Will we ever be able to fly commercially past Mach 2?

Hello everyone. I remember sometime ago that the Concorde Was one of the fastest planes available for public transportation but was retired due to economic clashes and a certain crash in July of 2000.



I was wondering if anyone knows of any aircraft that is currently being made for public transportation that can reach speeds of more then Mach 2 safely with efficiency and at a low cost. I hope that one day we can travel the world at record breaking speeds like the X-15 that can fly up to Mach 6 or faster for traveling but the question is can it happen in our lifetime and if so will we be able to afford it? Would like to see if anyone can uncover something that flight industry is trying to hide from us.

I think one or two supersonic capable trainers or demilitarized jets have made it into civilian ownership!

But overall supersonic transport is very expensive when you can do 650 mph at one TENTH the dollars per flight hours in FUEL alone.

I think we will see supersonic flight again for airline passengers BUT there's a few things they need to work on to make it affordable for all.

Hardly anyone could afford the flights on the Concorde as it was small (few passengers), and used immense amounts of fuel. It wasnt very fuel efficient for its size.

I think the problems faced by these airline manufacturers is that to make a large plane its going to be less aerodynamic than a smaller plane like the Concorde for example. An A380 for example could never achieve supersonic speeds, even if you strapped the biggest engines to it. Its too big...it cant pass through the air as smoothly as you would need to break the sound barrier.

I personally think that a commercial airliner would have to fly at huge altitudes to overcome this....70,000ft +.(as the air is far thinner)

I dont think we will see supersonic airliners in my lifetime (im 31)...theres still too much to overcome to make it a viable venture

There are several plans for supersonic business jets but I doubt we will again see supersonic aircraft with 100 seats or higher. The reason is economics. Few people have the real need and money available to pay for such a flight, but when they do, then they want to be as near to point-to-point travel as possible rather than going through a major airport with all the security hassles and queing and time delays, hence flying to small airfields/ports. I would love to see Concorde 2 or similar, but I can't see it happening again, indeed I had the great priviledge of flying on her and reaching 60,0000 ft and Mach 2, amazing!

reply to post by roguetechie


Thanks for the link Rouge .

Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI), based in Nevada, USA, is developing a supersonic aircraft called Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST). it’ll be ready for flight by 2014, and deliverable to customers by 2016. QSST (Quiet Supersonic Transport) could well be the future of high-speed passenger jets and the concept pictured above boasts some impressive figures. It promises to be 100 times quieter than the Concorde with a range of over 4000 nautical miles and a top speed of Mach 1.8, or 1,188 miles per hour. Check out the official site for More Information.

Source

reply to post by Stop-loss!


How can it be 100 times quieter?? A sonic boom is a sonic boom....they are all equally as loud as each other

reply to post by loves a conspiricy


I believe it means for passengers inside, not for the outside. Still, going faster then the speed of sound and is a real accomplishment these days. we should have technology invested in this for quick transport.

Response to thread title:
Sure. Just research the triangles, or if you can allow yourself, add UFOs to the list.
Do ANY of their movement characteristics indicate that they are using air for lift or propulsion?
(Answer: NO!

Just wait. As soon as they think we have had enough bits of info rationed out to us about one mysterious space-capable "plane" or another, or if we get into a very serious war, then they will allow us the privilege of knowing about those fantastic devices.

The foreign powers undoubted know about them and obviously lust aftter such themselves, but the average American lives in a dream world of what they are told to believe rather than thinking for themselves from easily available data.

Originally posted by Stop-loss!
I was wondering if anyone knows of any aircraft that is currently being made for public transportation that can reach speeds of more then Mach 2 safely with efficiency and at a low cost.

I don't know if you are including commercial spacecraft in that question, but the Virgin Galactic craft will travel well over Mach 2 though I couldn't find the exact speed. But I can estimate it.

The speed of sound is about 343 m/s. The velocity of low Earth orbit is about 7000-8000 m/s, so call it 7500 m/s. I'll use that as an estimate but if you find the exact velocity, let me know.

That's roughly Mach 22 if you divide 7500 by 343.

Here's the thread on it:
Virgin Galactic Spaceliner Launched

Originally posted by AnteBellum
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/50747711cb58.jpg[/atsimg]
Virgin Galactic Link

The SpaceShip Two is able to hold six passengers and two crew, already 300 people have reportedly signed up at a cost of about £121,000.

Whether £121,000.00 is low cost or not is relative. It's too much for most of us, but it's far cheaper than the roughly $20 million others have been charged for a ride into space.

Why is it expensive at all? If they'd develop a plane like the Concorde with more seats etc and they offered flight in an affordable price range they still could benefit from it! I would love to go on a flight like this one day

reply to post by loves a conspiricy
...Because a sonic boom is not just a sonic boom.

It has nothing to do with making the aircraft quieter for the passengers as the other poster suggested to you in response to your query. If you are a passenger on a supersonic aircraft you hear virtually nothing except that which is transmitted by resonance through the airframe. The QSST concept revolves around making an aircraft that nullifies its sonic boom, thereby making it much quieter. This is achieved by careful shaping of the wings and airframe to either reflect any shock waves away from the ground, using aero type spikes to gradually open up the air in front rather than create a sudden shock wave or cancel them out by bouncing waves into each other. Further afield you could also look at active cancellation to create an anti sonic boom, however this would require a power source and an acoustic emitter capable of delivering the required power.

The point is it is not only perfectly feasible to build a quiet SST but it is in fact being worked on right now. As a matter of fact NASA has already built and tested the basic technologies over the last few years. Just because something is supersonic does not mean that it is necessarily always noisy.

LEE.