Russ Niles is Editor-in-Chief of AVweb. He has been a pilot for 30 years and joined AVweb 22 years ago. He and his wife Marni live in southern British Columbia where they also operate a small winery.
I hate to sound like a Luddite, but speaking as someone who has exceeded the speed of sound (in the USAF) I fail to see an incremental value in exceeding that speed between points A and B: First, under the best of circumstances, such aircraft will be very expensive to build, buy and maintain. The only people liable to truly benefit from them are already-overpaid oligarchs who can afford such luxuries. Second, It seems likely that fuel consumption per passenger mile will be significantly higher than subsonic travel, dumping relatively more pollutants into our already polluted atmosphere. I know progress will continue toward supersonic flight, but its benefit to the common good remains questionable, IMHO.
History has shown your reasoning to be sound, I agree. If non military supersonic flight was a reasonable proposition today then the manufacturers with that background experience would have gone down that road. I think the best supersonic argument would be for a corporate jet and we’re still waiting. This has been debated since the last Concorde flight. Today is not a good day for SuperSonics, tomorrow doesn’t look good either.
Don’t need no garbage about atmospherics, oligarchs, etc. All political. If supersonic travel was a boon to mankind, the Concorde’s successor would be flying. Cutting an hour off a cross-country flight is not worth the cost. To me, at least. And, yeah, I’ve flown supersonic, too. Not a big deal.
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I hate to sound like a Luddite, but speaking as someone who has exceeded the speed of sound (in the USAF) I fail to see an incremental value in exceeding that speed between points A and B: First, under the best of circumstances, such aircraft will be very expensive to build, buy and maintain. The only people liable to truly benefit from them are already-overpaid oligarchs who can afford such luxuries. Second, It seems likely that fuel consumption per passenger mile will be significantly higher than subsonic travel, dumping relatively more pollutants into our already polluted atmosphere. I know progress will continue toward supersonic flight, but its benefit to the common good remains questionable, IMHO.
History has shown your reasoning to be sound, I agree. If non military supersonic flight was a reasonable proposition today then the manufacturers with that background experience would have gone down that road. I think the best supersonic argument would be for a corporate jet and we’re still waiting. This has been debated since the last Concorde flight. Today is not a good day for SuperSonics, tomorrow doesn’t look good either.
Don’t need no garbage about atmospherics, oligarchs, etc. All political. If supersonic travel was a boon to mankind, the Concorde’s successor would be flying. Cutting an hour off a cross-country flight is not worth the cost. To me, at least. And, yeah, I’ve flown supersonic, too. Not a big deal.