Slashdot Mirror
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.
2.3M isn't much for even one supersonic research project. 2.3M for 8 is 300K. That's less than the cost of 2-engineer years at most companies. If they need an actual lab forget it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The biggest problems with supersonic flight weren't emissions or the sonic boom. It was the financial viability of it, enough people simply aren't willing to pay the extra to make this viable (at least historically).
They probably spend more than that on kleenex or toilet paper each year. 2 million for supersonic research seems not even worth a press release.
$2.3 million across 8 projects? That's less than $300,000 / project. Jack-squat to do much besides running a bunch of simulations on computers. Maybe one or two test flights.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
Not really. While this over-simplification ("It was too expensive!") might sound reasonable the true story is more complicated. Richard_at_work pointed at some of the issues. Another issue was that because of the Air France 4590 crash (which was largely due to bad luck), both British Airways and Air France got really jittery and anxious to pull the plug before another disaster happened.
Another thing that people ignore was that the Concorde was put to retirement largely because it was just a really old plane. It was designed in the 60's. It still had an _engineer_ in the cockpit - that's how old the design and avionics were. Unlike other planes designed during that period that are still flying, it never got any significant upgrades. It had a run of 27 years; more than good enough for any plane. Ultimately, it's not that Concorde failed, it's that we failed to replace it.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
That depends on whose profit you are talking about - the aircraft made a profit for its operators, British Airways and Air France, but lost its manufacturers money. Two entirely different set of accounts, and its easy to turn that on its head for other aircraft as well - the Boeing 747 made Boeing a lot of money, but while it bankrupted more than a few airlines whose egos were bigger than their fiscal abilities, you wouldn't say that the Boeing 747 wasn't profitable for Boeing.
The reason it lost its manufacturers money was because of the 1970s oil crisis, it had plenty of orders before that baby hit - indeed, the oil crisis depressed the entire airline industry, and many people believe that if the Concorde production run had outlasted the effects of the oil crisis, orders would have resurfaced, but alas the order book was filled (at least in terms of long lead time parts) before the crisis passed, and thus no more orders were possible.
The Convair 880 and 990 were also profitable for its operators, but lost its manufacturer money. Same goes for the L1011. But operators loved both types and they lasted decades in operational service precisely because they were profitable to fly.