Sunday, April 13, 2014

Supersonic Business Jets

Ever since everybody got fed up with the Concorde, supersonic travel has been very scarce. The Concorde was put out of commission for numerous reasons, like the sonic boom that would rattle windows from forty thousand feet, or the fact that it guzzled fuel more fuel at subsonic speeds than it did cruising at mach 1.2.

While the final flight of the Concorde was a punctuation mark on commercial jet travel because of the cost of operation and development, we must realize that private business travel is not limited by the constraints of money. Many business aircraft manufacturers are racing to produce a supersonic business jet, and many believe we will see them in action by 2018. The key issues regarding supersonic travel are:

  • Eliminating or minimizing the sonic boom
  • Increasing efficientcy of subsonic flight with supersonic airfoils
  • Minimizing weight and unnecessary design techniques that are popular today
A company called Supersonic Aerospace International is working with Lockheed Martin on a project called Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST) in an effort to minimize the sonic boom factor that develops from sound waves building on specific points of the airframe. The sonic boom is basically a series of large shock waves. QSST has attempted to minimize this problem by creating many more shock waves that are smaller in addition to reducing the points that these shock waves build upon.

The biggest issue with the Concorde, was the fact that at subsonic speeds, it had to maintain a very high angle of attack due to its small, supersonic airfoil design. This created massive amounts of drag and required more fuel burn. The Aerion Corporation is working on a design that would maintain fuel efficiency at low airspeeds as well as reducing unnecessary weight. They do this not only with a new wing design, but also by removing all windows from the airplane. This reduces the need for structurally reinforced airframes. You can read more about the Aerion SBJ here. These changes to the business aircraft world affect me because, as a future corporate pilot, there is a very good chance I will be flying these aircraft.

Again, thanks for reading, and fly safe!
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4 comments:

  1. flyinryanApril 15, 2014 at 7:06 PM

    That jet is the cats meow. I think the only issue challenging the legitimacy of this aircraft are air traffic delays causing the speed of travel of this jet to be marginalized.

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  2. Prof WallApril 16, 2014 at 6:24 AM

    This is interesting information. I agree that the efficiency of the Concorde was a major issue. For a supersonic business jet to work, manufacturers will need to work out the aerodynamics so that the efficiency is competitive with other jets. People aren't willing to pay huge amounts of many to save a few hours in time, as proven by the Concorde. However, this may be different for the business sector.

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  3. Tom SimonApril 16, 2014 at 8:34 AM

    I think this is really interesting, and something I really didn't think of. I think many businesses or advantageous billionaires might be very interested. Personally, I would love to fly at Supersonic speeds.

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  4. UnknownApril 16, 2014 at 11:42 AM

    I think supersonic jets would be a nice fit and good means of travel, but there are also safety risk. It seems with all of these new aviation devices (supersonic/UAV) the FAA is going to have to some work to do keeping things in order.

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