that is about $70+ Billion USD over 40 years worth of research and development at TS:SCI (SAP/CAP) levels of secrecy! Some of these I have ACTUAL PHOTOS of from my secretive expensive-alcohol-and-steak-infused internal sources and ME taking a few of the photos myself! So there! I was being sarcastic FOR A REASON! A lot these designs are 30+ years old and in OPERATION since the 1980's!
V
Although development costs were never recovered, neither were they for the USA's own 1 billion dollar SST programme.
OTOH once somebody at BA figured out they needed to charge more, not less, it ran at a nice profit:
https://www.key.aero/article/inside-story-how-ba-made-more-ps500m-profit-concorde
The thing is that Concord & TSR2 had a lot of peripheral learning. Not just the core technology. I worked at RAE Farnborough at the time when Structures had a Concord there to avoid the Comet issue. Just across the road was National Gas Turbine Establishment doing lead edge engine research.
This is what the USA does using massive military spending trickle down into other industries.
The Air France accident wouldn't have happened if they'd implemented the recommendation for fuel tank protection. Also if the FOD hadn't have been there in the first place.