12 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

The B747 proved that slow and steady wins the race, nothing beat the Queen of the Skies in that era

👍 Nothing will ever beat the 747 again now the accountants are in charge of aviation , although this  Boom looks interesting 

Edited January 28, 20251 yr by jon b

3 hours ago, LHookins said:

Will it be cheaper than a week at Disneyland? 😄

I got curious.

A week for a family of four at Disney World can cost from $4000 (super budget, seriously) to north of $10,000 for all the amenities. 

A flight on the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser from California to Hawaii cost "over $4000" in today's dollars. Keep in mind that the entire aircraft was First Class. A quick check reveals that the modern first class fare is maybe 20% of that. Feel free to check my math.

In the 1990s, a one-way ticket on the Concorde could cost around $6,000, which is equivalent to about $10,000-$12,000 in today's dollars. 

If SpaceX is flying passengers point to point, it's likely to be comparable to modern first class rather than Stratocruiser luxury. I suspect the fares will be similar to high end Disney World, and probably worth it.

Hook

Edited January 28, 20251 yr by LHookins

I think the whole idea is a pointless exercise.

When Concorde was around there was no Internet so it was very popular with business travellers who had to get to meetings. You can do that for free online nowadays. 

I think most countries that care about their populations will ban it overflying at supersonic speeds. Much as they did with Concorde.

Concorde made most of its money (eventually) through corporate and sightseeing flights. I can see a couple of these aircraft being sold for that but not for scheduled airline operation.

Also Concorde is the most beautiful looking aircraft ever. But then I'm biased😉

 

16:00 GMT for we Brits. 

 

Successful. Went supersonic 3 times. Mach 1.2 for one of the runs.

Two cameras on the nose gear, one as backup... what if they lose both? 🫣

Schlierian imagery for next flight, while supersonic, so they can see the shock wave. Interesting stuff. 

 

 

Edited January 28, 20251 yr by martin-w

26 minutes ago, martin-w said:

Successful. Went supersonic 3 times. Mach 1.2 for one of the runs.

 👏 👏 👏

27 minutes ago, martin-w said:

Two cameras on the nose gear, one as backup... what if they lose both?

What's the probability of both cameras failing? I understand that, if it's 10^-9 (i.e., one in a billion) or less, it's safe enough. That would be the requirement for subsonic aircraft. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

28 minutes ago, martin-w said:

Schlierian imagery for next flight, while supersonic, so they can see the shock wave. Interesting stuff

Looking forward to it.

Excellent stuff 👍

Bitter sweet for me as in the foreground is the future of aviation that I’ll be too old to ever fly myself, and in the background my beloved 747-400s being dismantled 😢

Mike Bannister in full diplomatic mode. 😁 It isn’t particularly attractive compared to Concorde but he couldn’t say that of course. Like a stick insect on elongated legs on takeoff. 😁

Did anyone count the number of wind turbines in the background? 🤣

46 minutes ago, Luis Hernandez said:

What's the probability of both cameras failing? I understand that, if it's 10^-9 (i.e., one in a billion) or less, it's safe enough. That would be the requirement for subsonic aircraft. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Both cameras are on the nose gear. So I'm thinking if they are that close together then both could be impacted. 

I'd want 27 cameras, all a distance apart and all on different circuits. 😁

 

Edited January 28, 20251 yr by martin-w

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

Successful. Went supersonic 3 times. Mach 1.2 for one of the runs.

Thanks for that, Martin.  I must say I got pretty excited when it went supersonic.  We just witnessed a history-making event in aviation.

I did some more reading and found that they aim for a ticket price of $5,000 round trip New York to London, so that's not too bad, actually.

I thought that Boom was trying to develop an aerodynamic design to greatly reduce or eliminate the sonic boom, but don't find anything about that, so I guess it will be like Concorde with subsonic speeds over land.

They'll be using non-afterburning medium-bypass turbofan engines for the Overture, so it should be a lot more fuel efficient than Concorde.

Anyway, this is pretty cool.

Dave

47 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

I thought that Boom was trying to develop an aerodynamic design to greatly reduce or eliminate the sonic boom, but don't find anything about that, so I guess it will be like Concorde with subsonic speeds over land.

 

Yeah, I can't find anything about sonic boom reduction, either. I believe NASA are working on sonic boom mitigation with their X-59. They say that the X-59 replaces the sonic boom with a "sonic thud". 

https://boomsupersonic.com/overture

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/quesst/