Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

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Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by Undaunted »

"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
fountainhall

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by fountainhall »

I suggest it might have been important to quote this from the article -
The firm refuses to speculate precisely when the jet will fly but Kevin Bowcutt, Boeing’s chief scientist of hypersonics, says it could happen in the next 20 to 30 years
What other new innovations await the next generations, I wonder? And how many of us will still be alive to see them happen.
Jun

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by Jun »

I thought high fuel costs & noise killed off Concorde.

The fuel cost problem has definitely not gone away. OK, modern engineering methods may improve fuel efficiency, but not by enough to catch up with subsonic flights or to offset the inevitable long term rise in fuel costs, since it is a finite resource.

Then, how big is the market for high priced fast travel ? If I can sleep overnight on a 12 hour flight, it's not a great hardship.
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Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

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Jun wrote:I thought high fuel costs & noise killed off Concorde.
Then, how big is the market for high priced fast travel ? If I can sleep overnight on a 12 hour flight, it's not a great hardship.
You assume boeing's long term plan for ultra fast travel will mean high prices I think as nothing significant has been done in this area since the end of the Concorde many years ago that it is very good news that atleast boeing sees this as an important move toward the future of long haul travel. Just for a frame of reference the Concorde was first introduced in 1976. The last long haul flight I took was when Thai air had the 19 hr nonstop from BKK to JFK......it was a fucking nightmare!
"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
firecat69

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by firecat69 »

I agree 100%. I won't be around but steps that have been made in so many areas have not been made in Aviation. Basically same speeds and comfort has gotten worse in the back of the airplane.

The whole point of this advance will be I think is that speed will take place naturally in space and fuel will only be needed to achieve orbit and approach for landing. I am so sorry I won't be around. This advance would be a lot further along if not for the Concorde crash.
fountainhall

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by fountainhall »

Concorde only made a profit when the respective governments wrote off the cost of the aircraft so BA and Air France only had to cover operation and maintenance costs. Yet each airline only flew around 200 passengers each way between New York and London/Paris each day. It was an infinitessimal fraction of the total market on those routes.

When Concorde entered service, Boeing also had advanced plans for an SST of its own. With 75% of the funding guaranteed by the US government, the Boeing SST was supposed to fly at 1,800 mph whilst carrying 270 passengers. Concorde flew at 1,400 mph and carried just over 100 passengers. Boeing encountered enormous problems with the additional size and weight, not least being the amount of fuel it would burn and the heat of the aircraft flying at that speed. Concorde's skin heated to up to 127 degrees centigrade, and the entire airframe stretched by up to 12 inches in flight. The US solved these problems in its military aircraft but could not do so in the proposed SST.

The complexities to be solved in the design of a viable large supersonic plane remain huge. No doubt many will be solved over time. But at what cost? And anyone who believes that today's economy class passengers will be able to fly on the new supersonic concept plane, assuming it ever gets off the ground, is surely in some sort of cloud-cuckoo land. With airlines now spending oodles of cash in developing first class suites with sitting rooms, bedrooms and showers for the high end luxury market, the market for a high priced supersonic flight is likely to be the same as for Concorde in the late 20th century - ie. infinitessimal. Far more likely in my view will be the development of a small supersonic executive jet for a tiny group of corporate executives. Today's economy passengers crammed into ever-smaller seats with ever-decreasing service are unlikely to see much change. After all, as firecat69 points out,the last 30 years of subsonic flight has seen no advance at all for those stuck in the back of the bus!
firecat69

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by firecat69 »

I agree the complexities are immense. But I think they will be solved assuming the world is not destroyed in some fashion..

Just go back 12 years ago and imagine someone telling you that you would hold in your hand a communication device that soon would have far more computing power then your current 12 pound laptop and allow you to communicate around the world for free with video.

The average person would have laughed at you . Just like people laughed when it was said satellites would be launched into orbit and the thruster rockets would be returned and land safely to be used again.

If Earth survives I believe eventually it will look like the Jetsons. IMHO Sorry that probably I won't be around for these changes.
Jun

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by Jun »

I agree entirely with Fountainhall on this. It's unlikely to happen.

The technical challenges certainly COULD be solved & if we had a planet 5x the size, with 20% of the current population, no global warming and a vast supply of cheap oil, I suspect they would be solved. In the world we actually live on, I believe the whole idea will be totally uneconomic, so we will not see it progress. You need both the technical and the economic feasibility for such ideas to progress.

There have been vast leaps forward in most areas of technology, but there are a few where we seem to have regressed, including:
1 Supersonic air travel
2 Nuclear Power. Instead of fast cheap zero carbon power, the adoption of this technology is far from universal & some countries are doing dumb things like burning our finite supplies of gas & shutting the nuclear power stations. In most areas of technology, safety improves AND prices fall. With nuclear, whilst safety improvements are virtually certain, somehow, there is too much government meddling & insufficient competition to keep prices down.
3 Antibiotics. We're not keeping up with new generations of antibiotics to replace the ones that no longer work.
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Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

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Jun wrote:I agree entirely with Fountainhall on this. It's unlikely to happen.
Who thought the internet was likely?
Who thought people could buy electric cars?
Who thought a flat screen TV as thick as a biscuit could happen?
Who thought a man could walk on the moon?
Who thought a man made vehicle could explore Mars?
Who thought a man's organs could be grown in a test tube?

Who thought? People that had the vision to make it happen!
"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
firecat69

Re: Fly Los Angeles to Tokyo in 3 Hours......Boeing Plan

Post by firecat69 »

Good thing there are those kind of people or we would still be using the Horse and Buggy.
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