Posted on 08/04/2020 2:40:46 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Virgin Galactic announced in May that it would be partnering with NASA to work toward high-speed, high altitude point-to-point travel for commercial airline passengers. The plan is to eventually create an aircraft that can fly above 60,000 feet (the cruising altitude of the Concorde) and carry between 9 and 19 people per flight, with a cabin essentially set up to provide each of those passengers with either Business or First Class-style seating and service. One other key element of the design is that it can be powered by next-gen sustainable fuel for more ecological operation.
In some ways, this project has many of the same goals that NASA has with its X-59 Quiet Supersonic research aircraft. Both aim to inspire the industry at large to do more to pursue the development of high-Mach point-to-point travel, and Virgin says that one of its aims is to “act as a catalyst to adoption in the rest of the aviation community” by coming up with baseline “sustainable technologies and techniques.”
Another company working on supersonic flight, Boom Supersonic, is set to unveil and begin testing its XB-1 prototype at an event in October, and also recently announced a new partnership with Rolls-Royce to assist with the design and manufacture of the engines for its eventual Overture commercial plane.
(Excerpt) Read more at techcrunch.com ...
Ping.
Any guess what a NY to London will cost? I’ll say $20,000 minimum.
Might be worth it. A trip to the edge of space.
That’s a beauty!
The view would be spectacular.
> next-gen sustainable fuel
Hydrogen?
Yeah, I’d say it would be. It’s pretty small group who could afford to plunk down $40,000 for a round trip ticket though.
We can get to Epstein Island in record time now.
Drug dealers. And crooked politicians.
And NBA/NFL players.
Which NBA player will be our first Kneel Armstrong?
Ohhh, I like!
“A trip to the edge of space.”
That’s on my Bucket List.
Another boondoggle to go the way of concorde. Limited clientele, limited passengers, what’s the point?
So are they getting out of space? Good, because they haven’t done anything worthwhile.
Powered by pig $hit.
Really? A distinction between first class travel and business class. ... Sounds asinine. But what do I know?
Pretty sure it would need pontoons to roll out on that rock.
IF they can overcome the sonic boom problem (i.e; no one wants it), they’ll then have to overcome what really eventually killed the Concorde: it was too expensive to maintain or fly in it.
IF they can get supersonic flight down to an affordable level for most people, it may have a chance.
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