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NASA Drops $2.3M On Supersonic Aircraft Research
coondoggie writes: This week the space agency said it invested $2.3 million for eight research projects that will address sonic booms and high-altitude emissions from supersonic jets. NASA's Commercial Supersonic Technology Project, which picked the new projects, focuses on developing sonic boom reduction methods and defines the necessary approaches or techniques for objectively assessing the levels of sonic boom acceptable to communities living in the vicinity of future commercial supersonic flight paths.
Actually, the biggest problem was indeed the sonic booms - from the airlines privatisation in the 1980s and right up until 9/11, Concorde was profitable for British Airways on the trans-atlantic routes it typically operated on, and one of the main reasons Concorde became less profitable after that was because a lot of the services clientèle were killed in the 9/11 attacks. The crash didn't help of course, but the aircraft was still profitable after that point.
The main issue was the major restrictions on the service over land - it was forbidden from flying supersonic over pretty much every land mass, meaning it had no benefits on overland routes than a more spacious aircraft (Concorde had a smaller cabin than a Boeing 737, with only a 4 across seating arrangement rather than the 737s 6 across), so the economics of those routes were murdered by the restrictions on causing sonic booms. On routes which allowed Concorde to show its legs, airlines made a profit.