Wrong. Sydney is 12050 km from LA. It would fall out of the air from fuel exhaustion somewhere over the South Pacific. The author of this article is an idiot and has a problem with math.
I can not see this craft as a commercial success. Aerodynamic drag is a function of velocity squared. Example: A modern jet airliner will fly at about 550 knots, this craft will be flying at about 1300 knots. 550 knots squared =302500, 1300 knots squared =1690000. Thus the drag at that speed is 5.5 times greater. Fuel burn will kill it as a commercial success.
It may have a niche market for those of great wealth. Fuel burn and range killed the Concord as it will this new aircraft.
I lived near Heathrow Airport in the 70s. Concord would fly over my house daily. I never tired of seeing that beautiful machine and the roar of the Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojet engines.
Anyone who’s ever taken a trans-Pacific flight and listened to how many frequent flyer miles you get knows that 4100 miles from LA to Sydney, Australia is nonsense.
You are very right. And I also don’t see much future use of the aircaft either. Mach 2 with a stripped aircraft is fine, but so what. It falls into the capacity need of the SR-71 that they had a lot of trouble using it. It finally became a traveling poloroid machine. They just couldn’t shoot it down. And it fessed up to Mach 4. But those ponies need feeding and they had to refuel sometimes twice before it reached the altitude it worked at. The SR had a range of 2500 miles but climbing to altitude uses fuel.
wy69
You are very right. And I also don’t see much future use of the aircaft either. Mach 2 with a stripped aircraft is fine, but so what. It falls into the capacity need of the SR-71 that they had a lot of trouble using it. It finally became a traveling poloroid machine. They just couldn’t shoot it down. And it fessed up to Mach 4. But those ponies need feeding and they had to refuel sometimes twice before it reached the altitude it worked at. The SR had a range of 2500 miles but climbing to altitude uses fuel.
wy69
“Thus the drag at that speed is 5.5 times greater. Fuel burn will kill it as a commercial success.”
And, conversely, the drag at 60,000 feet is roughly half that at 38,000 feet. Plus the aircraft naturally has a much lower drag coefficient than a typical airliner.
Yeah, more “click-baity” type poor “journalism”: the “Mojave Air & Space Port” is NOT Edwards Air Force Base (Muroc AAF/NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center) where the Bell X-1 was tested. Close but no cigar! Mojave is home to some cool A/C tho...mostly from Scaled Composites/Burt Rutan.
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/first-generation-x-1/
https://scaled.com/portfolio/stratolaunch/
Drag is also a function of air density and Boom thinks its airplanes will fly much higher than commercial jets today.
That said, Boom is a pump-n-dump, IMHO. They claim they will solve a new physics model and have engines that do things no engine maker thinks is physically possible.
Boom, like several airplane companies before it at Centennial airport, Colorado, is terribly underfunded to get something certified.
No, one burning up on takeoff is what doomed the Concord.
There are plenty of hyper rich people willing to pay to justify a few of these in operation.
The ticket price will be insane, but just like the concord, there will be people willing to pay it. It won’t be a ton of people, but I would expect like the concord, you likely will have a few daily trans atlantic flights out of NYC. If they handle the sonic boom issue and get that nautical mileage up to 5000 give or take, they can do direct LA to PARIS which would likely be a viable route as well.