NASA is just catching up with 50 year old cartoons.
Posted on 03/01/2016 11:32:47 AM PST by sparklite2
Sure if they can hijack, shoot it down or blow it up. To say nothing of crashing it into whatever.
The business model for a supersonic jet with no or very subdued sonic boom would be very different from that of the Concorde. A quiet supersonic jet would be able to service many more locations than the Concorde could, as it would not waste much of the time advantage in subsonic flight over populated areas. So with that, a larger fleet would be practical which would yield economies of scale. However, IIRC, the Concorde also needed an extra long runway due to its inherent marginal aerodynamics at low speed. I suspect most major hub airports are adequate, and the new design may be improved in this regard, though I doubt it. And the needle-like fuselage would still limit passenger capacity. But mitigating the boom does make a huge difference.
Wasn’t the Concorde very expensive to operate, resulting in very high air fares, and didn’t they find there just wasn’t a lucrative market of people willing to spend big bucks to save a few hours on a trans Atlantic flight???
...
Airlines are more interested in stacking passengers like cargo than they are in supersonic travel.
Interesting... read the comments.
I suppose you could travel to New York for lunch and make it back to LA in time for dinner.
For business travelers, the time savings would be worth it.
“Why are taxpayer dollars being used on this? There are plenty of non-govt outfits which have this ability, if it’s a viable technology.”
Sometimes in aerospace, the cost to do the initial R&D is waaay beyond anything you can recoup from doing business in a lifetime.
“Rocket science” is a very inexact science. The scientists get an idea something is mathematically possible but it’s impossible to do such complex fluid calculations on a computer and create a scaled working machine right away. So the engineers build countless iterations of (very expensive) prototypes, test them and watch most of them blow up.
That’s why all the private space firms are using Soviet designs for their rocket engines. The Soviets already spent the insane amount of resources needed to find simple rocket designs that work.
If we depended on private firms do develop a profitable space rocket from scratch without a cent of taxpayer money, we would STILL not be in space. The Russians would be doing circles around us (literally). Capitalism is generally good but it has its limitations and inadequacies.
That was my FIRST thought....a government entity building passenger airlines????
Have you noticed the ads on TV for private planes?
More notable last week there was one with Jennifer Aniston as the spokesperson.
Boy that sure looks like a nice way to fly!
Pinnochicorde?
Only pols, corporatists, and Friends of Obama are allowed on board. The rest of us have to travel by donkey cart to “save the planet” from evil CO2.
For the last decade we were lectured it was time for private industry to take over space and space technology travel which used to be NASA's role. Now that Obama needs a plane to get the hell out of America faster than anything can catch him and VJ shooting off to Tehran for their state sponsored heroes parade, we hear about this?
Additionally, it is surprising that we have a thread with many mentions of the Concorde without anybody posting this ... :-)
Lol. Good ol Monty Python.
The operating costs of SSTs put travel aboard them out of reach for the good old 99%. Thanks sparklite2.
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