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darkteflon 1 hours ago [-]
Cool science. But the article fails to take even a cursory stab at contextualising the plan against the economic, environmental and political backdrop - doesn’t even mention that there’s already been one failed supersonic commercial flight programme. This is as pie-in-the-sky as it gets.
hdndjsbbs 30 minutes ago [-]
I think a lot of the Concorde failure is tied to its status as a British-French project. Trans-Pacific flights are much longer and there's a lot of money in PEK -> LAX than in JFK -> LHR.
Qantas wanted to offer London to Sydney, but they couldn't fly supersonic over land. Mainland China or Japan to Australia is a feasible route for high-margin, low-capacity supersonic flights.
If you could make the flight from Beijing to California take less than 5 hours that seems like a premium product many ultra wealthy people would spring for. Dubai to SFO is also a possible route.
decimalenough 18 minutes ago [-]
There is a lot of money in NYC-LHR, that's why Concorde continued to fly that route and profitably too, once they realized how high they could yank the prices and still fill the plane.
Also, Concorde's maximum range was 4,488 mi, which was calibrated to allow trans-Atlantic but not much more. Trans-Pac was not an option and even Australia to North Asia would be a stretch.
gottorf 27 minutes ago [-]
> Dubai to SFO is also a possible route
Is there really that much premium traffic between Dubai and the Bay Area?
WorldPeas 23 minutes ago [-]
I think the more interesting question is /will/ there be that much premium traffic ongoing
VerifiedReports 20 minutes ago [-]
ORD -> Vatican
rdl 9 minutes ago [-]
Vastly more favorable today than it was when Concorde flew.
1) Rich people are WAY richer, and time is even more valuable
2) Businesses have some very important employees and "2 day trip" vs "3-4 day trip" is worth $50-100k
3) Larger population of people able to pay $20-30k for a flight than ever before.
The biggest practical impact is there's probably going to be a private jet version instead of just a commercial one, and there will likely be transpacific demand exceeding transatlantic. Also government/military use.
HNisCIS 60 minutes ago [-]
Whenever you look at supersonic or hypersonic commercial aircraft plans you should assume one of two things.
A. It's a bait and switch by a founder who wants to pivot to weapons/military aircraft but wants to be able to hire high grade talent without paying the "we're gonna kill people" premium, can pivot once a good chunk of the workforce is complacent with a paycheck. You laugh but this happens SO FUCKING MUCH.
B. It's for business jet scale operations for billionaires. There are >3000 billionaires and however many corporate aviation departments and if you can build a super/hypersonic private jet that's not horribly expensive to operate the "time savings"* for that class of person will demand they buy one.
* when I say time savings I mean dick measuring contest
nradov 41 minutes ago [-]
Defense contractors don't pay premium wages. Rather the opposite. Many employees specifically want to work in the field in order to contribute to the national security mission.
HNisCIS 37 minutes ago [-]
I'm being a bit obtuse here to make the point, it's more complicated than that. The reality is if you create a defense startup you end up hiring defense employees which comes with its own set of issues.
That said, go look at salaries right now in the defense space.
picture 33 minutes ago [-]
From my experience with working for defense/aerospace companies as well as civilian b2b ones in the US, the general situation is that defense/aero companies pay less but demands less of a grind. People usually take the lower pay (usually 70% of equivalent role in commercial sector) for the better culture
HNisCIS 31 minutes ago [-]
For pure generic full-stack-whatever devs yes. For EEs, embedded, FPGA, RF, etc you can pull waaaaay more in the defense world, especially if you're willing to do cleared work.
Seattle3503 48 minutes ago [-]
What companies are examples of that bait and switch strategy?
Onavo 47 minutes ago [-]
Can't give any examples but I have definitely heard the same about a lot of aerospace startups through the grapevine. As for OP's point about private jets, Boom supersonic is your classic example.
HNisCIS 32 minutes ago [-]
I can't name names but 3 of the startups I've worked at.
Places I haven't worked:
Skydio
Applied Intuition
Saildrone
Planet Labs
Boom
Scale AI
Also worth noting that sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes the founders are all "we're gonna save the world" then AFWERX enters the chat with a big fucking check and the founders yell "Nevermind! Guess we're the baddies now! How many slaughterbots did you say?"
Grosvenor 45 minutes ago [-]
> * when I say time savings I mean dick measuring contest
And in this case smaller is better?
loeg 49 minutes ago [-]
Safety should probably also be considered.
rbanffy 1 hours ago [-]
People say this like it's a simple engineering problem.
No. By itself, a new hypersonic engine can't make 2-hour flights between Japan and the US a reality. We are not even close to being able to build an aircraft that can do that - we don't even have the materials for that. What seems "easier" (as in "less impossible") is a hypersonic glider design that enters a suborbital trajectory and does shuttle-like aerobraking while it glides to its destination, before reengaging propulsion prior to landing on an airstrip (because passenger planes need to be able to abort landings and do multiple attempts). Not sure how reverse thrust would work there - variable geometry rocket bells?
1 hours ago [-]
atoav 1 hours ago [-]
The actual time to skim off IMO is all the airport procedures.
whiplash451 52 minutes ago [-]
This is already a solved problem for the class of customers they are going after.
holoduke 1 hours ago [-]
What would a ticket cost like? 50k? Aren't those people in their own fancy private jet with whiskey, massages and party?
Ekaros 1 hours ago [-]
Or have their own room in first class... Maybe time trade off isn't worth it for most of the people who can afford it at that point.
59 minutes ago [-]
superkuh 1 hours ago [-]
>At that elevation at Mach‑5, air around the nose and leading edges can reach temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832°F), a challenge...
It is not the conical nose or leading edges that are the show stopper problem(s). There the shockwave generally does not touch the craft. The internal shockwaves that touch the walls of the engine ducting are. The heat loading and heat soak ability on those shockwave impingement sites will limit the duration of hypersonic travel.
Hypersonic travel through the atmosphere is easy, a problem solved in the 1950s. Be conical and carry your oxygen internally. Hypersonic travel that is air-breathing is an entirely different class of problem and I don't think it is anywhere near to being solved.
The only silver lining is that at hypersonic speeds you don't need to be propulsive for very long to get anywhere.
Qantas wanted to offer London to Sydney, but they couldn't fly supersonic over land. Mainland China or Japan to Australia is a feasible route for high-margin, low-capacity supersonic flights.
If you could make the flight from Beijing to California take less than 5 hours that seems like a premium product many ultra wealthy people would spring for. Dubai to SFO is also a possible route.
Also, Concorde's maximum range was 4,488 mi, which was calibrated to allow trans-Atlantic but not much more. Trans-Pac was not an option and even Australia to North Asia would be a stretch.
Is there really that much premium traffic between Dubai and the Bay Area?
1) Rich people are WAY richer, and time is even more valuable 2) Businesses have some very important employees and "2 day trip" vs "3-4 day trip" is worth $50-100k 3) Larger population of people able to pay $20-30k for a flight than ever before.
The biggest practical impact is there's probably going to be a private jet version instead of just a commercial one, and there will likely be transpacific demand exceeding transatlantic. Also government/military use.
A. It's a bait and switch by a founder who wants to pivot to weapons/military aircraft but wants to be able to hire high grade talent without paying the "we're gonna kill people" premium, can pivot once a good chunk of the workforce is complacent with a paycheck. You laugh but this happens SO FUCKING MUCH.
B. It's for business jet scale operations for billionaires. There are >3000 billionaires and however many corporate aviation departments and if you can build a super/hypersonic private jet that's not horribly expensive to operate the "time savings"* for that class of person will demand they buy one.
* when I say time savings I mean dick measuring contest
That said, go look at salaries right now in the defense space.
Places I haven't worked:
Skydio
Applied Intuition
Saildrone
Planet Labs
Boom
Scale AI
Also worth noting that sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes the founders are all "we're gonna save the world" then AFWERX enters the chat with a big fucking check and the founders yell "Nevermind! Guess we're the baddies now! How many slaughterbots did you say?"
And in this case smaller is better?
No. By itself, a new hypersonic engine can't make 2-hour flights between Japan and the US a reality. We are not even close to being able to build an aircraft that can do that - we don't even have the materials for that. What seems "easier" (as in "less impossible") is a hypersonic glider design that enters a suborbital trajectory and does shuttle-like aerobraking while it glides to its destination, before reengaging propulsion prior to landing on an airstrip (because passenger planes need to be able to abort landings and do multiple attempts). Not sure how reverse thrust would work there - variable geometry rocket bells?
It is not the conical nose or leading edges that are the show stopper problem(s). There the shockwave generally does not touch the craft. The internal shockwaves that touch the walls of the engine ducting are. The heat loading and heat soak ability on those shockwave impingement sites will limit the duration of hypersonic travel.
Hypersonic travel through the atmosphere is easy, a problem solved in the 1950s. Be conical and carry your oxygen internally. Hypersonic travel that is air-breathing is an entirely different class of problem and I don't think it is anywhere near to being solved.
The only silver lining is that at hypersonic speeds you don't need to be propulsive for very long to get anywhere.