News: 1596459545

"Concorde [carried passengers in] the very best surroundings that commercial aviation had to offer"

That ain't true. Noisy, not much space.

@Mark192

So, just like every other airliner, even before the budget brands started carving away everything and anything to make a couple of extra quid.

Ahh, you want your knees in the same place on your body when we land and you also want Oxygen, yep, those are all extras.

Would be nice to see a new leading edge aircraft design, but you have to wonder how many of those meetings could really be done over video conferencing given that its 2020 and all.

My Aunt used to fly on Concord quite frequently and commented that it was just as uncomfortable as all the other planes but that it had the benefit of being not very comfortable for not very long. Neither my Aunt or Uncle were very tall so perhaps didn't notice the lack of headroom.

I sadly missed out on my one possible trip when a family problem meant cancelling my air mile funded trip, at least they gave me the air miles back.

I did ride the Concorde one time on an unforgettable day in 1991 and it was small but not uncomfortable. The leather seats were a bit wider with more legroom than a slow plane economy. Noisy in the cabin, yes but people really don't care about that.

My brother in law had to fly from Brisbane to Sydney only last week for a meeting, which his boss insisted he had to attend in person and couldn't be done over video links despite the COVID19 pandemic.

He was lucky to be able to fly back to Brisbane just before they mandated a quarantine on all people coming in to Queensland from NSW due to there being several new cases of COVID19 in Sydney.

The basic parameters of the initial high speed aircraft design include a targeted Mach 3 certified delta-wing aircraft that would have capacity for 9 to 19 people at an altitude above 60,000 feet

Why? What is the point?

So Hollywood celebrities can get to their destination faster and spend more time lecturing us on how to save the planet.

This article says nothing about range, but the point is to move well-heeled people around the planet in less time than it would normally take, whilst extracting a tiny tiny drop of their personal fortune which would amount to a very large amount of money. Being a business jet, the normal air terminal wait doesn't apply, the thing can load from a limousine very shortly before its slot and off it goes.

So a sector time from London to New York could be around 3 hours, instead of 10 or more. If I had so much money that it accumulates faster than I could spend it then I would do it.

is enough to get old beardy to his private island then it will be enough.

PErsonally, it needs to be able to fly from London to Sydney over the ocean all the way (i.e. down the Atlantic, hang a left at Cape Town and over the Southern Ocean all the way to Oz.

Naturally, that ain't gonna happen so this will be another DODB (Dead on Drawing Board) project.

Projects don't become DODB because of your personal requirements.

"Why?"

To get to those private islands, of course.

‘ The engine became unique as the only power plant in aviation history to use an afterburner on a civilian airliner.’

The Soviet Union’s Tu-144 used afterburners as well and needed them to maintain high speed flight unlike Concorde which could cruise without afterburners.

Concorde would use them to take off, switch them off for the climb. Then it would light them again for the push through transonic and then switch them off for supercruise.

and spend more time lecturing us on how to save the planet.

You scoff.

That's a significant percentage of their target market you're talking about.

Clearly at 6-16 it's not exactly the SST for the rest of us. :=(

Do we REALLY need this?

Of course not, we don't REALLY need any aircraft.

Except to move novel viruses or, more specifically, their vectors around the planet. It was mass aviation that got us into this mess.

I think yes, just another way to part fools and their money, generate jobs, part more fools from their money?

Fleecin' rubes... no finer feeling, especially rich rubes!

"this" is a pr spin to get beardy (and RR) back in the public eye when it comes to airline bailouts

Do we really need the wheel? I mean I can walk wherever i need to go, and heck if i need to carry something heavy i can just stick it on the Ox over there. Wheels? bah! Do we REALLY need them...

OK, to be less facetious, WE may not need this specific aircraft, but if they crack Supersonic flight without being massively loud, and whilst being comparably energy efficient to a standard flight, then eventually that tech will appear in our regular civilian jets. I mean we didnt jump from the Wright Brothers to the 747. You need these in between steps, and if rich buggers want to spend their money funding that tech development, then I'm all for it... And even if it doesnt work out, at least some of that rich people cash has made its way into various designers pockets, so I'm failing to see a downside here...

My thought exactly -- "just what we need"...

The next (cancelled) version of Concorde wasn't going to need afterburners, so they shouldn't be necessary now. No citation, because the best I could find was one of those bloody awful Wix sites.

As for the noise, the Boeing 747s of early '70s were just as loud on take-off. It's why the opposition to Concordes at New York failed.

It might be using reheat partly for fun and to make it a more exciting ride, the acceleration for take off and climb out push on Concorde was an experience on its own.

"the acceleration for take off" makes sense as it has a much faster take off speed than conventional aircraft. Runway can get used up awfully fast.....

p.s. why is it not called a Vulcan2?

p.s. why is it not called a Vulcan2?

No space left for the bottled sunshine.

The Concorde wing requires rotation to a bigger angle for take off so the passengers are already feeling their weight pushed into the seat back, then its reheat thrust which doesn't relent after it has left the ground gives a feeling of going up much more steeply that you are. My flight was a joyride round the Bay of Biscay, so we we had no hold luggage and a light fuel load, which meant it went even better.

Concorde was noisy, I was on Digital course held in an office ion reading centre on a high floor (you can't expect details it was a long time ago), come 11am (or whatever time) the instructor just stopped talking as Concorde went over.

Living in Wokingham at the time used to be good to see it going over.

I did get to fly to New York on Concorde once, I remember it being comfortable, as ling as you sat down but noisy. Then again I arrived in New York an hour before I left Heathrow slightly drunk...

Concorde engines were necessarily pure turbojets, which are loud. They were loud on all the early passenger jets that were powered by turbojets or low bypass engines.

Ideal for those billionaires needing to nip across the Atlantic or similar for dinner (and back again the same day).

;-)

Their tech and Virgin's resources might have produced some magic. I half expect RR to lumber around for a while, haemorrhage a bunch of cash, then cancel the project.

If anyone has the tech RR do.

I’d be more concerned at the paper tiger that is Virgin TBH

Royce’s have been putting money into Reaction engines and investigating the use RE’s precoolers with conventional Jet engines. It wouldn’t surprise me to see that technology being involved in this project.

In the mid-eighties I worked on a project called HOTOL - a planned stratosphere capable aircraft that could operate as a jet at normal altitudes or a sort of super speed rocketty thing in a high altitude rarefied atmosphere. Lovely notion, but sadly, it never got off the ground.

Has ol’ beardy not heard that we’re fscking up the environment, and toys like this have no practical benefit - they only accelerate the damage?

That’s not to say that I won’t tolerate any damage. I’m not in favour of going backwards - but we need to weigh up the cost / benefit carefully. For example, exploration of space gets a tick from me, as does the building of solar, wind and advanced new nuclear reactors. I’d also be in favour of building advanced new sailing ships for the transport of goods which don’t need to be delivered quickly.

On the other hand, I’d put a tick in the ‘hell no, are you mad?’ box for nuclear weapons, fossil fuel guzzlers like supercars and SUVs, social media - and Branson's new toy.

So this is going to be entirely powered by renewables, right? Right?

Beard trimmings perhaps?

How does it compare to Concorde for fuel efficiency?

Should be far more efficient...if not somethings seriously wrong.

Carrying 1/10 as many passengers it needs to be 1000% better

Carrying 1/10 as many passengers it needs to be 1000% better

Not really, as Concorde was a commercial service aircraft. These intended to be private jets.

It'll never happen.

If first class travel means being able to stand up in the cabin it'll need to be almost as big as Concorde to meet supersonic design requirements and carry the fuel for a useful range. (Concorde has a cabin not much wider than a gulfstream biz-jet).

Concorde wasn't allowed to overfly any large populated landmass while supersonic due to the shockwave, I can't see this getting more favourable treatment unless it manages to not drag a supersonic shockwave behind it.

I have a spaceship that (just about) gets me to space, what else do I need? A supersonic plane? Not very ambitious - surely Spaceship 3 should be developed for sub-orbital travel instead?