Supersonic Air Liners???

No. The only sonic booms you might have heard would have been from military flights.

 

Or, as someone who grew up in Florida, the Space Shuttle

 

I seem to recall that the Concorde SST did once or twice before being banned from US skies in ss mode.

 

I heard sonic booms all through the 60's as a kid, all military. Didn't seem to bother anyone then. "The sound of security" I guess.

Now a sonic boom is blasphemy.

That's pretty much what killed the SST as a viable mode of commercial world transport, except for strict flights over the Atlantic by the Concorde, which never made a dime.

 

The sonic boom wasn't the only problem with the airplane. Its viability started to unravel as the design evolved. Wing swivel pin never passed the lab tests in the original offering. Slow speed control and aerodynamics weren't very nice. The swing wing concept began to show more problems than it was worth and the design segued to the delta or modified delta much like Lockheed's. In fact, it appeared that Lockheed had the right answer from the start.I worked on the program and as it progressed, there were more and more unanswerable questions in all disciplines except propulsion. IE: the leading edges of the empennage were like the edges of a dull knife, they were shaped like an arrowhead. The indentations on the sides accepted the skins. The LE was exposed to damage, even from bugs or birds. How would you remove the LE's to repair them? The SST was premature in its time, the congress was against it, and we were encountering the same type of economical collapse that has just occurred. Boeing lost the SST, C-5, a flying public, and me all at the same time. That's when I started trying to paint.
Switches

 

I'm thinking the SST turned out to be a bit of a dead end. I think instead we'll see suborbital passenger air/space craft for long haul travel.

 

Interesting that people within Boeing actually saw it that way.

I was on the other side (P&W/Lockheed team) and we pretty much felt that was the right way to go. The Boeing proposal had a swing wing and pure turbojets, and the Lockheed proposal had a delta wing and low bypass fans (leaky turbojets like the J58). The thought behind the fans was if you lost an engine half way across an ocean, you could drop down to subsonic speed and still make land. With a turbojet you would burn too much fuel and have to ditch. Lockheed had a lot of experience with various delta platforms and felt that was for sure the way to go.

By the time the Boeing effort was cancelled the aircraft had delta wings and leaky jets...

We felt all along that Boeing won because of politics and the fact that "Boeing makes commercial jets and Lockheed doesn't", but that the Lockheed proposal was actually the right answer from the start.

 

I have always felt that politics plays too heavy a hand in these competitions and the winning proposal is too many times based on the clout of the "winning" congressman rather than the merits of a particular proposal. Lockheed has done it as well as NA Rockwell, GD TFX, etc.
I have some SST program summaries, general arrangement drawings, sales books and brochures, and a titanium slat nose rib test piece from one of the first NC machining runs.
Should be worth something some day.
Switches

 

I thought the final configuration to actually fly (the Concorde with modified delta wing) used pure turbojets but after reading these specs I'm not sure what category these fall into; these sound like a typical "suck and blow" engine to me.


"The Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus engines that are fitted to Concorde are a highly developed version of the Bristol-Siddeley Olympus that was fitted to the Vulcan bomber, which generated 11,000Lbs of thrust. Roll-Royce provided the development of the Olympus engines while SNECMA developed the exhaust and reheat system. On the prototypes this powerplant system was upgraded to generate 33,000Lbs of thrust and by the time it was fitted to the production aircraft, 38,050Lbs were available.

The Olympus engines are 2 spool engines. The inner shaft revolves within the outer shaft. The engine consists of 14 compressor stages, 7 on each shaft, driven by their respective turbine systems. At supersonic speeds when the air approaches the combustion chamber is is very hot due to the high level of compression of 80:1.



To protect the later compression stages the last 4 stages are constructed of a nickel-bassed alloy, the nickel alloy is usually reserved only for the turbine area. The speed or RPM of the engine's outer shaft is controlled by the amount of fuel being burnt. By varying the surface area of the primary nozzel, the inner shaft RPM on the inner shaft can be controlled relative to the outer shaft RMP

Concorde is the only civil airliner in service with a 'military style' afterburner system installed to produce more power at key stages of the flight. The reheat system, as it is officially known, injects fuel into the exhaust, and provides 6,000Lb of the total available thrust per engine at take off. This hotter faster exhaust that is used on take off and is what is mainly responsible for the additional noise that Concorde makes. The reheats are turned off shortly after take off when Concorde reaches the noise abatement area.

The reheats are turned back on, by the piano switches behind the thrust leavers, for around 10 minutes once the aircraft is clear of land, to push the aircraft through Mach1 and on to Mach1.7 where they are no longer required.

The Aircraft has an electrically controlled throttle system that is used to control the power delivered from the engines. Moving the throttle leavers asks the computer to apply the power to the engines in a correct and controlled manner. Through throttle master controls on the overhead panel, each engine can be either connected to the throttle lever (main) to an alternate controller or not controlled at all.

The engines also have ratings where they can be selected to different power or rating settings for different parts of the flight. eg take off or cruise. A contingency setting is available for use during engine failure and more power that normal is required from the remaining engines

There are two auto-throttles systems fitted to the aircraft that are associated with the autopilot systems. Each engine can be manually disconnected from the auto-throttle system if required. The Autopilot and auto throttle system will be described in another section of the site. "

 

Growing up near an AFB (McChord, near Tacoma) I have vivid SCARY
memories as a little kid (I was born in 1961) of sonic booms over our
house - once, some plates broke and I asked Mom if that was an earthquake!

I'm just glad they don't do it anymore (live 1 mile from that house... didn't fall
far from the tree)

Jedi

 

The original Boeing bid supposedly had higher bypass engines that wouldn't have been efficient at high speed as lower bypass ratio engines.

The Olympus is a typical turbojet, but the US SST was going to be a bigger aircraft with a larger payload, hence the leaky engines with a bit of bypass were thought to be the better choice. The bypass ratio of a leaky turbojet isn't much, only 5 to 10% of the inlet flow, as opposed to big bypass engine that today are way over 10 to 1.

 

anyone with any insights in Hypersonic engines, air breathing ones!

 

The FAA held about a one-year test series of sonic boom effects in Oklahoma City, I believe in the late 1950s/early 60s. Military jets flew over the city twice a day to create a sonic boom and they put on TV a number to call to see if any structural damage occurred. I lived there as about a 10 or 11 year old kid at the time.

Not much real land property damage was ever proven (at least from this test) but the public outcry pretty much caused the FAA to eliminate the option of land based supersonic transport.

 

I worked on some stuff that was powered by turbomachinery that was going to go Mach 3.5..... ON THE DECK!!!

We were assuming that they wouldn't need a warhead, just hit whatever you were going to try to destroy, and that you would pretty much annihilate anything that you hit, like a ship. Or, if it flew over you it would break your eardrums and knock you senseless...

The pressures and temperatures that we were getting in the inlet were pretty amazing, an engine like that has to run pretty much stoichiometric and that was a challengem but it was done.

Don't have any experience with supersonic combustion, scramjets and the like, but that's what it is going to take to make a hypersonic aircraft, and while NASA has spent a wad of money on it, they are only now getting some stuff that appears to sorta work.

 

There have been 2 SSTs that have been built. One is the Concorde, built by Aérospatiale-BAC and the other was Russian: the Tupolev Tu-144. Both are no longer flying. The Tu-144 had a very short operating life - less than 3 years. It also first flew before the Concorde.

We all know that the Concorde had a long and distinguished service history. I remember my only ride on it: Air Space America 88. That was a great airshow. I remember clearly walking around and seeing a C-5 dwarfed by an An-124. (They had the planes backed up to each other.)

I also remember walking up to a KC-10 on display and asking if it was "Shamu". Surprised, the crew chief said yes, and wondered how I knew. I told him I recognized him from when I went on a KC-10 Incentive Flight with my AFJROTC unit. Do they even still do those types of flights anymore?

 

Supersonic passenger return? http://www.aerioncorp.com/

 

The only intentional sonic booms I've heard in the last 30 years were at airshows at Edwards AFB, where, of course, they're famous for one sonic boom that happened in 1947! And at both of the Edwards airshows I attended, the man doing the honor was the same one, Chuck Yeager.

Once, when I was going to school in Puerto Rico in the early '60s, at a small school near the airport and right on the ocean, we heard a sonic boom, probably made by a diving F-86 from the P.R. Air National Guard (whose unfortunate initials spell PRANG!). Either his boom was an accident or he thought he was far enough out to sea so that his boom would be inaudible on land.

 

I grew up next to Sandia Base/Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque.

We heard Sonic Booms regularly, thought little about it.

Nothing compared to the B-36's landing over our house... pictures falling off the walls, plates falling out of cabinets, etc.

Fun when you're a kid.

 

We have supersonic corridors all over the US. They are picked because there is little or no population below them. Many are over-water, so you do not hear the booms like we did in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

NASA and the AF are working on designs for aircraft, especially airliner class aircraft, with suppressed sonic booms, but that is not the only issue. You really want to fly in an area of aerodynamic efficiency and neither Concorde nor the Tu-144 flew in one. If we do build one, it will probably need to fly around mach 3, not mach 1.4-2.0, and will be most effective for really long routes where the majority of flight time will be overwater.

It remains a huge investment for an SS airliner, and I am not sure anybody can afford it unless it is subsidized and that puts the WTO on your case.

Hypersonic airbreathing propulsion is still being worked heavily. The AF's X-51 recently flew and reached mach 5 with 2 minutes of sustained internal propulsion. To be useful as an aircraft propulsion system, however, a propulsion system that can cycle through the low speed regime, ramjet, and scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) flight regimes is necessary and a much bigger challenge. Maybe someday. NASA was able to sustain propulsion at mach 7 and mach 10 for very short periods of time with the X-43. Now we just need to glue the cycles together.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

I grew up near Redstone Arsenal and Marshall Space Flight Center in the US. Very occasionally, a supersonic jet would take off nearby, presumably out of Redstone Army Airfield, and it'd go booming over the houses. We never got any reports as to what they were, so they were almost certainly military or NASA aircraft.

Most of the time it really was more interesting than disturbing, although there was the rare low-altitude flight that would scare the crap out of me when it thundered overhead suddenly. I wouldn't have a problem with supersonic passenger planes booming overhead providing there were some altitude restrictions for running supersonic flight mode.

Later, moving to Berkshire in England, I was in the flight path of Concorde for its final years - and it was majestic. I once saw it taking off (full power) at dawn when I was travelling on the motorway to the airport for my own (non-supersonic) flight - I really wish I'd had a camera on me to snap a quick picture of the blue streaks of afterburner. It looked a little bit similar to this:

Image Unavailable, Please Login ​

BBC NEWS | UK | Concorde makes last NY flight​

Except I saw it from the side. The body of the plane had just broken into light and you could still see the afterburners streaking against a dark sky behind it. Honestly, it was one of the most majestic things I've ever seen. Damn, I wish I had a picture of it.

Very interesting reading guys, thanks!

Wow - that's cool!

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Interesting post. I have posted before, I think, about the plates and dishes that started rattling in our 1953 apartment in Seattle one night . Thinking that it was an earthquake, we started to think about running outside. But it was only a B-36 approaching the area and soon we began to hear the low frequency beat of the six propellers as it slowly passed over the Pacific N.W. at 120 MPH. I know this to be true because a good friend was an ATC controller who tracked the airplane. It took over thirty minutes for the sound to pass over us until it was silent.

 

Bob- My Dad was at Lackland AFB from 1954-1955 and they did the depot maintenance at nearby Kelly AFB. Occasionally, there would be a low frequency disturbance and you would hear all kinds of noise, run outside, and there would be an aluminum overcast of several huge aircraft with ten engines each. Very impressive sight and the ground literally shook. Hard to forget. Guaranteed they were nowhere near the mach since max speed was ~350 KTAS.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Yeah, Taz. Six turning and four burning. There will never be another airplane with that rather dubious moniker. What a tub!
Bob