It’s been 15 years since Concorde was up in
our skies flying faster than the speed of sound. I looked at this machine sitting
there and I thought, “Wow.” It led the way in aviation technology but
its program lasted less than 30 years. SST or supersonic transport hasn’t been
seen since in commercial aviation, but it may be about to
make a comeback. Flying faster than the speed of sound may
feel like a relatively new phenomenon, but the first Concorde took to the skies
the same year man landed on the moon. How does one know, what truly will be the
ultimate in the conquest of the skies. Well, the first jet flew, the prototype,
in 1969, people forget that. It’s a sixties airplane, and then it
didn’t enter service until 1976. Steve Bohill-Smith was a British
Airways Concorde pilot for six years. How come in the last century we used to be able to
fly from London to New York in just over three hours, and now it takes seven
and a half hours? That’s not progress, is it? So what are the flight times of
today’s subsonic passenger jets compared with future
supersonic aircraft? Take for example the Sydney
to San Francisco route. The distance between
the two is 7,419 miles. Currently, subsonic planes make that
journey in roughly 13 and a half hours. Future supersonic planes are
aiming to fly at up to Mach 2.2. That’s 1,688 miles per hour, which would make
the flight time nearly four and a half hours. It was Concorde however that displayed
the glamour of high-speed flight and the plane was supposed to revolutionize
the commercial aviation industry, Everybody wanted to come
up and see us in the cockpit. Celebrities used to sit where
you’re sitting and chat away. But by the end of
the 20th century, the world’s only supersonic airliner faced
an increasing number of problems. One of the issues that Concorde faced was the sonic
boom it created when it broke the speed of sound. This meant it was only allowed
to fly across the ocean. There were reports that the sonic boom
was rattling and damaging property. There were, according to some scientists,
environmental concerns that the plane’s high altitude would result in its exhaust fumes doing more
damage to the ozone layer than regular jets. Concorde’s small passenger
capacity meant airlines struggled to spread the high running costs
across its 100 or so tickets. The planes also required specialist flight and
maintenance crews, which were an additional cost. Fuel was another problem, particularly once
oil prices began to go up in the 1970s. The Concorde burnt nearly 100 tons of
fuel flying from London to New York and two tons just taxiing
onto the runway. Its fuel capacity limited the
plane to trans-Atlantic journeys. Then in July of 2000, an Air France
Concorde crashed just outside Paris after puncturing a tire
and fuel tank on take off. 113 people died and the entire Concorde
Fleet was grounded for more than a year. While the Concorde did fly again, the
crash, as well as the 9/11 attacks which hit the aviation industry as a whole, compounded
the many issues that the plane was already facing. Ultimately though, it was the Concorde’s
business model that didn’t work. It’s small, aging and expensive fleet of planes
would have been too costly and unprofitable for the airlines to improve or re-build, and under
the weight of political and economic pressures, its flying days were over. Today, passenger aircraft still travels at speeds
similar to those at the start of the jet age. But there are some who
are trying to change that. One American company called Boom is planning
on making supersonic transport a reality. We’re like a re-invention of Concorde half
a century later with more modern technology, so the aircraft can be more affordable
and available to more people. Boom is one of a handful of startups in the process
of creating a new commercial supersonic aircraft, which its founders hope will be 30 percent
more efficient than the Concorde. Its first flight is
scheduled for 2023. Research and development for the Concorde -
they spent hundreds of millions of dollars. How much is it going to
cost to make your plane? It’s certainly not a capitally unintensive venture,
but what’s different now versus Concorde is Concorde with 100 seats on the
airplane and a $20,000 ticket price could not work on very many routes for very
many people and so 14 only ever entered service. When you get the fares down to business class
prices, so think $2,500 each way across the Atlantic, and you right size the airplane, so 55 seats,
smaller vehicle, works on more routes and we could see a market for 1,000 to
2,000 of those airplanes which means a much greater opportunity to
earn back the development costs. Even with an improved business model, how
do you solve the problem of the sonic boom? The sonic boom issue I think is really overblown,
but we’re baselining supersonic flight over water only. Boom is aiming to produce a plane
30 times quieter than Concorde’s, while NASA is attempting to reshape the conventional
design of a fixed-wing aircraft to solve the issue. NASA is also working on creating a
quieter supersonic commercial plane with American aero and defense
company Lockheed Martin. However, even if the sound is reduced, there are still
concerns that new jets will harm the environment. That’s because much of the development
is focused on modifying existing engines that still exceed global
fuel emission limits. There are also some industry experts
that believe supersonic planes may not be the leader in
aviation technology for long. In the early stages of development for commercial
supersonic transport, Boeing actually won the initial design contract but had to stop development
after their funding was cut four years later. Now, the American manufacturer is back in
the game, developing a new hypersonic plane. We are looking at potentially really, really
high-speed travel, Mach 5 speeds, which is a step function change in what some
of the subsonic or supersonic jets would do. So how quick is hypersonic? Hypersonic planes will be traveling at
Mach 5, five times the speed of sound. That’s 3,836 miles per hour. Meaning the plane would take just under two hours
to complete the Sydney to San Francisco journey, around two and a half hours quicker
than Boom's supersonic aircraft. But hypersonic technology for commercial
travel is still decades away. There’s a lot of technology challenges
that you have to overcome, and then there’s also just the business
model around hypersonic flight. Is there a market? To get a commercial aircraft to travel at the speed
of sound is a feat of incredible engineering, and if manufacturers can also sustain and expand
their fleet while continuing to make money, then this is an industry set
to reach new heights. Hi guys, Tom here, thanks
very much for watching. If you want to see more of our
videos, then check out these. And what do you think of supersonic
travel, do you think it has a future? Comment below the video to let us know
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