News: American Airlines Announces Agreement to Purchase Boom Supersonic Overture Aircraft, Places Deposit on 20 Overture

[Chris Trott]

So a couple things -

There were several SST programs run in the US. All of them were stupidly expensive, stupidly optimistic, and the one that might have worked on a reasonable budget was the XB-70 conversion, but it ran into all the problems with delamination of the aluminum honeycomb skin and such. But it was the end of government support of funding that killed the SST, not environmental issues or lack of orders. In fact, the Boeing 2707 had significantly more orders (115 vice 75). A lot of economists and historians argue that the failure of Concorde and Supersonic transport was actually more due to the loss of serious competition than any of the changes in environmental or regulatory climate, arguing that it was the loss of competition and thus significant reduction in potential orders (because of the increased risk) *allowed* for the changes in those climates that resulted in the further limitation of Concorde to just 14 aircraft.

As for the mockup, it's at the Museum of Flight in Seattle undergoing restoration for display after being in private hands for quite a long time.

As for Boom - I think the difference this time is two-fold. One, they're using "quiet boom" technology, making it much less noisy at supersonic speeds, potentially to the point that it will remove all restrictions against overland operation because its impact at the surface will be no more than what it is of any other airplane overlying. The second part about fuel is kinda a mute point. Concorde used Afterburner to attain its takeoff and cruise capabilities. This severely hurt its overall fuel efficiency, per seat-mile or per hour. Per seat-mile/100km Concorde was ~16.7L/100km. That's about the same as most long-range business jets, so not horrible, but also about double that of other 100-150 seat long-range aircraft. But so much of that was tied up in the use of afterburner during takeoff and somewhat during acceleration. Since Overture is building its design around not using afterburner and having a modern high-efficiency turbofan with FADEC and new composite structures which will solve a lot of the weight issues, I don't see that as being a factor anymore. The technology is actually mature now. With Concorde it was beyond bleeding edge, and that was what hurt it more than anything. It was the first. And the first always suffers.

[AllanL]

My son pointed out this story which could provide the power solution - if it wasn't utter b*ll*cks.

https://www.cntraveller.com/article/hyper-sting-plane

I stopped after seeing cold fusion for the power source. Perhaps they should stick to tales about exotic places no-one can afford to go to

And don't even get me started on the internal stresses from the wings.

[Paul K]

My son pointed out this story which could provide the power solution - if it wasn't utter b*ll*cks.

https://www.cntraveller.com/article/hyper-sting-plane

I stopped after seeing cold fusion for the power source. Perhaps they should stick to tales about exotic places no-one can afford to go to

And don't even get me started on the internal stresses from the wings.

Whatever happened to cold fusion anyway ? I remember the kerfuffle about its 'discovery' in the late 90s, but it seems nobody else could replicate the experiment, and it was discredited. Are they still working on it, or has it been dismissed as impossible ?

[Chris Trott]

Cold fusion, even if possible (which I think the issue was that the theory is sound, but everything else wasn't), may not have the kind of power density needed to be commercially viable in the near term. So while I'm sure there's academic research into it, the majority of commercial research is into "conventional" fusion reactor designs that would be more readily commercially viable. What's even more exciting is the newest generation of fission reactors that can literally be put inside a standard shipping container and operated *safely* on site just about anywhere. I got drawn down that rabbit hole by a discord chat a few months ago and it's pretty interesting what's being worked on in Gen 4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor At the bottom is a list of the small reactor designs being worked on. It's pretty ambitious for some of them.

[airboatr]

Whatever happened to cold fusion anyway ?

I turned out to be just another big fission story.