We did. They were the Concordes. Too expensive. Not enough market. You only get what you are willing to pay for. And not even that, if you are in a small enough minority. But, be hopeful. There are startup companies trying to develop a new generation of supersonic airliners.
True. It curtailed supersonic flight to be over the ocean only, and any subsonic legs were not economic to fly. But the people on the ground have a say in what flies overhead, if it makes a nuisance noise. Its service ceiling was 60,000 feet. A higher ceiling might have reduced the boom overpressure enough to allow overland routes, but it would have been more of an engineering challenge.
The good citizens of NY and DC did not like the sound of 4 Olympus engines on full afterburner each morning as the first Concorde flight took off. So they moaned and whinged to their governmental reps who pressured the administration who said no to Concorde. As it was built for the transatlantic route that was the end of it.
I worked.for a company in US where HQ was in UK. The execs flew on Concorde because their time was so valuable. Gorbachev visited UK HQ once. The company folded a few years later....anyway
There's a real good reason for fast flight, but it's difficult finding viable solutions. Some colleagues at work were speculating about rocket transport to the other side of the Earth in less than 45 minutes. But the down side was a launch rate of maybe once a day, at best. That, and the unlikelihood that normal people would like a diet of high acceleration followed by a half-hour of free fall.
The Tu-144 was supposed to have been a good plane, but was canceled on account of a design flaw, and I can't recall the details. Terrible accident at one air show.
And as the Tupolev started climbing, it might have encountered the fighter jet and in an attempt to avoid it, the supersonic jet dived steeply. Then, the pilots had lost all power from the engines, as the Tu-144 had stalled, so they had to restart the engines, but did not have enough altitude left to properly recover.
Here's the air show crash. Cause speculated but not determined in this article.
We did. They were the Concordes. Too expensive. Not enough market. You only get what you are willing to pay for. And not even that, if you are in a small enough minority. But, be hopeful. There are startup companies trying to develop a new generation of supersonic airliners.
It was the noise problem that did for concorde, bloody do-gooders.
True. It curtailed supersonic flight to be over the ocean only, and any subsonic legs were not economic to fly. But the people on the ground have a say in what flies overhead, if it makes a nuisance noise. Its service ceiling was 60,000 feet. A higher ceiling might have reduced the boom overpressure enough to allow overland routes, but it would have been more of an engineering challenge.
The good citizens of NY and DC did not like the sound of 4 Olympus engines on full afterburner each morning as the first Concorde flight took off. So they moaned and whinged to their governmental reps who pressured the administration who said no to Concorde. As it was built for the transatlantic route that was the end of it.
I worked.for a company in US where HQ was in UK. The execs flew on Concorde because their time was so valuable. Gorbachev visited UK HQ once. The company folded a few years later....anyway
There's a real good reason for fast flight, but it's difficult finding viable solutions. Some colleagues at work were speculating about rocket transport to the other side of the Earth in less than 45 minutes. But the down side was a launch rate of maybe once a day, at best. That, and the unlikelihood that normal people would like a diet of high acceleration followed by a half-hour of free fall.
The Tu-144 was supposed to have been a good plane, but was canceled on account of a design flaw, and I can't recall the details. Terrible accident at one air show.
Here's the air show crash. Cause speculated but not determined in this article.
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/22933-tupolev-tu144-paris-air-show-crash
That's a horrible outcome.