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Supersonic plane to move the super rich super fast
If you're a king of finance, getting across the country fast is important, and the luxuries of first class won't help you. No, you'd prefer to travel a touch faster than a normal plane — say, faster than the speed of sound. Lockheed Martin has begun work on designing a new business jet capable of flying at Mach 1.6, or about 1,200 miles per hour. A group known as Supersonic Aerospace International commissioned Lockheed to design and manufacture the what has been dubbed the Quiet Supersonic Transport, and they plan to have it in the skies by 2013. Seating 12 well-financed asses, the QSST will be able to get from New York to Los Angeles in about 2 hours and 15 minutes, which is about how long it takes for one to get from New York to Newark in a car at rush hour. The plane is being designed to be significantly quieter than the last supersonic jet to grace the skies, the Concorde, which is no longer flying. As anyone familiar with Guile from Street Fighter II knows, a sonic boom is a loud and irritating noise, so keeping the plane quiet when it breaks the sound barrier would greatly increase its chances of getting approval to fly over civilian airspace.
By northoftheborder at 3:23 AM ON 08/17/06
So what's keeping them from scaling the design up and putting it into commercial use? Sure, make the plane bigger, but cut down on the luxury to save.
By spacecoonass at 8:12 AM ON 04/05/07
Just "scaling it up" may be a tall order. There was an article on jets like these in Popular Science a while back - there are things you can do at a certain size level that you can't do at a larger size (which is why there's interest in supersonic biz jets all of a sudden).
Not to mention the climate change implications of a hundred or so airliner-size SSTs crossing the continent at any given time - particulate debris from incompletely burned jet fuel being mixed with the air at 20,000 feet at supersonic velocities may well change the weather.
Finally, the traffic control infrastructure is already being maxed out - imagine the added strain if all that commercial traffic were suddenly moving faster than sound.
I'd be more interested in transferring the flying wing technology from the B-2 bomber to civilian airliners. The B-2 is wicked-economical with jet fuel and quiet in the bargain - if the world airline fleet were to go over to civilianized B-2s, the high-level carbon emissions from air travel might be cut in half easily. Sure, the things might be more expensive to build initially (though maybe not if they didn't have to be stealthy - I bet that radar absorbing skin's a large part of the cost of the airframe in a B-2) but if the fuel consumption is as low as it is in the B-2, you'd get the money back in the first year of operation of a jetliner built with that type of airframe, maybe.
By Shortsircut at 2:19 AM ON 02/10/08
All that might even matter if you fall for the "man made global warming" garbage!
By Mr. Byte at 1:59 PM ON 02/19/08
They could use liquid hydrogen like the A2. No environmental impact, I would think, as unburned hydrogen would subliminate into gas and probably float into space.
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Mr. Byte:
They could use liquid hydrogen like the A2. No environmental impact, I would think, as unburned hydrogen would sub...More »