3 ms·
The underlying tech isn't dead but in the 90s I remember reading article after article about how ramjets and scramjets were going to change air travel forever a
by voxadam 3y ago
The underlying tech isn't dead but in the 90s I remember reading article after article about how ramjets and scramjets were going to change air travel forever any day now. That day still hasn't arrived and I doubt it ever will.
- pjc50 3y agoThey are unbelievably noisy. High efficiency turbofans have won for subsonic, and nobody's really interested in the inevitable cost barrier of supersonic. People keep talking about SSTO spaceplanes, but I think there are unsolvable thermal problems in the engines?
- RetroTechie 3y agoIt's not just cost of supersonic planes, but sonic booms & how far they travel. So around populated areas it's a no-go. Which means you have to do a good portion of flight subsonic, and benefit from SS flight over a smaller leg of the yourney. Iirc there were some studies showing that sonic booms were heard by people 100s of km's away. And eg. in Europe: more or less densely populated areas everywhere. So no SS city hopping there. Never mind check-in, waiting on runway & taxying vs. actual flight time. Benefits simply don't outweigh the negatives on most routes. And where they might, too small a market to invest in passing technology / regulatory hurdles.