This is a pretty extensive discussion. I don’t see hydrogen as the fuel, but when you’re a Reaction Engine hammer, every airplane looks like a nail.
2 thoughts on “Supersonic Airliners”
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This is a pretty extensive discussion. I don’t see hydrogen as the fuel, but when you’re a Reaction Engine hammer, every airplane looks like a nail.
Comments are closed.
That this may make its re-debut as a business jet makes perfect sense to me. Esp. for flights across PAC-ASIA. Range will be the big big issue and because of that I can’t believe fuel will be other than one of the current JP varieties or maybe LNG. The complexity of a reaction engine is just not needed for supersonic flight. Hypersonic, maybe. But that’s an even costlier business case. The most advantageous routes would be LAX/Bejing, LAX/Norita or LAX/Sydney non-stop. JFK to same destinations with one stop to refuel as well.
But full-on commercial, I just don’t see the business case. Plane size is too big and costs scale up with that to make it impractical AFAICT. Until that changes the issues will remain the same as those that killed the Concorde.
Dave
The minute you add a refuel stop, it becomes uncompetitive with today’s air travel.
And it seems silly to dump billions to try to save either cool the airframe down so it doesn’t incinerate Or have a massive penalty in airworthiness due to trying to optimize aerodynamics for super/hypersonic flight.
Get above the mesosphere and that becomes much less of a problem….