What's the deal about Bombardier flying one
of its business jets at supersonic speeds? Does this mean that we're about to see
more supersonic jets enter the market? Or was this some kind of publicity stunt? Well, it turns out that there's more
to this story than meets the eye. So, stay tuned. There's no question that there's
a huge interest out there for passenger aircraft who are able
to travel at supersonic speeds. We know this because there
are several companies out there that are working on prototypes. Probably the most famous one is Boom Supersonic that are currently doing some taxi
tests on its XB-1 prototype. But there are other companies out there
as well like XO Sonic, for example, that have recently been awarded a contract to look at the possibility of creating
a supersonic Air Force One. And on top of that, Russia's
UAC last year announced that they were looking into the possibility of
building a supersonic passenger or business jet, possibly loosely built on the technology
from the Tupolev 160 Bomber jet. But of course, that was
before Russia invaded Ukraine. And at the moment, all aviation
related businesses in Russia have many other things on their plate. And if you want to learn more about that, I've done a few videos about it,
you can check out one up here. So where does Bombardier
fit into all of this then? Well, up until recently, Bombardier had actually a very varied portfolio of
different aircraft types. They had the very successful Dash-8 Turboprops. They had the CRJ Regional jet lines, and also a number of business jets, including the very famous Learjet family. And of course, it was also Bombardier,
who created the C Series who was then bought up by Airbus, creating the Airbus A220 family. But more recently, Bombardier has actually decided to slow down on its aircraft divisions. They actually started as a snowmobile company claiming to have invented the snowmobile and other snowfaring vehicles as well, and they've been very successful
in creating different types of trains. And it's actually those parts,
especially the trains that Bombardier has decided to focus more on. So, besides selling the C Series to Airbus, they also sold the Dash-8 to
Viking who are marketing them under the Havilland Canada brand. And the CRJ went to Mitsubishi, but they held on to some of their business jets, which actually had a reasonably healthy
demand even before the pandemic started. It turns out that selling business jets often come with a much bigger profit margin
than selling airliners do. And that's because when airlines are being sold, they're often sold in big numbers to airlines. And because of that, the airlines
want a big bulk discount. But when you sell business jets, it's very rare for them to be
sold in such large numbers, which means that the prices can be kept higher, and so can the profit margins. And it's likely that this is one of the
reasons why Bombardier decided to continue with their business jets. This proved to be a very smart move,
because during the pandemic, the demand for business jets have been skyrocketing, with almost all manufacturers
who was in the business like Textron, General Dynamics, and Embraer, doing some really good results. Sadly, though, Bombardier decided to
get rid of its famous Learjet division, but that was not because they wanted to decrease on the amount of business jet they were selling. No, it was because they wanted to focus on their bigger, more successful global family. And this is where the supersonic tests comes in. Because back in May 2022, Bombardier
released their new flagship, the Global 8000 business jet model. This was going to be an improvement on their
actually recently new Global 7500 model. And it was going to be built on
pretty much the same platform with the same size, the same engine, but with an improved range and crucially, improved maximum speed. Now, whenever you're introducing a
new model of an aircraft into the market, it needs to first be certified. And if you're going to increase the speed
that this aircraft is using from an earlier model, well, then you're also going to
have to certify that higher speed. Now, I'm going to tell you more about those tests after this short message from my sponsor. If you're passionate about documentaries,
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the new global 8000 model had some significant improvements
on the older Global 7500 model. One of those improvements was an improved MMO, which is the maximum Mach
operating number of the aircraft. On the older Global 7500 model, the MMO had been set to Mach 0.925 which is a very, very high speed. But the new Global 8000 was
going to have an MMO of 0.94. Now, the MMO is the absolute
maximum operating Mach number that the aircraft is allowed to
operate in during normal operation. But of course, when you are setting a maximum speed, the aircraft needs to show
that it can handle that speed and a little bit more, have a little bit of a margin
so that it doesn't break apart in case the aircraft would
become temporarily destabilized. Or there would be a change in
wind at high altitude for example. And this is why they had to
demonstrate that the Global 8000 could actually handle a
speed higher than Mach 1. Now, I mentioned before that the Global 8000 was going to have the same size
and engine as the Global 7500. And this meant that while they
were doing the flight testing, they can utilize one of the older
flight test vehicle, the FTVs that was used to test out the Global 7500 in order to do these tests as well. So that's what they did. The test pilots, they climbed the aircraft
up to close to its maximum cruise level, which is 51,000 feet, that's by the way, 10,000 feet higher than I'm allowed
to fly with my Boeing 737. And then the test pilots put the
aircraft into a very shallow descent in order to achieve these very high Mach numbers. Now, they needed to be sure that
this speed was actually accurate. And in order to properly measure that, they actually utilized one
of NASA's F/A-18 fighter jet to operate as a chase plane and see exactly what speeds they were keeping. The aircraft did pass through Mach 1
during the shallow descent, and it went as high as Mach 1.015, which is just 0.05 Mach above the speed that they actually needed to demonstrate for the flight testing. But does this mean that the Bombardier
Global 8000 is actually a supersonic aircraft? No, it does not. This aircraft is not allowed
to pass the sound barrier. The only reason that these tests were done, and I'm saying tests because it wasn't just one, it did this on numerous
occasion back in May 2021, was only to certify that
the aircraft is safe to fly at this very high MMO of Mach 0.94. It is never designed to operate on
a regular basis above this speed. Now, it is very important that aircraft
do go through these kinds of testings because the aerodynamic changes
that happens to an aircraft that goes from the subsonic speed regime, which is where all parts of the aircraft is
flying slower than the speed of sound into the transonic speed regime, that's when part of the aircraft is supersonic. That actually happens to us,
the Boeing 737 and Airbus 320s and Boeing 747s as well, because the air that is flowing over the wings, it gets accelerated. And when it's accelerated, and we're
flying at Mach 0.78 or Mach 0.8, the airflow that's going over the wings
actually goes supersonic in some parts. And you can actually see this
as a passenger sometimes, if you're sitting over the wings,
and you look out over the wings, you can see kind of an optical change. It looks like a thin line
that goes across the wing. This is actually a pressure wave from the air becoming partially supersonic. And when an aircraft goes into transonic regime or the supersonic regime, you get these compressions of air. Basically, the air will not have
time to get out of the way for the object that's coming towards it. Instead, the air will start to compress and it will create these pressure waves. And these pressure waves
creates very high localized drag. And if the aircraft is not
properly built to handle this, it can cause so much drag that part of
the aircraft can actually come apart. And this is why it's so important to make these tests to make sure that all parts of
the aircraft that goes supersonic can actually handle those
kinds of pressure waves. The maximum Mach operating
number, the MMO, is by the way, not the speed that the Global 8000
is going to normally cruise at. That cruise speed is going
to be closer to Mach 0.85. But even so, that speed is exceptionally high and at the altitude that this
aircraft is going to be flying, Bombardier is claiming that the Global 8000 is now the fastest passenger aircraft in production. And with a cruise speed of Mach 0.85, it will have an astounding
range of 8,000 nautical miles. But if the Global 8000 has now
been proven and certified that it can actually fly faster
than the sound barrier, what's the reason that we cannot have
aircraft flying regularly at these speeds? Well, like I mentioned before, the aerodynamics of the aircraft
changes quite dramatically as the aircraft increases
the speed past Mach 1. But on top of those aerodynamic changes, which comes with changes in wing designs,
and structural strength and things like that, there is also some environmental impacts of this. Anytime that an aircraft does
shoot through the sound barrier, it creates this pressure wave, this sound sonic boom that
you've probably heard about. And what was found out during
the introduction of the Concorde was that those sonic booms have
a very negative impact of anyone who is around when the
sonic booms occur, right? It will shatter windows sometimes. And because of that, some rules and
regulations were actually put in force to make sure that aircraft could not
break the sound barrier over land. At the moment in most countries, you're only allowed to break the sound barrier when you're over sea. This is what limited the options
that the Concorde had. That's why it mainly only flew
between New York and London towards the end of its career. And those laws are still in place. In fact, most people don't
know that those laws when they came in force almost
bankrupted Boeing because at the time, Boeing was working on the Boeing 2707, the SST, the Supersonic Transporter, and they had to scrap that program when they realized that it wasn't economically
feasible to continue with it. And because they were working on both that program and the Boeing 747 program at the same time, they almost ran out of money. However, like I mentioned
at the beginning of the video, there are still a lot of companies out
there who haven't given up on the dream of creating yet another supersonic
passenger transport aircraft. NASA have been working hard on
trying to figure out if they can change the shape of the aircraft in order
to minimize the sonic boom, and thus minimize the impact
of the noise on the ground. This has led to a quite funny looking aircraft, which is a version of the
F-15, called the Quiet Spike. But during testing of that aircraft,
they realized that even though the sonic boom was more quiet, it still wasn't quite enough. And because of that, NASA has
now teamed up with Lockheed to try to utilize all of the knowledge that
they've gained from this first project to create a new aircraft called the X-59 QueSST, which stands for quiet supersonic transport aircraft. That aircraft is supposed to have its first
test flights towards the end of this year, 2022, and to be delivered to NASA during 2023. And they're going to use that
aircraft together with some research in how the supersonic boom moves
through different atmospheric conditions to try to figure out whether
or not they can come up with an aircraft that is quiet
enough to lift these rules and to be able to fly supersonic over land again. There are more challenges connected
to supersonic flight as well, and one of them being that in order to get
the aircraft into these really high speeds, you are going to need a lot of fuel. And this is why almost all of the
projects that you hear about today, including Boom Supersonic, they're all talking about the use
of SAF, sustainable aviation fuels, so that it won't have as terrible of an
environmental impact as the Concorde did. I should mention as well that the
Bombardier global flight test vehicle that we've been talking about in this video is far from the only subsonic aircraft
that have broken the sound barrier. In fact, a lot of military subsonic aircraft
has also flown quicker than Mach 1. But, maybe the most unlikely aircraft that
I've heard about to have actually done this was a DC-8 that achieved the
speed of Mach 1.012 back in 1961. That's just a couple of knots shy of the speed
that this Bombardier Global 8000 aircraft did in this flight test. But it did it 60 years ago, and it's
a substantially bigger aircraft. I would love to hear what you guys
thinks about supersonic flight. Put your comments into the
comment section below. Now, check out this video next. And if you want to support the
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and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.
