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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
"Supersonic airliners are significantly heavier, less aerodynamic..."
I think this comment is weird. Supersonic aerodynamics is different than subsonic aerodynamics. A supersonic airliner should definitely designed by taking supersonic aerodynamics into account, indeed assigning a higher weight to it. This in turn reduces the subsonic efficiency of it. Bu it is not correct to say that it is "less aerodynamic than subsonic aircraft", because it lacks a basis for comparison.
"Less aerodynamic" is either concise to a point of ambiguity or wrong. SST's supersonic aerodynamic qualities do make designing adequate low speed performance difficult, but overall SST require much more stringent aerodynamic features. The entire paragraph (and the entire article, for that matter) seems to have been written by somebody with a negative view on SSTs. Mwace (talk) 08:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
The article fails to mention that the TU-144 was the first supersonic passenger jet, airborne 2 months before the Concorde. Also, the Russian plane did go into regular, if domestic only, service. It was used on weekly Moscow-AlmaAta flights.
Can a knowledgeable person update the paragraph on the "European Supersonic Research Program"? I am sure it needs updating -- I just removed the note that it was aiming to create a reference configuration in 1999. Google search for "European Supersonic Research Program" returns 29 hits.
"The main advantage appeared to be practical, these designs would be flying at least three times as fast as existing subsonic designs, and would be able to three planes and thereby lower costs in terms of manpower and maintenance."'
This sentence does not make sense, can someone correct it?
Adrian Pingstone 22:43, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Regarding the following text in the section "Damage to the Ozone Layer": "The high altitude flight makes such damage theoretically more likely than with traditional aircraft. However, research showed that the comparatively tiny quantity of nitric oxides generated in the exhaust actually boosts the ozone layer."
The webpage http://www.npi.gov.au/database/substance-info/profiles/67.html (which was cited in Nitric Oxide) contains the following information on the effects of nitric oxide on the ozone layer:
"In the stratosphere, oxides of nitrogen play a crucial role in maintaining the level of ozone. Ozone is formed through the photochemical reaction of nitrogen dioxide and oxygen. However, too little nitrogen dioxide results in too little ozone being formed, On the other hand, too much nitric oxide reduces the level of ozone because of an increase in the reaction of ozone to convert nitric oxide to nitrogen dioxide."
Ozone: "The latter reaction (O3 + O → 2 O2) is catalysed by the presence of certain free radicals, of which the most important are hydroxyl (OH), nitric oxide (NO) and atomic chlorine (Cl) and bromine (Br)."
Ozone-oxygen cycle: "Certain free radicals, the most important being hydroxyl (OH), nitric oxide (NO), and atoms of chlorine (Cl) and bromine (Br), catalyze the recombination reaction, leading to an ozone layer that is thinner than it would be if the catalysts were not present."
From all these sources, I have concluded that NO has a very important role in the ozone cycle, but greater amounts of Nitric Oxide in the stratosphere would do nothing to boost the ozone layer. If anyone else with a slightly greater understanding of this comes along and happens to agree with my conclusions here, the text of that section should definitely be changed. Ph0t0phobic 22:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Im no expert in this but the article fails to go into any detail about the huge work by the USAF - e.g. the Blackbird program/SR71 built by Lockheed's skunkworks flew at record speeds during this timeframe (1960-85) at 3,600 MPH routinely. http://www.aviationexplorer.com/sr-71_facts.htm
Also Gen Gibbs headed up the USAF SST program developing an SST which resulted in the superconic bomber the ? B1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-1_Lancer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.216.68.78 (talk • contribs)
"Since supersonic aircraft use more fuel, this translates into higher ticket prices, but since this is borne by the customers, this is not of itself a disadvantage to the airline. However, because more of the ticket price is fuel, variations in the price of oil cause greater elasticity in the price of a ticket, and hence in the numbers of passengers, and having to fly aircraft partly empty is rarely cost-effective."
This is convoluted, I kind of get where it's going but it's really not correct in several ways. Costs don't translate into prices except very indirectly. Most business costs are "borne by" consumers, unless the business is unprofitable - the cost of staffing HR people in the airline headquarters is also "borne by" ticket buyers and if that cost goes up with nothing else changing, that's typically not a positive thing for an airline. Profits are revenues - costs. A fuel cost increase in and of itself is a bad thing for airlines and their profits. There are lots of other factors that would play into whether ticket prices (and revenues) could change as a result of the cost increase - the competition, the substitutes, the elasticity of demand, the ability to schedule more or fewer flights, etc., but they're not simple.
Also, variations in the price of oil wouldn't naturally cause greater price elasticity of demand for a ticket. The price elasticity is already there, it's an attribute of the market for tickets. The variations in price cause variations in demand corresponding to the elasticity.
Probably better to just say that supersonic aircraft have higher per-passenger fuel costs and leave it at that. Xetnauq2 (talk) 21:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
I think the correct sentence is "Supersonic aircraft have higher fuel costs for passenger but if there are sufficient number of customers who are ready to pay more for traveling faster, this is not itself a disadvantage to the airline." Gokaydince (talk) 21:39, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
This whole section is unsourced and poorly written. It is not a question of what airlines want; it is a question of what consumers want. For today's international air travelers, if you asked them: "Would you rather have the same flight time with half the cost, or the same cost with half the flight time?", the vast majority would opt for the same flight time with half the cost. In other words, reducing cost is more important than reducing flight time to the vast majority of airline consumers. Thus, there are no more Concorde's, but instead B787's, A350's, and other planes using advanced composite materials and highly-efficient engines. The market wants lower cost more than it wants faster flight. --Westwind273 (talk) 16:07, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Westwind273, what is written here is not contradictory with what you say. Just think about it: What do we mean by "consumer" or "customer"? Any aircraft manufacturing company does not sell any aircraft to air travelers. From their point of views, customers are airlines. So, from manufacturer point of view, the important thing is the airlines' demand. Of course the airlines' demand is driven primarily by travelers' demand, but there are some other driving factors such as conservative approaches (We are already making good money, why take the risk of trying totally different things) etc. Gokaydince (talk) 22:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, if you assume that airlines are simply responding to their customer demand, it is only a semantic point. The more important point is, what does the market want? The market wants lower cost flight much more than it wants faster flight. --Westwind273 (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
You are basically right. But, indeed, demand of customer is not independent of service providers' behaviour. Sometimes, demand of customers is driven by what is presented to them. If customers don't demand something very strongly, this doesn't necessarily mean that they don't really want it. It may mean that they are simply not aware of it, because it has never been presented to them. This may be the case for supersonic travel. In reality, supersonic travel was only for a very very small minority - not a very good public awareness. But, maybe if you make it more widely available, when they taste it, they will demand it. I agree that today the biggest ambition of air travelers is to find cheaper and cheaper tickets. However, I don't think that it would be the same today if that "low cost airline" concept was not created by someone until now. They tasted it and they demand it. So, I still think that, it is an issue of "airline desirability", not "passenger desirability." Airlines' conservative approach is to blame, not the passenger demand.Gokaydince (talk) 22:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Does anyone have information on how much a ticket Paris-New York cost during the Concorde's lifetime? Some reference would be good as well, i.e. how much was a ticket for a subsonic flight at that time?
These two sentences are somewhat misleading:
"Now that commercial SST aircraft have stopped flying, it has become clearer that Concorde made substantial profit for British Airways."
"Since Concorde stopped flying it has been revealed that over the life of Concorde, the plane did prove profitable, at least to British Airways. Concorde operating costs over nearly 28 years of operation were approximately £1 billion, with revenues of £1.75 billion."
So was the Concorde profitable or not? Costs of 1 bn GBP compared to revenues of 1.75 bn GBP sound profitable to me -- am I missing something here?
see above paragraph, unresolved, ab USAF SST program, so im' here suggesting again, to add Gen Gibbs, pioneer in SST aviation... and adding also his son Lt Jim Gibbs, pioneer in USAF OTH, the mountain R&D, aka the "criminal" Jim Gibbs, etc lil darpa sr !!! 69.121.221.97 (talk) 16:25, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
The lead states "Supersonic airliners' greater speed and efficiency over their conventional counterparts have made them objects of numerous recent and ongoing design studies". I don't see any supporting evidence for the greater efficiency claim. I will remove it in due course. - Crosbie 21:04, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Where supersonic commercial transports have the opportunity to be competitive with subsonic transports is in productivity. During NASA's High-Speed Research Program, it was claimed that a supersonic vehicle could fit two flights per day for the majority of city pairs, whereas a subsonic vehicle would only have one. So even though the supersonic airplane has, say, fewer seat miles per gallon than a subsonic airplane, it would still be attractive for an airline to buy. – AeroJeff, 8 September 2013
I would like to point out that footnote 187 on the Concorde's page cites a reference from the Times concering the use of the word Concordski. --Arkansawyer96 (talk) 18:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
This article is highly deficient in that it has no links and very few references to the effect of regulations banning supersonic flights on the federal level in the United States as well as regulations and laws banning flight routes in parts of Asia both in the 1970s as well as later. 71.214.125.228 (talk) 20:20, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Supersonic transport/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
could use some more inline refs |
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Article currently contains predictions for dates such as 2019 which have passed. Andrewa (talk) 18:37, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
See also https://www.quora.com/Were-old-jetliners-in-the-60s-flying-faster-than-today-Was-it-due-to-the-use-of-turbojet-engines-or-turbofan-with-lower-bypass-ratio/answer/Matthew-Bekaert-1 for some of what we have been missing. Andrewa (talk) 00:12, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
https://boom-press-assets.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/United+Adding+Supersonic+Speeds+with+New+Agreement+to+Buy+Aircraft+from+Boom+Supersonic.pdf is of course a primary source, and CNET and others have based articles on it but these are still technically primary sources.
And there are at least two other commercial SSTs under development. Andrewa (talk) 09:48, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
I moved a couple of things around to get Aerion out of the 'Under Development' section but there's quite a bit more work to be done here if someone has the chance to tackle it. Lots of confusing info and a table that doesn't belong here as it includes long-gone airplanes. Retswerb (talk) 08:46, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
The "Engines" section confuses me.
I think I understand what is meant by turbojet engines potentially being more efficient at supersonic speeds than other engines are at subsonic speeds - even if they use more fuel for a given thrust, they are going faster, so that thrust needs to be sustained for a shorter time.
But then this section talks about high-bypass turbofans making the advantage of supersonic turbojets disappear - "One major advantage of the SST disappeared.", right after saying, "subsonic jet engines immediately became much more efficient, closer to the efficiency of turbojets at supersonic speeds." This makes it unclear whether high-bypass turbofans eliminated the supersonic turbojet efficiency advantage or merely narrowed it.
But the last paragraph of the section ends in a way that seems even less clear to me. It goes:
"For example, the early Tu-144S was fitted with a low bypass turbofan engine which was much less efficient than Concorde's turbojets in supersonic flight. The later TU-144D featured turbojet engines with comparable efficiency. These limitations meant that SST designs were not able to take advantage of the dramatic improvements in fuel economy that high bypass engines brought to the subsonic market, but they were already more efficient than their subsonic turbofan counterparts."
What does "already more efficient than their subsonic turbofan counterparts" mean? It isn't clear whether it is referring to low-bypass turbofans (just mentioned only in a supersonic context), or whether it is saying that high-bypass turbofans, for all their efficiency, still were not as efficient as supersonic turbojets.
Boatman4 (talk) 18:16, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Please explain how my edit about the North American NAC-60 is vandalism. I have reverted the reversion which was NOT done in good faith. --KJRehberg (talk) 03:47, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I believe an update is necessary to the article to keep it accurate, namely the american airlines purchase of 20 supersonic boom SSTs. DropBear42 (talk) 15:11, 17 August 2022 (UTC)