Could supersonic air travel make a comeback?
I mean as much as I like the Concorde, I really don’t see commercial supersonic flights being a major success, it might be of some use on certain long fight routes that are mostly over water.
But it’s going to have the same problems that were the nails in the coffin for Concorde, too noisy to fly over populated areas, high running/maintenance costs, low passenger capacity and reasonably small market.
Given the rise of the internet there’s even less need to just pop over to the US and back for the day which was some of the market for Concorde. The environmental impact of a commercial supersonic aircraft would also be under significant pressure. A lot of the current improvement in jet engines for commercial flight has been how to make them more efficient.
As someone with an interest in the technology involved in this stuff: it’s a LOT more viable today than it was 60 years ago. Today, you have:
- extremely advanced composites, ceramics, and metallurgy
- extremely advanced construction techniques, including bespoke additive, subtractive, and planar deformation
- incredibly detailed computer simulation in various domains to enable rapid iteration and perfection of components
- 60 years of research into jet engine energy and noise efficiency
- 60 years of research into supercruise
- recent advances in combined cycle, geared turbines, and rotational detonation engines - not to mention, theoretical advances in the future around electric, hydrogen, and fusion-powered concepts
- recent flight research around suppressing noise during supersonic flight (QSST)
There is a TON of technology and innovation that’s coming together recently to make supersonic transport an actual viable thing. For the record, it wasn’t a viable thing when the Concorde was doing it. That was basically a national pride project between the UK and France.
