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There's a company in the South West that is worth billions, making precise measuring equipment for aerospace and the semiconductor industries, amongst others. You can see their probe in the iPhone 5 release video (it's used to check the milling accuracy on the case), Samsung are also customers. The company was built around a measuring probe developed by a Rolls Royce engineer when he was helping develop the engines for Concorde.

Is London to New York the only route that makes sense for a supersonic airliner in the 2020s? I appreciate that they were both financial centres with wealthy companies and individuals, and that most of the route was over water so the sonic boom didn't disturb too many people.

Anyway, the rich are getting richer as they always do, and it's easier to fill a 50 seat aircraft with paying customers than it is a 100 seat plane, all things being equal.

A lot will depend on how much they manage to muffle that sonic boom. If they can get it down to a distant rumble, rather than Concorde's distinctive, and allegedly greenhouse-smashing, "Boom-Boom", then I could see other possibilities, W. Europe to Middle-East for example. Range will be an issue, of course.

Where I used to live, in Bavaria, and where I now work, in Lower Saxony, we get regular supersonic training flights from the local Luftwaffe bases. It keeps the dust from settling on the rafters.

Did Beardy own a chunk of FlyBe? Resurect that as the tax haven based airline that flies tax exiles out of the country. UK - Jersey is mostly over water and sorts the range issue. If HS2 business case is built on saving 20 minutes to Birmingham then this must be a cert ...

I wonder if Zoom will kill the Boom?

Or perhaps 1/1/21 will kill of any London/NY route stone dead.

Concorde broke a glass jug of water in my kitchen around 1985 in Woodley, Reading.

Wealth becoming more concentrated, so pool of potential customers likewise will be shrinking...

"Is London to New York the only route that makes sense for a supersonic airliner in the 2020s?"

I guess up and down the east or west coast of America?

I wonder if this will be superseded by extra-atmospheric flight by reusable rockets.

New York to Sidney in an hour...

An hour - and more, or less greenhouse gasses per mile? Plus, a rocket launch is so disruptive to the local environment (sound shockwaves especially) that Starliner would quickly become known as the Ryanair of rockets because you can't have a frequently used launchpad close to your population.

Actually, given an air-breathing rocket such as SABRE, a sub-orbital rocket plane makes a lot of sense. For example:

* The spaceplane takes off horizontally from an airport runway like any other jet airliner. Rocket-powered does not mean vertical-launch, it does not need a launchpad, uh ... okaaay?

* An airbreathing rocket will be no louder than a turbofan with reheat.

* The sonic boom on the outward leg is directed upwards and little if any makes it to ground level.

* The spaceplane spends most of its journey in ballistic spaceflight, burning zero fuel. "Please do not undo your seat belt" though!

* Its engines would only be restarted as a safety precaution in case the landing was aborted at the last minute, so more fuel saved there.

"An airbreathing rocket will be no louder than a turbofan with reheat." so that's London out of the way as an airport for it.

> New York to Sidney in an hour...

Given that Sidney, NY is only 3 hours or so by road from New York, NY then flying there in an hour should be pretty easy. Unless of course you meant S y dney, Australia, in which case that might be a bit more of a challenge.

Did you mean New York USA or [1]New York UK ?

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/New+York,+North+Shields+NE29+8EP/@55.0257312,-1.5035826,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x487e6e6ccd735aed:0xd19106cfb05b0faa!8m2!3d55.025733!4d-1.486073

Just as the world is realising that it can do business without having to leave home. Still, at least we'll be able to spread the next pandemic at supersonic speeds

it's not about "can do", i's about "can afford so I will", same as with Concorde

You obviously haven't met many investment bankers or the seriously rich, who tend to think nothing of jetting off somewhere for the slightest reason. The capacity of around 50 sounds reasonable. Even with the current restrictions I can see this being very popular with some, assuming the travel experience is better than being on concorde, which apparently wasn't so good.

The solution to travel time is to make your sleep time your travel time. Travel in 10 hour sectors to suit your own time zone, spend the whole time asleep. Treat the flight as a hotel room, instead of sleeping overnight in a hotel, then travelling through the next day.

This is how the night sleeper between London and north works. It’s a hotel on the move. You get on board, have a meal and a drink then go to bed and wake up at your destination.

Jet lag notwithstanding.

Also building a new aircraft with new engines using fossil fuel is not a great idea.

Why oh why can't the UK follow through with the technologies that it develops?

Concorde

Maglev

etc

Because we'd rather spend 40 years gently tweaking something and let everyone else forge ahead. Mini 1000 I'm looking at you.

We like to tinker, and lose interest once the problems have been solved. Then US (or Chinese, or Japanese) companies swoop in and buy up the results of our research. If they can't turn a profit in a year, then it gets canned all over again.

See also INMOS (the Transputer) and ARM Holdings...

Well, in the case of Concorde, this isn't true, I think. We may have lost interest but no-one else made any supersonic airliners (the abortive Soviet thing excepted) either, because, I suspect, it turns out that supersonic airliners are not actually that interesting.

It will be interesting to see what happens to this: surely the kind of companies which used to fly senior people between London and NY have now discovered that you don't need to do that because the internet exists. That leaves rich individuals who want to fly from one CV19 hotspot to another I suppose (I know, just because you fly to a London airport does not mean you're going to London, but still).

"it turns out that supersonic airliners are not actually that interesting."

There was also an element of "Not Invented Here" no-fly bans too.

But nothing was quite like the fuel crisis to price it so that it could never be come sustainable.

I believe Concorde ran at an operating profit (obviously it did not repay its development cost). Still, this is perhaps right: although the existing planes were profitable it may have clear that new planes (even new Concordes, while that was still possible) would never repay their purchase cost.

BA (and Air France) had the advantage that they didn't have to pay the fast majority of the R&D costs, they were all paid by the British and French taxpayers.

Ignoring those costs though, BA at least managed to make a profit off of Concorde (even ignoring the publicity it brought). This was helped by the bright idea of asking their passengers (most of whom presumably had their secretary/PA buying the tickets) how much they thought that a ticket cost. This turned out to be quite a bit more than the actual ticket price, so BA bumped the prices up to what the market could evidently bare.

I don't think this accounts for it. There definitely was that problem, but what stopped the US, say, from building their own version which would conveniently have been deemed sufficiently quiet to evade the bans? I think that lack of demand stopped them.

Because the people who will be flying in this thing kill them off here as soon as they see them blossoming.

Why don't we follow through?

Because politicians or short-sighted bean-counters and managers sell the new developments off for a quick buck - or even worse, the politicians often give it away (and almost always to the Yanks).

Don't forget that Concorde was a joint project with France. It wasn't just British technology.

(Judging from how many French people I know who work at Filton, it's a project that's still bearing fruit).

But to answer your question: Money.

Let's hope it doesn't go boom

It'll be okay as long as they don't wing it.

To be fair, if it doesn't, it's failed in its supersonic objective...

While this and Starship (mentioned in another reply) are both interesting engineering challenges I fail to see how either can fit in to the future of global transport. Starship is probably a decade away from being certified for such activity - if ever. Development and certification of a fifty seater supersonic aircraft likewise. Then factor in the steep development costs, the coming recession, environmental issues and the very real quite high cost of using such services...

Do sufficient numbers of people really need to move around the globe that quickly to make either of these things viable? I think not. Some people may want this kind of service, some may believe it is needed, but I think their time has come and gone.

I'd like to hope we are sufficiently forward looking to realise that given the state of our planet, these are not paths we should be going down.

I'd be interested in the carbon emissions story of these things. It's pretty easy to work out some values for orbital and beyond orbital systems, because the Δv requirements are well-known and the rocket equation tells you useful things (and I've done that and the result is: exploratory missions have very negligible impact but we will never send large numbers (millions) of people to LEO or higher with rockets using fossil fuels unless the hugely larger number of people who stay behind like dying). But for suborbital flights it's much more complicated. I assume they're fairly horrible though.

Like you, I think their time is gone: the whole thing is now being driven by people who read various science fiction books (I read those books too) in which people take the spaceplane from London to Tokyo in an hour, and believe that world can happen because they can't, or won't, do the maths which shows it can't. Or, worryingly, they can and don't care.

And of course I am expecting drive-by downvotes because I dare to actually be capable of doing the maths and in fact actually do the maths rather than believe in the convenient science-fiction myths.

And getting to/from airports?

This will be more than the flight time at each end.

If Greta wants the world to use less air travel all she has to do is persuade the politicians to increase the check-in & arrivals checks.

Just claim the extra checks are "for terrorism" or "think of the children" and no-one will complain.

But this is for the rich, normal rules do not spply.

> If Greta wants the world to use less air travel all she has to do is persuade the politicians to increase the check-in & arrivals checks.

Perhaps we can all sail in Olympic-standard competition yachts instead? Building a few more of those out of carbon fibre will count as a carbon sink. Doubly so if they actually sink.

Oooh yes. Air travel is annoying, by itself, the whole sitting-in-a-tin-can-thing. Admittedly, the few times I got upgraded on a transatlantic flight were pretty ok - still not a great experience in total, it was mostly "less painful / annoying".

The biggest hassle is first going to the airport, they are outside the city (mostly, except for London City, which is a rather cute little airfield), then getting inside the building, maybe dropping off luggage (ok, frequent travelers either travel without checked luggage or can drop it off at 1st class), then queuing for the security theatre, the security theatre itself, then having to pass through the shopping mall that all airports seem to be attached to, then hanging around in the lounge (trying to get some work done, while some business-class-entitled-feeling git yaps on his phone (the ladies seem a tad more considerate than the gents) top of his lungs, entertaining all of us, then stumbling along to the gate, be there on time-ish (be one of the last to arrive, so you don't have to queue as much), queue to pass through the gate, queue on the gangway, queue some more, because some inconsiderate... person... brought in a suitcase that does not fit anywhere (c'mon, if it does not fit under your seat it is not a carry-on-sized item), and they are holding up the traffic and...

I don't miss flying. I miss spending time at other interesting places though.

I mostly feel the same. Sitting in a tin can for a few hours is slightly boring (but a Kindle and music player sort that for the most part). But queuing and standing/sitting around in the airport is stressful. Reducing the flight time is tackling the wrong problem for me.

it's all a matter of perspective and attitude . Travelled a lot pre-Covid, long haul, economy class on my employers dime . Now you can choose to be annoyed at the queue to check in, security, the shopping mall etc. Or you can choose to read a book/listen to a podcast while you drift through to the lounge. Or ammuse yourself looking at cameras and laptops you will never buy in Dixons Then assuming the sun's over the yardarm have a leisurely pint in the faux olde worlde pub. Drift onto the plane when called. Noise cancelling headphones - selection of films your other half wouldn't want to watch with you, someone brings you a beer and a glass of wine. Have a sleep. Wake up and read a bit. Arrive somewhere exotic. Depending on the timezone hit the pool, or go to sleep, or dive into an exciting meeting. Don't forget to tell all your colleagues how totally miserable the experience was though.

Unless you are 6’3 and there is nowhere to put your knees.

"(be one of the last to arrive, so you don't have to queue as much)"

Turns out that, sometimes, if you do that you'll find that the flight is overbooked and you don't have a seat any more.

Red Dawn...

I assume this will be "supersonic" in the same way that Virgin Galactic isn't space travel?

Boom Supersonic

Not quite what Sir Humphrey meant with "Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title".

Assuming at some point in future a suitable power storage becomes available (maybe green ammonia+fuel cells)