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Supersonic aircraft projects have come and gone over the years. They usually dwindle away into oblivion. The only company that I would take seriosly right now
by the_duke 10y ago
Supersonic aircraft projects have come and gone over the years. They usually dwindle away into oblivion.
The only company that I would take seriosly right now is Aerion (http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/ http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/). They are working on a supersonic private jet (12 passengers). They already have quite a few orders (notably 20 jets for Flexjet, 120 Mil a piece) and a cooperation with Airbus, who is apparently helping them. Probably in exchange for their drag reducing "laminar flow" technology.
Building a new aircraft is a huge undertaking, both in terms of technical challenges, financing and organization. A supersonic one even more so.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but this doesn't sound too promising.
- knz 10y ago> Supersonic aircraft projects have come and gone over the years. They usually dwindle away into oblivion. The international aviation market is probably the largest it has ever been and I believe the expectation is that it will continue to grow. That could be a factor in determining how successful the next iteration of supersonic aircraft will be. I travel from the US to New Zealand often. I don't care about getting to LAX in 1.5 hours instead of 3 but I would love to be able to go from LAX to AKL in 5 hours. The airlines would love to be able to provide quicker service to Europe or Asia from the US.
- nether 10y agoAll the same FUD spoken during the early days of SpaceX. It was correct in most cases; Bigelow, Blue Origin, Xcor are floundering, SpaceX is the exception. I just hope we have more entrants in this industry to increase the odds of success.
- rbanffy 10y agoSpace access never had the cost pressures of passenger air transport. It's not much easier than what Virgin Galactic is trying to do.
- skykooler 10y agoBlue Origin seems to be doing OK so far; they've just grown far slower than SpaceX due to not starting out with commercial flights.
- duaneb 10y agoSpaceX doesn't need to compete in a consumer market, though.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoBoth SpaceX and Blue Origin look like they could provide hypersonic transport to antipodes in a not too distant future.
- greglindahl 10y agoThe reliability of "things that go to space" is much, much lower than civilian airplanes.
- nickjarboe 10y agoTrue. But think of the status of going from point to point anywhere on earth in less than an hour. How much risk is that worth?
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoI think Elon said there is probably a market for delivering stuff to antipodes in under an hour, price doesn't matter. It's not a large market, and you don't get a steady daily business, but there will always be demand for it. Until, of course, this sort of thing becomes trivial and super-reliable, and then the price will drop through the floor.