Originally Posted by
Dave Fitzgerald
The thing that has changed is the quiet boom research. They are banking on no or little sonic boom to change the prohibition of supersonic over land. This is why going supersonic the first time is so important. Not tht the plane can do it, but the instrumented test data about the pressure waves. They will have to do subsequent tests--wo the T-38 chase plane's boom, to start measurements.
Now, there has never been a civilian project, except the Concord, that has successfully built a supersonic commercial venture. Yes, you can even argue the Condord was a dismal failure after building only 12 planes. I doubt this venture has the financial resources to do any better. Small market, small number of potential passengers, very expensive program.
But, I hope they succeed anyway. Time to shake up Boeing and Airbus! (Not that they aren't in the midst of a cataclysmic--cool word BTW--market shift already!)
The US boom ban, while it fundamentally had a good reason, was also artificially re-inforced politically by US aircraft mfgs, since they didn't want to open up a market for their competitors. If Boeing's SST had started looking to have more potential, you might have seen some changes. Booms allowed from 0900-2100 local?
But yes there's currently government/industry collaboration research to shape pressure waves to mitigate or even eliminate the booms, and it looks like it can be done. Obviously Boom is banking on getting relief on that. That part is well within the plausible from where I sit.
I think the most questionable component of this is a commercially viable engine, not the sonic boom mitigation. But I won't write much of anything off anymore, not after watching spaceX launch the largest man-made object to ever fly, return it to launch site and grab it out of the air for re-use. Concorde is 60 year old technology, we may have made some advances since then.