Concorde Part Deux

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: PheonixReborn

And yet, when they did tests over London in 1967 with a Lightning, for the SST program, the people there complained about the noise levels of the sonic booms, and the UK government stopped allowing supersonic flight over the UK, except in extremely rare circumstances.

But hey, why pass up a perfectly good chance to bash the US, right?

I'll think you'll find that Concorde and the British Electric Lightning were two different beasts.

One was a passenger plane and one was an interceptor.

The Lightning was designed to intercept Russian bombers very, very quickly. A job it did superbly.

Concorde was designed to rise to a height which would not produce a sonic boom at ground level either on take-off or landing. There was no sonic boom in America.

There were a lot of sour grapes, however!

originally posted by: Sammamishman
a reply to: PheonixReborn

Sounds like there was plenty of whinging from your side of the pond:

hansard.millbanksystems.com...

Cornwall is South West UK. No transatlantic flights would go over there. They go over the North West of the UK and follow the Great Circle route.

Any flights over Cornwall would have been test flights.

Commercial flights did not create any sonic booms at ground level.

originally posted by: PheonixReborn

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: PheonixReborn

Yes of course. We only developed those rules, that inconvenienced the hell out of the military too because we were bitter that we didn't invent the Concorde first. You figured it out.

Tell me these figures are wrong. At what height is Concorde going supersonic? What affect will that have on the ground? Who is whinging like a little girl? UK and France or USA?

The American SST project was cancelled a long time ago.
en.wikipedia.org...

Richard Nixon strongly supported the SST, as did his financial benefactor, Howard Hughes, who wanted to build an SST airport in Las Vegas.

I think I'll let your countrymen let their thoughts known.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter

originally posted by: PheonixReborn

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: PheonixReborn

Yes of course. We only developed those rules, that inconvenienced the hell out of the military too because we were bitter that we didn't invent the Concorde first. You figured it out.

Tell me these figures are wrong. At what height is Concorde going supersonic? What affect will that have on the ground? Who is whinging like a little girl? UK and France or USA?

The American SST project was cancelled a long time ago.
en.wikipedia.org...

Richard Nixon strongly supported the SST, as did his financial benefactor, Howard Hughes, who wanted to build an SST airport in Las Vegas.

Those figures and that diagram were for for Concorde, not SST.

Which didn't work!

a reply to: PheonixReborn

The concorde sure looks like it flew all over that part of England:



The Shuttle was over 60,000 ft (higher and slower than the concorde cruising altitude and speed) when it made it's very distinct sonic boom so yes sonic booms from that altitude can definitely be heard and felt at ground level.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: PheonixReborn

The Lightning was substituted for the Concorde to determine if people would complain. They did, even after Concorde was flying. If Concorde isn't flying, you can't very well test using it, now can you.

But you keep right on bashing the US and rewriting history.

a reply to: PheonixReborn

Uh, Concorde WAS an SST. You can't even get that right, but you're going to tell people that we're wrong about the rest of the history of it?

Looks like the Germans are dusting off old things as well.

Martin Sippel, leader of the SpaceLiner project at DLR's Space Launcher Systems Analysis group in Bremen, Germany, told Aviation Week at the AIAA - American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the scheme could now move ahead.

German SpaceLiner

a reply to: Sammamishman

To be fair, none of those lines pass over Cornwall, and the flights off the coast are off the coast exactly for that reason.

What about the anti boom technology? Why couldn't a civil company design one if it is plausible?

Concorde was dumped because it wasn't financially feasible, and the political issues around engineering challenges that could not be sufficiently overcome. Sonic booms are somewhat better understood at this point, but there's no magic bullet that will convince everyone involved to remove the restrictions on supersonic travel off the bat.

Furthermore, if you want higher performance it's going to cost. Nobody wants to pay for it. You have people crying at airports because they have to pay to gate check overly large carry-on items, and that's for a couple bucks. There need to be high-paying clientele for this to have financial returns that are not red, otherwise it'll never get to a runway. The only chance that an SST has of working is to offload enough first-class passengers from the conventional aircraft that they can fit (and fill) more business, economy, and vermin-class seats. As a common person, I can say I'd buy one ticket to say I had done it, but after that it's the slow way around for me and my tiny wallet.

Afterthought: For people to want tickets on an SST, it has to be priced such that the price increase is in line with the value of that person's time. If they're a CEO making however many million a year, 6 hours is a lot of time and potentially worth a lot of money. For someone like me working a technical job, I might give serious thought to taking a transatlantic flight if they could price it at a current first-class seat on a conventional aircraft. I might not take it, but I would think very seriously.

a reply to: Zaphod58

America called their supersonic transport proposal "SST"

This is what I was referring to. Now YOU get it right.

a reply to: PheonixReborn

And what do you think SST means? It's the FAMILY of aircraft that includes the Concorde. The US aircraft didn't have any designation beyond the company project names. The US referred to the program as SST, meaning SuperSonic Transport. That wasn't what it would have been called if it had ever flown.

Both the Concorde, and Tu-144 were SSTs.

The US programs were the Lockheed L-2000 and the Boeing Model 2707.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Zaphod58

We beat you to it. Stop whining.

a reply to: PheonixReborn

Who the hell was whining? You were wrong and were corrected. Get over yourself.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Do you deny that America referred to their proposed alternative to Concorde as "SST?"

a reply to: PheonixReborn

Of course they did. The UK, France, and Russia referred to theirs as SST too. It was a SUPERSONIC TRANSPORT. That's what SST MEANS. Any transport that flies supersonic is an SST.

originally posted by: PheonixReborn
a reply to: Zaphod58

We beat you to it. Stop whining.

There are a lot of English who think that because America didn't build a craft like Concorde that America single handedly ruined it by closing airspace.

It's not true, but I believed it for a long time.

But what Concorde proved was the Supersonic transport wasn't viable.