Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

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So, is there a replacement coming for the Concorde?

Here's a related obligatory Elon Musk quote from his talk at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico last month:

"Actually, I was sort of thinking, like, maybe there is some sort of market for really fast transport of stuff around the world, provided we can land somewhere where noise is not a super-big deal — rockets are very noisy — but we could transport cargo to anywhere on earth in 45 minutes, at the longest. So most places on Earth would be maybe 20, 25 minutes. So maybe if we had a floating platform out off the coast of the USA, off the coast of New York, say 20 or 30 miles out, you could go from, you know, from New York to Tokyo in — I don't know — 25 minutes. Cross the Atlantic in 10 minutes. Really, most of your time would be getting to the ship. And then it'd be real quick after that.

So there's some intriguing possibilities there, although we're not counting on that."

> So, is there a replacement coming for the Concorde?

Unlikely. Flying supersonic is expensive, and the larger the jet the more expensive it is.

The market for people willing to pay significantly more for a somewhat shorter flight is way too small, people much prefer cheaper flights (hence the success of Ryanair and similar) and those who would/could be willing to pay for it will use private or shared charter jets instead.

Note that even the POTUS doesn't care, Air Force One is a militarised 747-200.

I believe Airbus is partnering with a startup that is working on a supersonic biz-jet called the Aerion. This probably makes more commercial sense than a large transport - people already willing to spend USD 100 million on a jet will spend USD 120 million to fly faster and quicker.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerion_AS2

Yeah, whether it'll pan out is in question but it makes much more sense for non-commercial business jets than for regular flyers.

> Note that even the POTUS doesn't care, Air Force One is a militarised 747-200.

No president has really had a chance to choose super sonic vs subsonic. There's never really been a plane big enough to support the whole retinue and support apparatus that POTUS travels with that's capable of super sonic flight.

The FA says that the perception that the Concorde was expensive was incorrect and that the airlines raised it's tickets costs to match that incorrect perception.

No, it says customers thought the Concorde more expensive than it actually was, that's a very different statement. That people thought Concorde tickets more expensive than they were doesn't mean they were cheap by any stretch of imagination.

There's a YC startup working on supersonic flight:

https://blog.ycombinator.com/boom-yc-w16-is-building-an-affo...

Interesting - is an airplane something that can be reasonably done by a startup? My perception was always that it takes the major manufacturers decades to get a new model out into production, and that changes and improvements are very incremental from existing models. Building a new passenger airplane from scratch in startup dimensions looks like an impossible challenge at first glance.

I think Boom are helped by computer aided design being good these days and plan to fly a 1/3 scale prototype powered by an existing jet engine in late 2017. The I guess they'd have to raise major money to go full scale. http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a23382/race-build-sup...

I guess they'll go as far as they can go in the development and then either sell to Airbus or Boing, or try to go public.

Hm. I suspect that the 20/80 rule applies there and "here's our shiny new aircraft design, have fun testing and debugging it for the next 15 years" isn't a viable strategy there. There are often those "vision designs" of wonderful new planes that are developed internally by the major companies, but then never realized. I bet they can easily produce the 20% part themselves in much less time. But maybe it's an illusion and they are really ripe for disruption.

spacex was (is?) a startup, so never say never but it does sound like a big bite to chew.

True - but I guess an airplane that flies 100 passengers every day will have much more complexity and safety regulations than a (so far) unmanned rocket.

You could argue that building rockets or cars is also an impossible challenge...

That's great, but didn't Concorde show that there's really not that big a market for shaving a few hours off an intercontinental flight? Wouldn't it be more future proof to invest in "fast enough" ultra low fuel, low cost intercontinental means of transport, that's still viable after peak oil?

Pretty much. Airliners have actually gotten slower since the 1960s because it saves a nontrivial amount of fuel.

That said, there probably is a market for supersonic commercial aircraft. The problem is it's not large enough to develop the hardware. When Boeing or Airbus comes out with a new subsonic mid-sized widebody they're expecting to sell thousands to the commercial market, plus an air freight version, plus tanker variants for military use.

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