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New supersonic aircraft. Your thoughts?


MAD1

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Hi all, am finally back in FlightSim after being flooded to the ceiling Feb 28 in unprecedented Australian east coast flooding event. My town's floodplain central area was devastated, 2.4m above the highest known floods, 1 in 100 year level, in 1954 and 1974. Will be years before we all recover. PCs all went under, so no sim setup for awhile yet. But, good to be able to read the forums etc.

 

Listening today to our national radio Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Science Show, had a guy at Farnborough Air Show talking about the Overture supersonic passenger aircraft with totally synthetic fuels being developed by Boom (http://boomsupersonic.com) slated to launch in 2026, to be the first passenger ship since Concord, as well as their XB-1. Also how they are or going to make the fuel using hydrogen and carbon dioxide taken from the air, using a modified industrial process that was developed in the 1920s (which used carbon monoxide, which they said the Germans used in WW2).

 

Interesting times ahead. Your thoughts?

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Yeah, felt bad about you guys in the New South Wales area with all that rain. Prior to that it was the massive devastating fires. So it all pretty much underscores that old adage, when it rains it pours. Here in Colorado, U.S. we had massive fires (Cameron Peak fire) a few years back during COVID and now because of all the burned out tress the ground doesn't absorb the water like it used to. So now there's flooding in that area every time it rains. Last I heard it's suppose to rain for at least three days I guess. And as I type this I hear the wind in the tress so something is moving in.

 

It's great we're getting the rain because I see our lakes are down, but not so great to those that call the foothills of the Rocky Mountains home. In the fire fighting community they call this urban interfacing. I honestly think we've gotten more rain this Summer than last. I haven't taken the time to look at the numbers and I don't often watch the news much.

 

 

I hope Overture takes off and is successful because I for one hate being in a plane longer than two hours let alone 10+! In this the 21st century we need transportation like this. Especially how everything is so interconnected and in a way countries are not oceans apart anymore (even diseases know...) It's amazing to think of how we now are in this era compared to the world's history back then. I believe it would take at least three months just to cross the Atlantic from England to New England (east side of the U.S.) just relatively recently in the 1800s alone. We're looking at at least 222 years ago.

 

I hope this new form of travel isn't like the Concorde though where only those that could afford the ticket could ride. It will without a doubt start out like that though, but I hope it's scaled up for affordability.

 

Honestly though, when I see headlines and stories about stuff like this with super sonic air travel and commercial space travel and whatnot I kinda go meh because I'm pretty sure we've mastered the power of gravity for propulsion. It's really just another form of force we've not mastered yet. Well, at least overtly anyway. LOL! Depending on who you ask, mankind has been messing around with fire for at least 50,000 years from that little area there in or near modern day Ethiopia. Since then, fire has not only been used for cooking but for work in/work out energy for electrical production, steam production, planes, trains, automobiles, boats and rockets/missiles... And I think 'change is on the rise.' Such a great power it is to utilize gravity as a force that it'll be like the technological advent of the Internet + satellites times a million let me tell you. Everything can now be self-powered and self-sustaining by small anti-gravity generators the size of say a modern day wrist watch. Your PC, refrigerator, washer/dryer toaster, you name it will have one built-in. The threat of a nuke attack is null and void with quite literately the ability to deploy a force field. Need the bomb squad? They can deploy a force field over the bomb and that's that. Threat is gone. Of course we carbon-based chimps will use it for control and military uses and so I don't think we're ready to have this awesome power. You could keep a population inside a border to say the least...

 

I could probably write a short story on this technology alone. It's that massive in technological scope. Those that know the applications know about this possibility thus it's probably why you want it kept under lock and key. Well, until we've masted it so that others don't get the upper edge should they discover it. I hear China is trying to create anti-gravity. They're already making progress on quantum computers last I heard. Not sure how true though. Like anti-gravity, those that master quantum computing will own the ball in the court and break all of our encryption. Not very good in every sense of the word... This is where communication via quantum entanglement now comes in. LOL! It's always a constant tit for tat. (can you imagine the deployment of the blockchain using quantum entanglement and/or DNA storage)?

 

Anyway, I said enough and had intended to keep my inventive thoughts to myself, but as it is, if I can think it, so has someone else. It's usually the case.

Edited by CRJ_simpilot
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Well CRJ_simpilot your post is up to your usual standard, very interesting if a bit strange - the anti-gravity thing I mean, certainly the quantum computing thing is a reality, if only in a research sense. Re weather and climate, we see on the news here about the devastating floods in Texas I think it was recently, plus the wildfires in California I think, and just today, more heatwaves and fires in Europe, and 40+ degrees C in England, unheard of. Could this be climate change in action as predicted 40 years ago? Something seems to be happening, more intense and more frequent extreme weather. Re supersonics, I wonder if any of you are interested to get your hands on a sim of e.g. the Overture or XB-1. No doubt somebody will put out a sim soonish. Keep calm and safe CRJ_simpilot, the world needs people like you to rattle our traditional thinking. Edited by MAD1
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I was at De Gaulle airport making a connection, 1999, when a stately woman's voice came over the public address to say: "Attention. Concorde now departing." I joined many others at the windows to watch the beautiful plane zoom down the runway The French have class, no one can deny that. The next year, of course, tragedy struck down the Concorde at that same airport. What with so many environmental concerns and the disappointing trends of modern business economics, I doubt we'll see commercial SST travel again in my children's children's lifetimes. But then, I'm old enough to remember how disappointing it was when Boeing's SST was cancelled ... and Apollo was cancelled ... and my flying car wasn't coming ... nor were family vacations to the moon ... nor my personal jet pack ... etc. Concept pictures, press releases, and venture capital don't an SST airplane make.

 

As for quantum computing, isn't one of the least mentioned unsolved problems the task of programming them - creating the programmers tools and creating new programmer paradigms necessary to make use of them beyond just experimental testing and Von Neumann-type computers? A long way to go, I've heard tell, no matter how impressive they look in the pics.

 

Antigravity? The Chinese are working on handwavium now? Wow. Impressive! What would Einstein have said about that?

 

From the Wiki:

handwavium - Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties.

Edited by ftldave
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Hi ftldave, when I lived in London for 2 years 1981-82 I went to Farnborough once, must have been 1981, a dream fulfilment, and saw the British Concorde do a low pass. Wonderful. Yes, agree with all that you say, but it seems the Overture will really happen. And yes, maybe the Overture is just so much hoop la. We'll see. The new aviation fuels are real, a major theme at this years Farnborough apparently. I think all this new world 21st century thinking is wonderful. About bloody time (to use the UK/Aussie vernacular). Wow, 1999, was it that long ago, no wonder I'm feeling old, that tragedy seems much more recent. And the US recent floods we saw on TV was Kentucky. Edited by MAD1
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I saw the Concorde at OSH in 1993- LOUD? Wow! -it's a beautiful ship, and it was very interesting to watch it and hear and FEEL it (low freq waves rattling the body).

 

had a guy at Farnborough Air Show talking about the Overture supersonic passenger aircraft

 

I, too, recall the Boeing SST that was "so near" to happening (actually a LONG ways off), and I've seen many proposed aviation products/projects that seemed so promising, only to eventually succumb to finances/regulations/difficulties after a few years. Remember the Windecker Eagle?

 

But one of the biggest obstacles is the sonic boom, and while there has been some promising research into taming that boom, nothing has yet reached the practical stage. Also, as CRJ says, it would be great if flight in such (should it ever occur) would be in reach of the "average Joe" rather than being the province of the rich, which is a portion of why the Concorde died out.

 

So as nice as it may be to dream about an SST, the barriers are still formidable and it will be expensive and time consuming to overcome them, perhaps not even in my children's lifetime (they're around 50).

 

Larry N.

As Skylab would say:

Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science!

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I, too, recall the Boeing SST that was "so near" to happening (actually a LONG ways off),

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

 

Need a Windows wallpaper? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/North_American_XB-70_on_ramp_ECN-1814.jpg

Edited by CRJ_simpilot
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It was around the Summer of 1978 and I was lying on the sand of Manhattan Beach in NYC. Heard the sound of a jet engine above me - looked up and beheld the delta wings of a Concorde making the turn from JFK heading to Europe - it could not have been more than 2000 feet above me?
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Recently saw a documentary about this plane. Slightly slower than the Concorde - M1.7 rather than M2 - and much longer range - NY to Tokyo. But will only carry 80 passengers, still has noise issues, and still requires large runways. Cost? Expect $5k for NY to London in three hours, and as one analyst put it, "how many people will pay that much to go that far in that time?"; when a regular flight is only twice as long but for a tenth the price. Sure there will be those for whom it will be for the status (bragging rights ...just like the company making it), but unlike the Concorde there will be no government subsidy to help with operational costs, which I predict will spiral far beyond expectations so the entire project will bankrupt (if indeed it ever becomes operational) or will become a millionaires' plaything.

 

Commercial supersonic flight will never be viable unless they can carry enough people per flight to bring the costs within range of the average traveler (A380 at M1.5?).

 

If they really want to speed up air travel, do something about the ridiculous wait times between getting to the airport, boarding the plane, and take-off. Some airports are stating, "you need to get here at least four hours before departure time". For any flight less than 800-900 miles you can probably drive there in the same amount of time.

 

(Some years ago the TV show "Mythbusters" proved this. Two couples in front of a hotel in San Francisco, one couple got in a rental car and headed for a hotel in Los Angeles, the other couple took a taxi to the airport, flew to Los Angeles, and took a taxi to the same hotel. The couples arrived within forty minutes of each other.)

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