Supersonic Flight to make Comeback?

[Argos]

Link (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/start.html)

Despite this precedent (and half a dozen even less successful attempts to put supersonic passenger jets into service), two US companies now think they can make high-speed flight commercially viable. The trick, it seems, is to focus on the richest of the rich.

[Maksutov]

Despite this precedent (and half a dozen even less successful attempts to put supersonic passenger jets into service), two US companies now think they can make high-speed flight commercially viable. The trick, it seems, is to focus on the richest of the rich. Link (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/start.html)Isn't that what the Concorde consortium ended up doing?

:think:

[Argos]

Well, you´re quite right. :)

[NEOWatcher]

Link (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/start.html)
Despite this precedent (and half a dozen even less successful attempts to put supersonic passenger jets into service), two US companies now think they can make high-speed flight commercially viable. The trick, it seems, is to focus on the richest of the rich.

Okay, let's take the words "passenger" and "commercial" and twist the story around to make it equal to Concorde.

Sorry, but this doesn't fly with me. Other attempts have been "public" commercial passenger flights. These are "Private" commercial passenger flights.
They are equating their theory on things that were meant for the masses, but were just a little out of reach until production was able to bring it down. I don't see the masses in this one.

The richest of the rich will pay for anything that anyone is willing to venture building as long as it looks prestigious. It doesn't necessarily mean a "market" will develop.

In the mean time, I really don't care what the rich do. If they can pay for it, then fine. It's just not newsworthy to me.

[ASEI]

A commercial aircraft has a few boundary conditions for economic viability. The first is that enough planes have to be built, and enough flights flown on these aircraft to cover the development cost. This establishes lower bound on the number of people who are flying versus the cost of the airplane. (The more people that fly it, the cheaper the airplane gets).

Another is the cost people are willing to pay to get to their destination faster. Supersonic planes burn a lot more gas per passenger. A lot of people (too many for commercial supersonic flight) are willing to trade a few hours for a few hundred dollars. The customer base that is willing is too small to cover the development costs. Most people make on the order of $10-$20/hour. Unless you approach that sort of exchange rate when knocking travel time off of your flight, it won't pay off.

[djellison]

Until the Paris crash, Concorde for BA was turning a nice profit.

Doug

[mugaliens]

The main problem is fighting all that air for several hours. You go twice as fast, it costs 4 times as much in fuel, and 10 times as much in technology, maintenance, and upkeep.

Cheap, solid-rocket assisted, hybrid engine technology-powered suborbital flight vehicles without the bells and whistles of creature comfort stand the best hope of making it past the red ink.

I'd easily pay $200 more to turn a 10-hour transatlantic flight into a 2-hour hop.

But not $300, as loosing access to the inflight movies isn't worth paying that much...

[Gillianren]

Every time my best friend (whose father lives in Ohio and mother in Hawaii) has seen a really, really bad movie, the choices are either "it was on cable when I was at my dad's" or "I saw it on an airplane." When she moved here from Ohio, the movie was Big Mama's House 2.