Boom....The new Concorde...?

[A380]

And there lies the reason this new Concorde won't take off. If what has to be discussed just can't wait a few hours you video conference it, otherwise you fly in comfort and get some rest, arriving ready to do business. When flying west you save time, Conc used to leave London at 1030 and arrive in New York at 0930. However it would leave JFK at 0900 and arrive in Lon don at 1700, a whole business day lost. Far better to fly overnight, get some sleep and hit the ground running.

The last bit of your post sounds like advertising copy from some 80s aftershave called ‘TestosterBoss’.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

The last bit of your post sounds like advertising copy from some 80s aftershave called ‘TestosterBoss’.

It;s how I flog all my flights. "Grab the low-hanging fruit as you pass through Schiphol" and so on...

 

[OzT]

whatever happened to the jet that was meant to go really up high then pretty much free fall back to its destination? London to Sydney in 4 hours or something like that. Beet any supersonic flights!

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

whatever happened to the jet that was meant to go really up high then pretty much free fall back to its destination? London to Sydney in 4 hours or something like that. Beet any supersonic flights!

What happened to it? Same thing that’ll happen to this latest fantasy.

 

[2hats]

whatever happened to the jet that was meant to go really up high then pretty much free fall back to its destination? London to Sydney in 4 hours or something like that. Beet any supersonic flights!

I’m guessing you mean HOTOL which evolved into Skylon, which is still under development (various related threads scattered around here - search on skylon/reaction engines).

 

[Slo-mo]

Fine as long as no public money is spent on it. In retrospect the government subsidies for Concorde, which was only ever a plaything of the rich, were obscene.

 

[A380]

Fine as long as no public money is spent on it. In retrospect the government subsidies for Concorde, which was only ever a plaything of the rich, were obscene.

It was the wrong guess though. The 10 or so that actually got built were only supposed to be the start of a much bigger run. People thought that all long haul would be supersonic. Even Boeing got it wrong, the reason the 747 had a top deck bubble was it was designed with more than half an eye to freighter use.

Then the oil crisis happened and we realised oil wasn’t unlimited and almost free....

It’s like the space shuttle, fantastic engineering that solved the wrong problem.

 

[doodlelogic]

is calling it Boom a good idea given that s the noise the engine made on the last concorde flight

The tyres, on the last Air France concorde flight. BA kept it going a bit.

 

[1927]

The tyres, on the last Air France concorde flight. BA kept it going a bit.

I'm sure tyres go bang not boom!

 

[OzT]

Still an superb bit of engineering, done without modern computers, by men in brown coats and brycream and slide rules throwing paper darts at a fan.

It is a shame fantastic and glamorous engineering like that are no longer carried out in Britain.

 

[A380]

Still an superb bit of engineering, done without modern computers, by men in brown coats and brycream and slide rules throwing paper darts at a fan.

It is a shame fantastic and glamorous engineering like that are no longer carried out in Britain.

We still build most of the world’s satellites apparently. In Stevenage and Hatfield. But yes, brilliant at inventing and designing stuff, not so good at making and selling it.

 

[Chz]

It was the wrong guess though. The 10 or so that actually got built were only supposed to be the start of a much bigger run. People thought that all long haul would be supersonic. Even Boeing got it wrong, the reason the 747 had a top deck bubble was it was designed with more than half an eye to freighter use.

Then the oil crisis happened and we realised oil wasn’t unlimited and almost free....

It’s like the space shuttle, fantastic engineering that solved the wrong problem.

My mum's ex was a junior Mech.Eng on a bit of the Concorde project. Said the only real miracle of the program was proving that the English and the French could actually work together on something without sabotaging each other. Of course, they immediately refused to do any further programmes together...

 

[likesfish]

Apprantly the RAF borrowed a concorde to simulate supersonic nuclear bombers then hushed up the rather embarrasing fact it was a tad too fast for biggles to catch.

 

[2hats]

We still build most of the world’s satellites apparently.

Nope. Country of manufacture of satellites launched in 2016:

Or by value the 2016 share was:

The satellite construction industry in the UK is significant but not really the most prolific.
(Sources: FAA, SIA).

 

[DownwardDog]

Apprantly the RAF borrowed a concorde to simulate supersonic nuclear bombers then hushed up the rather embarrasing fact it was a tad too fast for biggles to catch.

Concorde flew at M2.0 at about 50,000 feet. It would have been no problem to get a high pk solution with F3/Skyflash. F4/Sparrow could have done it too. Lightning/Red Top: dunno, probably not.

The interceptor doesn't have to "catch" Concorde just get in a position where the AAM can...

 

[Rosemary Jest]

And herein lies the rub, massive projects like this need a bottomless pit of public money to make them 'successful.'

Just like the space race, no fucker like Richard Branson is ever going to be able to fund something so ambitious nor get anywhere near the scale of those projects, nor get anywhere near the timescale these projects took place in.

 

[A380]

Nope. Country of manufacture of satellites launched in 2016:

Or by value the 2016 share was:
View attachment 122893
The satellite construction industry in the UK is significant but not really the most prolific.
(Sources: FAA, SIA).

Oh well. I hoped it would make up for the fact that the UK is the only country that put a satellite in orbit on its own but now lacks the capacity to do so.

 

[SaskiaJayne]

whatever happened to the jet that was meant to go really up high then pretty much free fall back to its destination? London to Sydney in 4 hours or something like that. Beet any supersonic flights!

I remember that now in a tv programme that was on when Concorde first flew. Concorde was very much seen then as just the start of very fast passenger jet travel. The programme had models of 800 seater mach3 airliners & also a dart shaped spaceship looking thing that would do London Sydney in 4hrs. It did seem believable then what with moon landings & so on. It’s also true about the 747. Seen as a stopgap before supersonic airliners of the same size came into service. The 747 had ease of convertion into a freighter designed into it for that reason.

 

[Crispy]

And herein lies the rub, massive projects like this need a bottomless pit of public money to make them 'successful.'

Just like the space race, no fucker like Richard Branson is ever going to be able to fund something so ambitious nor get anywhere near the scale of those projects, nor get anywhere near the timescale these projects took place in.

I dunno, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos seem to be making pretty swift progress. SpaceX plan to find their own Mars program on the profits of their satellite internet system

 

[Wookey]

Fine as long as no public money is spent on it. In retrospect the government subsidies for Concorde, which was only ever a plaything of the rich, were obscene.

All commercial aeroplanes are the playthings of the rich. There's no equality of access to flight, when seen in its global context.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

All commercial aeroplanes are the playthings of the rich. There's no equality of access to flight, when seen in its global context.

The majority of humans alive today will never fly. Of the minority who will fly the vast majority will do so no more than once a year. Frequent flying really is a very elitist activity.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The majority of humans alive today will never fly. Of the minority who will fly the vast majority will do so no more than once a year. Frequent flying really is a very elitist activity.

So, those tickets you sell to frequent flyers...would you say that you're a facilitator for elitist activities (opens notebook to page 1: "The List", and readies pen)?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

So, those tickets you sell to frequent flyers...would you say that you're a facilitator for elitist activities (opens notebook to page 1: "The List", and readies pen)?

I take their money from them and give it to more needy souls.

 

[A380]

I take their money from them and give it to more needy souls.

And I hope you make the realy rich ones change at Charles de Gaul even when it could have been avoided.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

And I hope you make the realy rich ones change at Charles de Gaul even when it could have been avoided.

I have an very wealthy chap en route there from Dakar at this very moment, his flight last night was cancelled due to atc strike at the week old Dakar airport, being an Air France Platinum card holder the airline kindly rebooked him on Tuesday night

Luckily he has me. I sort him out, he pays my mortgage.

 

[krtek a houby]

Is killing the boom the key to supersonic air travel?

"Instead of a $20,000 round-trip across the Atlantic it's more like $5,000," says Mr Scholl. "That is still expensive relative to economy - but if you can afford to fly front-cabin you can afford to get there in half the time."

Still bloody expensive, then.

 

[alex_]

Is killing the boom the key to supersonic air travel?

"Instead of a $20,000 round-trip across the Atlantic it's more like $5,000," says Mr Scholl. "That is still expensive relative to economy - but if you can afford to fly front-cabin you can afford to get there in half the time."

Still bloody expensive, then.

The cost is pretty important - even business fliers have cfo’s who will eventually go “what the fuck?”

At the point that a seat costs the same as a virtual reality holodeck, then it’s a tricky business.

virtual reality is getting better, internet bandwidth is getting cheaper so I can see in a few years twenty grand getting you a room full of top notch 8k virtual reality headsets and you can be sat at the same table as the guys in New York and shanghai.

Computer games ( and porn probably ) are doing most of the innovation here so this isn’t totally niche.

Still won’t be able to shake their hand though.

Alex

 

[Chz]

Killing the boom opens up a few new routes, which allows the development costs to be spread over a larger number of airframes. But there's a limited market for such things, so it's always going to be a fairly boutique aircraft. BA could run them at a (slight) profit once the airframe costs were written off, but that was on one of the most profitable routes on Earth. No-one's going to jump at it as a way to make money. It will be for prestige. But they could possibly sell enough of them to make it worthwhile.

 

[T & P]

virtual reality is getting better, internet bandwidth is getting cheaper so I can see in a few years twenty grand getting you a room full of top notch 8k virtual reality headsets and you can be sat at the same table as the guys in New York and shanghai.

Computer games ( and porn probably ) are doing most of the innovation here so this isn’t totally niche.

Still won’t be able to shake their hand though.

Alex

Not to mention visit the local upmarket whorehouses, an staple of any executive business trip.