Quote:
Originally posted by adamzion
Quote:
Originally posted by Tony Shepps
Boeing had a lot of flak over it's corporate HQ news last week, and skipped was this news, that they want to build this jet rather than more stretch 747s or whatnot. This is an artist's rendering. The trend is towards speed, and this jet would fly just under supersonic. It would shave off some time on cross-country flights.
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I guess Boeing's engineers decided that the <b>very</b> significant increase in fuel use required for supersonic flight wasn't worth it for the relatively insignificant increase in speed when compared to a plane which can fly at speeds which are just subsonic enough to avoid running into problems with the sound barrier.
Good call,
Z [/b]
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Not just fuel use, the entire airframe needs strengthening to make it past Mach 1. And of course there's the whole sonic boom issue. Though IMO if it were reasonably possible to build a trans-Pacific SST, it would be a good thing. Unfortunately, it isn't. The increase in speed is not at all insignificant; the Concord flies at over Mach _2_.
Also, most commercial jets fly reasonably close to the speed of sound nowadays; they can't be getting that much more out of it. The limiting factor, as I understand it, is that airflow must be kept subsonic _everywhere_ on the plane, or bad things happen.
04-03-2001, 03:38 PM
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