Are you kidding me! I cant recall the last time I DIDN'T need to be in Honolulu in THREE HOURS!! This is a life changer for my Macadamia nut Addiction...
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In all seriousness, the best commercial prospect for this is high-speed-cargo.
Need a part from GuangZhu like TODAY?
Need an organ transplant from Ohio to Munich, TODAY?
Need to fire 900 employees via ZOOM call whilst flying to your other mansions to feed your pet slaves, TODAY?
Possibilities are boundless!
> Need a part from GuangZhu
CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm.
> Ohio to Munich
OK that can work, CLE-MUC is 3,759 nm.
Just add a refueling stop at ANC, the same as most cargo flights today (and the same as most passenger flights in the past).
According to a Great Circle mapper, CAN-ANC-LAX is only about 250 km longer than CAN-LAX.
It's a small enough issue that it's the routine route for cargo flights between China and the U.S. West Coast.
Anchorage is the second-largest cargo airport in the United States (after FedEx's home base in Memphis).
What’s a few shattered windows and waking up entire states with bangs at 3am? They shouldn’t have chosen to live under a flight path between an organ donor and recipient.
God, I fn Love you.
Might be related selecting an engine. The previous version of the design had a fantasy engine that didn't exist (I think the specs came from a military engine that they couldn't use due to export restrictions), but now they are working with Rolls-Royce, and appear to have actually selected an engine design. It must be smaller than what they originally wanted, because they moved from a 3 engine design to a 4 engine design.
I heard they put enough fuel in it to take off and get up to temperature and then refueled it in the air for safety reasons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional...
Great Britain is the name of the post 1707 Union of England and Scotland. It's not neutral if you are a member of the Unionist community in Northern Ireland.
The United Kingdom is the name used by the country at the UN but is, of course, not neutral if one is a member of the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
No one uses .co.gb domains.
People often use the terms imprecisely, but (for example) if Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom, it'd still be part of the island of Great Britain.
Yes I know.. that's not how the word is meant in this context...
edit: had to correlate sources to find that a bunch of popular aviation blogs got the original design wrong. was actually 3x turbofan -> 4x turbofan
> The Overture supersonic aircraft will be powered by three turboprop engines, which includes two that will be mounted under each wing, while the third engine will be fitted at the end of the fuselage.
https://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/overture-super...
What makes the turboprop itself supersonic is the blades are traveling super sonic. Normal turboprops are limited by keeping their blade tips below super sonic to prevent booms and vibration. It is not special to go super sonic at the blade tips, this experimental plane only served to confirm that.
So it is correct to say no turboprop plane has ever gone super sonic and the idea that boom is turboprop powered is wrong on its face.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech
edit: see parent edit, i was wrong. you guys are pretty good at making someone with misinfo feel bad though
Since this is the pedant thread I feel obliged to point out that turboprops are propellers attached to gas turbine engines, not jet engines. Jet engines are gas turbine engines that produce thrust using a jet of hot exhaust gas out the back. Gas turbine engines that don't produce thrust using a jet of exhaust gas aren't jet engines; examples are turboprop engines and turboshaft engines (popular in helicopters, some tanks, etc.) Turbofan engines produce at least some of their thrust with an exhaust jet, so it's fair enough to call those jet engines. Probably the truest sort of jet engines are turbojet engines, which are no longer used for commercial aviation and only have some niche applications remaining (for instance cruise missiles.)
Then there are the "jet engines" which aren't gas turbines at all; jetskis use gasoline powered piston engines to produce thrust using a jet of water. And rockets, which don't breath air, could be called jet engines in a sense because they produce thrust using a jet of exhaust gas. But if you go around calling rocket engines "jet engines" you're going to get a lot of people correcting you by pointing out that rocket engines don't breath air. Many rocket engines do contain gas turbines though, using gas turbines to power propellant pumps, e.g. turbopumps...
And if we really want to get into the weeds, some piston powered aircraft get a small amount of thrust from their exhaust too. And some exploit the "Meredith effect", wherein air over the radiators gets heated and produces a small amount of thrust. These effects may contribute a few percentage points of the total thrust of the plane, and in truth, some turboprop configurations do this too. But >90% of the thrust is coming from the propeller, not the exhaust.
The Republic XF-84H "Thunderscreech" was an American experimental turboprop aircraft derived from the F-84F Thunderstreak. Powered by a turbine engine that was mated to a supersonic propeller, the XF-84H had the potential of setting the unofficial air speed record for propeller-driven aircraft, but was unable to overcome aerodynamic deficiencies and engine reliability problems, resulting in the program's cancellation.
[. . .]
Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic speeds, the outer 24–30 inches (61–76 cm) of the blades on the XF-84H's propeller traveled faster than the speed of sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous visible sonic boom that radiated laterally from the propellers for hundreds of yards. The shock wave was actually powerful enough to knock a man down; an unfortunate crew chief who was inside a nearby C-47 was severely incapacitated during a 30-minute ground run. Coupled with the already considerable noise from the subsonic aspect of the propeller and the T40's dual turbine sections, the aircraft was notorious for inducing severe nausea and headaches among ground crews. In one report, a Republic engineer suffered a seizure after close range exposure to the shock waves emanating from a powered-up XF-84H.
The XF-84H design top speed was Mach .9 and probably made it to .7 in testing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscree...
It’s the original source of the mistake that should feel bad as they’re supposed to be experts in the field.
Can these be 'stacked' - Can you have a turboFan in line with a turboProp such that the output of the wash of the Fan feeds into the Prop, but with a portion of the wash spinning to thrust on the outer ring of output.=, via a design in the cowlings which is hyper directed thrust vents (think the grid of straws used to funnel water into a cohesive column, which can be directed)
Imagine a small diameter turboprop behind a much larger turbofan
So hopefully you see how your question is an interesting one, and one that has already been sorta done. Turbofans and turboprops are really quite similar, but at mach speeds only the turbofans have the right environment to be able to work efficiently. Your idea would have the prop in a supersonic air stream, which would make it effectively useless.
Leading micro eddys can solve this.
If the induction is a straight stream, it will fail - you need to direct micro eddys
If you do this with mechanical means (deflection cowlings) you will hit a limit.
The ideal design is in the funneling of eddys as they traverse in a super spiral between the front eddy and as it spirals to the thrust vector.
however, pre-ionizaton, and then magnetic ion direction can swirl the eddy to the desired output. However, AIR is not the thrust component at this time, its ionized energy which is being "thrust" (thrust is typically thought of as a 'push' - but this is actually a 'pull'
Identify a spot, pull yourself to it. As opp
Further, if you wer to dimple/convex in an alternating pattern the leading edge of any aero ... efficiencies would increase.
Micro-dimples are better.
Understand the eddys, as Da vinci would say....
Thus, the front prop gets almost 20% more torque than the rear prop.
0. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74787/why-dont-...
1. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showatt.php?attachmentid=281...
You might be interested in reading this stack overflow answer about differences between turbo prop, jet, and fan. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/71301/what-is-t...
Another aspect to consider is changing engine characteristics for different conditions. An example is changing the structures guiding air into the engine.
If everyone were to take their response as if they were educating a youngling, to grow with an understanding, the world would be a better place.
You could. But there's no way the efficiency and complexity penalty having props feeding fans or fans feeding props comes out ahead of "pick one and make it bigger"
But eastbound makes a lot less sense, unless you're just trying to save time. Because flying at night eastbound won't make you gain much compared to a regular red eye and flying during the day, you'll land at night...
Flying east fast after a day of meetings means you get in bed on time.
The above poster is correct - supersonics are suboptimal for eastbound, especially when you consider they can only be used at speed over the ocean.
A super sonic flight that leaves JFK at 6PM arrives at 2AM in LHR after 3 hours of flying plus a 5 hour time zone change.
It's much more optimal to take a lie flat seat on a traditional aircraft, get a decent nights sleep on the flight, land at 7AM, shower at the lounge, and charge forth with the day.
My view is that the lie flat bed is really what made supersonic obsolete, and I see Boom as largely a folly.
3 hour flight will change a lot of things for JFK-LON business trips as they open up opportunities to loose only 1 full day during business trip instead of loosing two full days. I generally stay on NYC time with meetings in the afternoon LON time if trip is less than 5 days so short flight is game changer.
Thank goodness for Zoom
I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
For me, there's no way to take a good break on a plane. I can't really get up and stretch my legs (unless you try to pace the aisle), and any kind of distraction is going to be on a screen.
It is more comfortable than coach, but it's still not really comfortable. Coach is actively uncomfortable, first class is just kind of neutral; not actively comfortable or uncomfortable.
I usually get more done sitting in the terminal than I do on the plane itself.
If I have a lie-flat business class option with decent food, getting to my destination a few hours early with less comfortable seating isn't a clear win. Like most people, I'm not jetting over to London to have lunch and sign a deal and heading home to sleep in my own bed.
Thank you for enlightening me. As someone nowhere near rich enough for this to be relevant, my upper bound for pleasant W-E transatlantic flight is being able to sleep. Shortening that sleep seems like a loss. But if you have a private jet on call, you can skip connecting flights, airport security, schedules, and all the things that actually make flying slow and miserable. I guess this company is aiming at the people who don’t quite have that kind of money.
Flying can still be a hassle flying business/first mostly because of cancellations/schedule changes--which can still happen otherwise because of weather, air traffic, etc.--but is less frequent I assume. A lot of the hassles of commercial flight (security lines, lack of overhead space, airport crowds in the waiting area, cramped seating, etc.) can be mitigated to a significant degree however.
Just having somebody watching transformers in the corner of my eye... on a flight a couple of years ago I watched 2 bollywood movies start to finish cuz the lady in the row in front of me was watching it and I couldn't help just watching on her screen.
Not so much the other way though.
It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth nearly non-stop.
100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really long international flight.
I still remember the first time I flew home from the north, we had taken off from Dubai and were headed to Seattle, which goes over the north pole. I watched that silly map more than I should have (it just makes things slower, I'm sure...) and I was so elated the moment we went 'feet dry' over North America. And then I realized that we still had six plus hours to go, more than if we were starting at the east coast. I was so sad for a few minutes I could have cried.
The worst flight I've had in a long time was a British Airways flight to Nairobi. Not actually all that long a flight to Nairobi from London, but BA uses their "This plane is definitely about to be decommissioned" planes on that flight. The panel between the cabin and the fuselage came loose when I nudged it with my foot and slid down into the hold, so I spent the whole flight with essentially all my possessions wrapped around me, certain that anything I dropped would vanish into the void.
Haha, yes. At some point people stop caring. You see people mulling around, getting their own food and drinks - just anything to pass the time.
It was not fun.
Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.
It's high-cost, non-vacation, long distance travel/transport where ocean liners were beaten in the 1960s by airliners (and airlines, in contrast, are generally not very profitable).
In any case, the lack of senior business executives choosing seven day trips in plush private cabins as their preferred mode of transatlantic crossing isn't much of an indication of whether people in that price bracket will tend to prefer pay more to spend four hours in discomfort rather than eight hours mostly asleep.
This will end up running LAX-JFK-LHR in my opinion.
And because the overall experience was so cool -- board directly from the lounge, the led display showing how fast you were going, seeing the curvature of the earth (sorry flat earthers), arriving before you left, etc. -- you never thought about the seat. I'm sure if you took it all the time you might care but most people it was awesome.
The seats do look very cramped and the windows are very small.
The museum of flight is amazing and much more interactive than most air museums.
https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/The-Intrepid-Experience/Exhib...
Has there been a render of the interior or something?
https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-experience...
Interior buildout in planes is always at the discretion of the airline, and the concepts shown by manufacturers should not be taken as realistic.
All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way? Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?
People will tolerate a sonic boom once a quarter or so, but you've better have a really good reason, like national security.
That was Columbia, not Challenger. Challenger exploded on launch from Cape Canaveral.
A crosscountry scheduled supersonic flight will have to overfly populated areas twice a day - booming all the way.
(Something that causes a lot of confusion - people often think a sonic boom is an instantaneous thing that happens when the plane breaks the sound barrier - it is not, it’s a continuous shockwave that travels with the aircraft while it is flying above Mach 1; anyone on the ground who the shockwave passes over along the flight path hears a sonic boom)
If you’ve ever heard thunder from lightning 15 miles away compared to thunder directly overhead, that might give you some framework for figuring out the difference.
I think it was a mistake for the US to ban supersonic flight outright and especially at all altitudes. I can't imagine a sonic boom being a huge problem, if you are 10 miles up or higher.
A previous entrtant in this area seemed to suggest that efficiency dropped near mach 1, but then rose again to 95% at speeds around 1.4 so being able to stay at that speed may make it cheaper to run and maximize their USP of speed.
You'd need a much longer range for this to be a real win. If you double that range then you can do JFK-SIN or PTY-SYD and then you could do an LHR-PTY-SYD flight in ~12 hours which would be a massive win.
This is true for getting to JFK from Manhattan, which is 40 minutes with 0 traffic and then the airport is absolutely massive and has long lines, but Boston -> Logan or SF to SFO is minutes. I think my total time from my door to my gate is ~30-40 minutes when I fly SFO.
BA001 LHR 10:30AM -> JFK 09:25AM
BA002 JFK 08:30AM -> LHR 05:15PM
AF002 CDG 10:30AM -> JFK 08:15AM
AF001 JFK 08:00AM -> CDG 05:45PM
That's why flying westbound supersonic is less of an advantage. Because as you can see, flying west, your day is still wasted, even if you leave early.
And realistically, from your plane at JFK to Manhattan, that's got to be a least an hour and a half (immigration and cab/limo). And assuming you'd have to be at JFK just an hour before your flight (and for an international flight that's ballsy), plus with transportation still taking an hour, you just wasted 3.5 hours commuting forth and back to the airport.
That schedule wouldn't work unless you flew to Manhattan. And even then, it'd be tight.
Its prolly something like 5x-10x worse.
I wonder if designing for synthetic fuels gives them any benefits? They can be a little bit purer.
Sustainable really depends on how much we need. There is probably enough wind energy for the process, so long as we only use it for things where high energy density is needed. That means drive an EV car or electrified transit, but we can use synthetic fuel for airplanes. Maybe, this last is mostly my guess, it is a real problem to work on.
Utility scale renewables are in pennies pwr kWh in Levelized Cost, and continually dropping.
There are 10kWh/liter of jet fuel. Utility scale solar is 3c/kWh LCOE today.
Assuming a pessimistic 10% efficiency in electricity to synthetic jet fuel conversion via H2 hydrolysis and the Fischer Tropsch process, that's a hypothetical $3/liter of synthetic jet fuel.
Current petroleum based jet fuel is $1.50/liter.
If you improve the conversion efficiency to 20% and lower the LCOE of utility scale solar to 1c/kWh (projected by 2050), and the hypothetical liter of synthetic jet fuel drops to 50c/liter, all while petroleum jet-fuel grows increasingly scarce and more expensive.
The efficiency of synfuel production could rise significantly as the efficiency of feedstocks like H2 hydrolysis (already 50%+) increase, and if if CO for Fischer Tropsch can be sourced from biomass instead of sourcing it from atmospheric CO2.
Finally, it's likely that in the future we'll switch to using hydrogen directly as an aviation fuel, bypassing hydrocarbons altogether, at which point the electricity to air conversion efficiency nears 80%.
At those prices, you can begin to afford to overbuild renewable capacity to drive a synfuel pipeline to store that energy chemically, which we will arguably need to do for seasonal energy storage anyways.
cool, so you're on board with nuclear + hydro as a more sustainable base load solution than lithium-based batteries
https://www.prometheusfuels.com/
(very cool website, not sure if thats a good or a bad thing)
Maybe I'm just old-school, but this was sooooo annoying. It'd be a cool intro to a Telltale game or something, but having it take over all the navigation (scrolling barely works, getting to the point takes forever) to tell its fancy 3d story was just a waste of my time, IMO. I want to know how their fuels work, not that they can hire someone to make a 3D game intro inside their browser. Just unnecessary shiny that gets in the way of usability :(
Probably will be very expensive but it's exciting for future possibilities