So why did Concorde fail? I'm legitimately asking, because in order to understand why this might succeed or fail, it is useful to understand why the previous incarnation failed.
I've heard people claim it was down to the Paris crash, but I'm skeptical since other aircraft designs have had multiple crashes and haven't been pulled as a result. Seems like it was already on the way out when Paris happened.
It wasn't the Paris crash. The jet never paid its development cost - if it hadn't been a sort of dual-country national champion it would have been cancelled years earlier.
Ultimately the problem was the per-passenger costs were too high. It didn't carry many passengers compared to the subsonic commercial jets, and anything moving that fast is going to use a lot of fuel both because of air friction and also because you can't use high-bypass engines. There are only so many people who are willing to trade $5k to save a few hours on a trans-Atlantic flight.
A separate but not insignificant problem was noise. It's quite noisy compared to modern airliners, and it was forced to ocean routes because nobody wants his windows rattled by sonic booms every day.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] threadThat's why they should fix the article themselves, by reposting (rather than leaving it to the mods to both notice and fix the errant title).
Email HN and ask them to fix the title.
(What's the edit window for users to fix titles?)
I've heard people claim it was down to the Paris crash, but I'm skeptical since other aircraft designs have had multiple crashes and haven't been pulled as a result. Seems like it was already on the way out when Paris happened.
Ultimately the problem was the per-passenger costs were too high. It didn't carry many passengers compared to the subsonic commercial jets, and anything moving that fast is going to use a lot of fuel both because of air friction and also because you can't use high-bypass engines. There are only so many people who are willing to trade $5k to save a few hours on a trans-Atlantic flight.
A separate but not insignificant problem was noise. It's quite noisy compared to modern airliners, and it was forced to ocean routes because nobody wants his windows rattled by sonic booms every day.