3 ms·

Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate (and maintain). The TU-144 made 102 commercial flights, with 55 of those carrying passengers -- the o

Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate (and maintain). The TU-144 made 102 commercial flights, with 55 of those carrying passengers -- the others I assume were cargo. Not 102 flights per day or month -- 102 flights TOTAL between the first commercial flight in December 1975 and retirement from passenger service in 1978 and from all commercial service in 1983. With 16 built, that's an average of 6 flights each in their lifetime. SpaceX has Falcon 9 rocket boosters with 4x as many hypersonic flights on them.

tobinfricke 2y ago
What cargo would justify a supersonic flight?
- mattclarkdotnet 2y ago
  Anything high value and perishable, like sushi grade fish for example. Or did you mean morally justifiable?
  - iancmceachern 2y ago
    Flying fish that are increasingly not sustainably harvested on insanely fuel in-efficient supersonic planes is exactly humanity deserves to go extinct.
- bcatanzaro 2y ago
  They often flew mail on it as their cargo. But the plane was more a matter of national pride than something that made sense.
throwaway2037 2y ago
> Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate (and maintain). This overlooks development costs. Wiki says: > Delays and cost overruns increased the programme cost to £1.5–2.1 billion in 1976, (£11–16 billion in 2023). That is an astonishing price for 20 aeroplanes!
- michaelt 2y ago
  £16 billion in inflation-adjusted development costs is peanuts. You should look at the costs of the F-35 :)
  - hnaccount_rng 2y ago
    But of the F-35 there are >1000 planes to amortise the costs over. Which is two orders of magnitude larger than the concorde
  - mgfist 2y ago
    F35s are now selling for $81m on average per plane - https://www.airandspaceforces.com/f-35-program-office-lockheed-lot-18/#:~:text=The%20action%20specifies%20that%20the,be%20completed%20by%20June%202027. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/f-35-program-office-lockhe... And yes, the program is expensive but there will be thousands of F35s by the end of it all (1000+ already)
- brucehoult 2y ago
  I didn't overlook development costs, I SPECIFICALLY excluded them, and SAID that I was doing so.
  - iancmceachern 2y ago
    But you can't just exclude them. They are part of the cost.
    - brucehoult 2y ago
      Of course you can exclude them, to determine whether the aircraft themselves are a viable commercial proposition for the people who bought them (the airlines) -- which they were, just as other aircraft such as the A380 today are. The people who bought A380s are happy, and will be using them for decades. Emirates would still like to buy more (and may end up buying used ones from less successful airlines) The fact that the aircraft manufacturer spent far too much on development relative to the sales they made is of course important to the manufacturer -- or at least to whoever is financing the manufacturer, but that is a DIFFERENT question. In fact more than one question. There is the question of whether the price they were sold to airlines for was greater or less than the incremental cost to build one aircraft. If the price was greater than the cost then there was some hope for a successful program, and they simply overspent on development and/or didn't sell enough copies. If they were sold to airlines for less than the marginal cost then it's just an all-around manufacturing screwup that could never be solved by any amount of sales.

tobinfricke 2y ago

What cargo would justify a supersonic flight?

mattclarkdotnet 2y ago
Anything high value and perishable, like sushi grade fish for example. Or did you mean morally justifiable?
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  Flying fish that are increasingly not sustainably harvested on insanely fuel in-efficient supersonic planes is exactly humanity deserves to go extinct.
bcatanzaro 2y ago
They often flew mail on it as their cargo. But the plane was more a matter of national pride than something that made sense.

throwaway2037 2y ago

> Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate (and maintain). This overlooks development costs. Wiki says: > Delays and cost overruns increased the programme cost to £1.5–2.1 billion in 1976, (£11–16 billion in 2023). That is an astonishing price for 20 aeroplanes!

michaelt 2y ago
£16 billion in inflation-adjusted development costs is peanuts. You should look at the costs of the F-35 :)
- hnaccount_rng 2y ago
  But of the F-35 there are >1000 planes to amortise the costs over. Which is two orders of magnitude larger than the concorde
- mgfist 2y ago
  F35s are now selling for $81m on average per plane - https://www.airandspaceforces.com/f-35-program-office-lockheed-lot-18/#:~:text=The%20action%20specifies%20that%20the,be%20completed%20by%20June%202027. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/f-35-program-office-lockhe... And yes, the program is expensive but there will be thousands of F35s by the end of it all (1000+ already)
brucehoult 2y ago
I didn't overlook development costs, I SPECIFICALLY excluded them, and SAID that I was doing so.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  But you can't just exclude them. They are part of the cost.
  - brucehoult 2y ago
    Of course you can exclude them, to determine whether the aircraft themselves are a viable commercial proposition for the people who bought them (the airlines) -- which they were, just as other aircraft such as the A380 today are. The people who bought A380s are happy, and will be using them for decades. Emirates would still like to buy more (and may end up buying used ones from less successful airlines) The fact that the aircraft manufacturer spent far too much on development relative to the sales they made is of course important to the manufacturer -- or at least to whoever is financing the manufacturer, but that is a DIFFERENT question. In fact more than one question. There is the question of whether the price they were sold to airlines for was greater or less than the incremental cost to build one aircraft. If the price was greater than the cost then there was some hope for a successful program, and they simply overspent on development and/or didn't sell enough copies. If they were sold to airlines for less than the marginal cost then it's just an all-around manufacturing screwup that could never be solved by any amount of sales.