Flying supersonic is awesome. Living near people who fly supersonic is awful. Since there are far more people in group B than group A, a ban is warranted.
Also, now we have the climate crisis to deal with, commercial supersonic flight should be consigned to the history books where it belongs.
I don't. Have you ever heard a sonic boom before? Supersonic aircraft are useless over land for that reason alone, and if the regulations regarding supersonic flight over land were lifted then the net result would be a small number of wealthy jetsetters subjecting hundreds of millions to ongoing, unpredictable, maddening explosions, akin to living in a warzone. This scenario is one of the worst plausible futures that I can imagine. Supersonic passenger jets are a dead end.
I would really think that environmental concerns would ground a supersonic commercial passenger aircraft, until those problems are overcome - most likely with a breakthrough in technology.
We don't have a market for commercial supersonic jets (given present technology) because they are an environment-clobbering indulgence even worse than private jets. And its consumers would no longer be as comfortably private with their consumption being sprayed all over IG and the like.
I will bet money that if this plane ever starts carrying passengers, Boom will immediately start lobbying for overland supersonic bans to be lifted. Shareholders would demand it.
Pardon my lack of enthusiasm for yet another fight between privatized gains at the cost of socialized harms.
Even if there is an economic case for supersonic civil aviation, considerable environmental problems must first be overcome.
Given their extreme noise, pollution, and ozone layer disruption it's certainly a good thing there aren't hundreds or thousands of Concorde-equivalents plying the skies today.
Have they actually solved the (non-noise) environmental concerns of SST? From a NYT article a few years ago:
"According to a 1999 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, introducing 1,000 commercial SSTs more advanced than the Concorde could make the climate impact of airlines balloon by 40 percent by midcentury. That’s on top of the tripling of emissions already expected as more travelers take to the sky."
A new breed of supersonic executive jets will be even more polluting. The International Council on Clean Transportation, a think-tank, estimates that their emissions will be five to seven times greater than for standard jets. Boom, one of the startups hoping to produce these jets, has forecast that up to 2,000 such supersonic aircraft will be built by 2035.
They should make these guys go carbon neutral by installing CO2 scrubbers or similar for every plane they sell. There's no reason we all have to suffer the consequences of the super rich wasteful behaviour.
Given the current emissions of air travel I find fairly repulsive to spend that much money designing a new airplane going completely in the wrong direction in terms of fuel efficiency. There is no way ( regardless of altitude, unless you’re going in LEO ) to avoid the huge drag losses of going supersonic, so most of that ticket price is going to go towards fuel.
If this ever flies and there is a kerosene carbon tax, that plane is dead.
There's no big conspiracy here. Passenger planes have actually gotten SLOWER over the last 20 years because it's more cost efficient.
Supersonic flight is fun, but borderline nonsensical. The cost is outrageous, it's incredibly inefficient, and the damage to the environment and local ecosystems is terrible.
Supersonic flight is the future for the 1% who can afford it and don't care about the costs they don't have to bear.
Honestly, I'd rather see Zeppelins come back before supersonic planes.
I felt like a small part of humanity died when we lost commercial supersonic transit, as I hate seeing our race lose any kind of technological capability. Though I doubt I'd use it myself, I'm glad to see someone is trying to bring supersonic flight back, and targeted at those who will benefit most: executives whose time costs more than plane tickets.
That’s one of the most shortsighted views I’ve seen in awhile.
They are making air travel more efficient. Improvements in aircraft aerodynamics and engine efficiency to achieve supersonic flight can sometimes apply backwards and make a normal plane more efficient. We can apply some of the same technologies to shorten runways and reduce the sprawling layout airports need. There’s so many places technology like this can go that it’s insane we ever stopped researching it.
Writing it off because of vague fear-mongered potential environmental impacts is silly. As another commenter said, you can swim to Europe if you’d like but I will take the supersonic jet personally.
Don't care. No one is banning supersonic travel, just supersonic travel over land. If it can't be made to work economically over the long oceanic routes then it is a dumb idea that deserves to die. Again. If it works over water then it can stay there.
Isn't the real killer of supersonic commercial flights the inefficiency? You're using ~5x more fuel to have a flight that's ~2x faster. I suppose you can recoup the fuel cost with expensive tickets, but should we encourage even less efficient flights?
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