There was some news of supersonic commercial startups a year or so back and I was surprised then like I am now.
NY to London in 3 1/2 hours instead of 7? meh, howabout NY to Hong Kong in 8 hours instead of 16? now that changes things.
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Both my parents worked on aircraft, and had a model of the Comet on their wedding cake. My father and an uncle of mine worked on the Concorde. Here, as well as I can interpolate, is their take if they were still around to give it…
The Concorde, like the Comet, was doing all sorts of things that were way beyond what the other non-military aircraft of the day were doing.The designers were very worried of dong “another Comet”, so the first Concorde design was effectively a prototype for the later, wider-bodied Concorde II that never got built.
As for the noise, they took routes that were supersonic mostly over the sea, but you could hear the boom. It was unexpected, but nothing like ‘deafening’, and some people (self included) preferred it because the boom was all you got, instead of the rumble of a conventional jet that could last for minutes.
The only unexpected side-effect of supersonic travel learned from the Concorde experience that I knew about was that the paint lasted longer. Conventional jets are repainted after less than 10 years because the paint gets abraded by cosmic dust falling though the atmosphere. The Concordes were in their original paint after 30 years - they fly higher, the air is thinner, the dust falls faster, so they meet less of it.
It was designed as well as it could be on early 1970’s computers. It is not surprising that someone can do better now. I look foreword to protesting against the new aircraft being allowed to land in London, nyaah-nar-nee-nar-nar.
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More cynically, the FAA ban on supersonic flight was also due to lobbying by American aircraft manufacturers, who didn’t have SSTs in production to compete with Concorde.
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Sigh. Also NASA:
The blind spot over aviation is fucking insane. There is no more cossetted industry on the planet. It needs to be reigned in.
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Yes, but think of the bright side. The politicians and financiers who attend the climate change conferences of the 2030s will be able to get there and back much faster on supersonic jets.
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maybe even the sound of the old beetle
Not “the X-Plane,” but “one of the X-Planes.” There have been quite a few over the years; the X-1, X-2, and X-15 rocket planes made news before and through my childhood. The X-29 (forward swept fiber wings, fully unstable flight compensated by full electronic forward control surfaces, etc.) was a dream plane of the 80s.
Today there are several being researched, reminding us that NASA is the “National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” One of my children works for the Aeronautics branch, and was tickled to be able to say that we are back in the business of building X-planes after too long.
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It’s not like we didn’t know how to do silent – the XB70 nailed that one. Politics entered the scene when a fighter plane flying chase on a test flight got caught in the wingtip vortices (huge, invisible) on approach and we lost the pilot. That, and the fact that supersonic high-altitude nuclear bombers were looking less and less interesting at about that time. Only two prototypes build, one crashed, program cancelled.
And, BTW, that’s how the A-12 became the SR-71.
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Unlike every other civilian jet engine, the Concorde’s had reheat (afterburner) which they (like pretty much every bird until recently) needed to go supersonic. Plus, of course, the variable intake geometry that let them fly at that speed without compressor stall.
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I hear you. 
My workplace is near enough to an airbase that I often get to “enjoy” sonic booms… and sometimes more than one on any given day. The booms — although incredibly startling and jump-inducing — are certainly more tolerable than constant roars.
There had also been a great anxiety about the sonic boom that Concorde would create, so I had said to Harold Wilson, I’m going to arrange for a supersonic bomber to overfly Whitehall and create a sonic boom at midday while the cabinet is meeting. I didn’t tell anybody else. When we heard the boom overhead, Miss Nunn, the secretary to the cabinet, was a bit shaken and said, “What was that?” and I said, “Oh, that was just a sonic boom.” They had imagined it would be like Vesuvius erupting, when it was just a little bang.
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I love the Angel Interceptors.
Here’s another one of my favs:
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The ME-163? Fascinating vehicle.
Certainly not a quantum leap, but I suspect the perceived benefit may differ based on the cabin class one is flying on. Not to mention 1/2 the time exposed to sociopathic armrest hogs, screaming kids acting out, and certain airline comfort pets.
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This is ‘Skunk Works’ stuff, so one step at a time.
Not that Comet. But we had a lot of trouble keeping up with the Germans back then. Here’s a 1930’s concept for an atmosphere-skipping aircraft which is another good way of getting somewhere fast.
On take-off, the nose what held up by a special wheeled trolley which was jettisoned as it took off. Fireball XL5 fans will appreciate this.
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I have one of the original Dyna-Soar artist’s concepts framed on my bedroom wall; it was the first major aerospace program my late father worked on, and he was always fond of it.
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