If there were a machine to travel through time, it would be a fascinating experiment to suddenly bring an adult from the mid-1970s to the year 2021. After watching on television the arrival of man on the Moon and the takeoff of the first commercial supersonic flights, that person would perhaps hope that there would now be bases on Mars or planes capable of transporting passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney or Paris in just over two hours. Instead, you would find yourself in a world that is incredibly advanced in some ways (a phone in your pocket with instant access to all of humanity’s knowledge!), But for some reason has stopped and even regressed in others.
The first supersonic commercial airliner, the Concorde, flew from 1976 to 2003. The accident of a flight operated by Air France in 2000 – 113 people died after the plane fell as soon as it took off from Paris – was in a way the sad last act of this mechanical prodigy, capable of cutting the duration of transatlantic flights in half. In reality, the incident – the only one of these aircraft in almost three decades – was not the ultimate reason for the Concorde’s withdrawal. Both British Airways and Air France itself canceled the flights of the supersonic plane in the months after the accident, and then resumed them. Everything changed with the September 11 attacks: they caused a drop in air traffic that made this aircraft economically unviable, which was always better on paper than in practice: it was traveling at 2180 km / h at its cruising altitude, but it was uncomfortable for passengers.
The Concorde was awkward
Its aerodynamic design did not leave enough room inside: it could barely fit four wide seats separated by a narrow aisle. There was almost no room for luggage, and when flying at an altitude of more than 18,000 meters, the pressurization of the cabin was complicated. In the event of depressurization, passengers could lose consciousness very quickly, so much so that they would not have time to put on an oxygen mask. For this reason, the aircraft was designed with very small windows, to gain reaction time in the event of an air leak. To add insult to injury, the Concorde’s engines were very, very loud, annoying even to the passengers. It was tolerable because the journeys were not long – about three and a half hours to link Paris with New York – but the experience was far from the comfort offered by regular commercial flights in business class.
With the Concorde out of circulation since 2003, the idea of traveling in commercial aircraft at a speed greater than the usual 900 km / h seemed doomed. In recent years, however, a few startups have attempted to resurrect supersonic flight, and one appears to be close to doing so. The powerful airline United Airlines announced on June 3 an agreement to buy fifteen supersonic Overture aircraft from the US manufacturer Boom Supersonic (possibly the worst name that can be given to an aeronautical company). These devices, still in development, are in a sense the spiritual successors of the Concorde. They will carry up to 88 passengers in a cabin decidedly smaller than that of a traditional commercial aircraft, but which has been designed in a much more modern way and offers great comfort, with individual seats and the kind of luxuries to which aircraft customers are accustomed. first class.
The goal is for these new aircraft to reach the same altitude as the Concordes – about 18,300 meters – and a speed of 1805 km / h, which at that point in the atmosphere is 1.7 times the speed of sound. If they succeed, they will link New York to London in three and a half hours, or to Frankfurt in four hours. A flight from San Francisco to Japan would take just six hours, compared to more than ten now. United Airlines is considering using them on continental routes in the United States that would leave the travel time from New York to Los Angeles in just over two hours, instead of the more than five that it currently implies.
Furthermore, it is assumed that these movements would be ecologically sustainable. Boom is working with Prometheus Fuel to develop a new type of fuel specifically for Overtures. Their prototypes already use this fuel, which is obtained by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and transforming it into ethanol, a compound that can then be mixed with others to create more complex hydrocarbons.
This point is especially important. Passengers’ sensitivity to the environmental cost of flights is changing and has little to do with the mentality that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s. The Concorde burned an enormous amount of fuel to travel at supersonic speeds, something that today costs more digest knowing the harmful effects of the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. Before we pack our bags, it is important to note that the first flights of the United Airlines company with Boom planes will not take off until 2026, and that they will be testing and certification. If all goes well, to buy a ticket you will have to wait until 2029.
Several analysts in the aeronautical industry are somewhat skeptical of the project, in part because of how difficult it is to achieve the economic viability of these routes. With only 88 passengers per journey maximum, the price of tickets will inevitably be high . And that is not the only problem, nor perhaps the biggest, but the fact that needs have also changed. Until recently, flying for work was unavoidable or convenient in many cases, but with the advancement of telecommunications it is no longer so. If we have learned something with covid-19, it is that many meetings that were previously held in person can be resolved with a video call. And that, there is no doubt, will always be much faster than flying, even at supersonic speeds.
