Could the US have built an SST?

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The Boeing SST in its various guises seemed to be the future of civil aviation and the 747 was designed to be converted easily to cargo lifting when the 2707s arrived in the late 70s.
Even Air France and BOAC planned to operate them alongside the Concordes expected to be in service some years sooner.
SSTs were killed off for mass travel by the Sonic Boom carpet issue and decisively by the impact of rising fuel costs.
Boeing's extraordinary beast died in 1971 when its costs and practicality defeated even the USA.
The rival from Lockheed had been much closer to Concorde in simplicity. It is often argued that this design might at least have flown.
As with other what-ifs timing seems to make a huge difference. Lockheed might have got its planes flying before the fateful 1973 price hike.
 
If Britain and France can bring the Concorde into service then in practical terms so could the US SST. The issue IIUC was that the Mach 3 spec made it too difficult to achieve at a reasonable cost.

The Concorde's cruise speed in service was Mach 2.04 and carried ~120 passengers, and the US wanted to double the passengers and cruise at Mach 3. If instead the US decided to double the passengers and have a 10-15% speed advantage over Concorde my guess is that US industry could have delivered a serviceable SST.

As an aside apparently the next production Concorde would have been the B model with extra range that would have drastically changed its operating economics. My guess is that the US would SST would have had the range of the Concorde B from the start, making it more attractive.
 
Mach 2.7, because it allowed three rotations per day between New York and Europe (and back, rinse, repeat). Between 6' in the morning and 11' in the evening.
Concorde could do only two, a 747 only one, and a Constellation, half a trip - one-way trip per day.
I did the math somewhere - here https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/a-different-concorde.35184/#post-660387
Also 250 passengers rather than 140 for Concorde.
Three rotations of 250 pax per day = 750 passengers across the Atlantic.
Concorde could only do twice 140 so 280. Barely one-third.
A 747 may do only one rotation, but it could carry up to 450 passengers so it fell right between Concorde and SST.
 
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The 2707-300 if build would have been an enormous aircraft. Packing 250 passengers into a narrow, supersonic fuselage meant the only growth dimension was length. Forget width or height, A380 or 747. End result: 300 feet long / 91 meters. Longer than the defunct An-225 ! And dwarfing such "giants " as Concorde or the XB-70 (200 feet long).
It would have weighed up to 700 000 pounds, and to accelerate such behemoth to Mach 2.7, the GE4s would have provided 30 tons thrust each. Growth variants up to 35 tons were being planned at the time of cancellation. The GE4 was a scaled-up, improved J93: already a massive turbojet, six of them needed to power a 550 000 pound XB-70 to Mach 3.1.
And the whole thing would have to be build out of titanium. As if Lockheed didn't had serious troubles to build a 100 ft long, Mach 3 titanium plane called the SR-71. Technology transfers were happening between Lockheed and Boeing. The Soviet Union was also involved, as their raw titanium was better than the US. There was even an informative meeting in Paris between Boeing officials and Soviet aerospace engineers.
 
Technological the USA was able to build there SST
but main issue at what cost and how much to operate it ?

a 240 seater airliner that fly at Mach 3 is not cheap to build.
Also it will be thirsty on kerosene fuel

Would PanAm buy a very expensive SST with horribly expensive maintenance and fly cost ?
special PanAm just has buy fleet of Boeing 747

you know the answer...
 
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Given how US banned Concorde from supersonic over-flights, I doubt Europe would have been sympathetic to US SST.

So, what's left ? Atlantic crossings, change at Heathrow and Orly ?
Pacific routes ? But steer wide of islands who'd rather not set their clocks by the booms...
 
I don't think the sonic boom panic has to kill the SST.

Here are a couple of maps from Heritage Concorde that show the potential of the longer range Concorde B (and presumably the big US SST). If a decent number of SSTs were built the sonic boom objections would be overcome, at least to an extent.
 

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From a purely technical/engineering point of view, *OF COURSE* the USA (the only nation on Earth to date to land humans on the Moon and bring them all safely back to Earth!) could have built an SST (heck, if the UK and France could do it...)! It was purely (speaking as a proud dyed in the wool German aerospace engineer) economic/ecological considerations/concerns that prevented that from happening.
 
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IIUC BA Concordes were the most profitable aircraft in their fleet, the seat prices were 'first class + 25%' and the planes were usually full.

Given these SSTs would have no economy class would fuel costs really be a killer? It's not as if the SSTs were competing against big widebody airliners to get the bulk passenger numbers.
 
Rule of cool said:
I don't think the sonic boom panic has to kill the SST.

Here are a couple of maps from Heritage Concorde that show the potential of the longer range Concorde B (and presumably the big US SST). If a decent number of SSTs were built the sonic boom objections would be overcome, at least to an extent.
Click to expand...
Amusing how those maps mainly show east-west routes.
Did anyone consider that great-circle routes might have been shorter over the North Pole?

Back in 1977 I can remember seeing airliners flying over CFS Alert at the Northern tip of Ellesmere Island.
More recently I have seen BOAC 747s turn north as they depart Vancouver on their way to Europe.
 
riggerrob said:
Amusing how those maps mainly show east-west routes.
Did anyone consider that great-circle routes might have been shorter over the North Pole?

Back in 1977 I can remember seeing airliners flying over CFS Alert at the Northern tip of Ellesmere Island.
More recently I have seen BOAC 747s turn north as they depart Vancouver on their way to Europe.
Click to expand...


Would it have something about the diversion airport rules in the 70s? IIUC 3 engine planes could fly further from diversion airfields than 2 engined planes, and 4 engined planes could fly further again.

Or maybe its a range issue, the Concorde B might not have the range required for the Arctic routes.
 
riggerrob said:
Amusing how those maps mainly show east-west routes.
Did anyone consider that great-circle routes might have been shorter over the North Pole?

Back in 1977 I can remember seeing airliners flying over CFS Alert at the Northern tip of Ellesmere Island.
More recently I have seen BOAC 747s turn north as they depart Vancouver on their way to Europe.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I wonder which routes? Canadian Pacifics DC-8-43s' Great Circle Route flew further south (perhaps because they originally routed VYR-YXD/YEG-AMS). IIRC, my flights on CP Air DC-8-63 (VYR-AMS direct) also went over Baffin Island before crossing Greenland.

I'm wondering if the flights that you were seeing over Alert in 1977 were LAX (or SFX) to LHR runs? I can see such a route being workable for a long-legged SST ... well, until it was on finals for Heathrow, anyway.
 
Rule of cool said:
IIUC BA Concordes were the most profitable aircraft in their fleet, the seat prices were 'first class + 25%' and the planes were usually full.

Given these SSTs would have no economy class would fuel costs really be a killer? It's not as if the SSTs were competing against big widebody airliners to get the bulk passenger numbers.
Click to expand...
BA were able to make money because the British & French Govts ended up absorbing the development costs and much besides. After various financial manoeuverings in the late 1970s, in 1983 BA had two choices - stop operating them or buy them at a knock down rate. They chose the latter and Lord King, the then BA Chairman and close to the then PM Margaret Thatcher, negotiated a deal.

So for a fleet of 7 Concordes that had cost the taxpayer £164m to manufacture, BA paid £16.5m for each of 5 aircraft and just £1m each for the other pair (total £84.5m), with the Govt also benefiting until 1984 from a profit sharing agreement entered into a few years previously. Profits become easier when you don't pay full whack for the aircraft.

It was only after Concorde was set up as a separate division within BA in about 1982, able to set its own fare rates above those of comparable sub-sonic fares, because market research showed the market would stand it, that it really became profitable to BA.

Had the airlines had to absorb the development costs into the cost of the few aircraft built, they could never have made money from the aircraft.
 
Rule of cool said:
IIUC BA Concordes were the most profitable aircraft in their fleet, the seat prices were 'first class + 25%' and the planes were usually full.

Given these SSTs would have no economy class would fuel costs really be a killer? It's not as if the SSTs were competing against big widebody airliners to get the bulk passenger numbers.
Click to expand...
It's not only the Fuel cost, a supersonic Airliner has also high expensive maintenance - Special the Engines.
Military no problem, but private Airlines, even the Communist Soviets had not Budget to keep there SST in air
The Concorde case was bit different, Next fly by nationalised airline as national symbol (special in France)
They also translate the high maintenance and Fuel cost to passenger, who pay the ticket until 25 July 2000.
 
The GE4 was related to the J93, and the XB-70 wasn't exactly commercially viable...
 
EwenS said:
BA were able to make money because the British & French Govts ended up absorbing the development costs and much besides. After various financial manoeuverings in the late 1970s, in 1983 BA had two choices - stop operating them or buy them at a knock down rate. They chose the latter and Lord King, the then BA Chairman and close to the then PM Margaret Thatcher, negotiated a deal.

So for a fleet of 7 Concordes that had cost the taxpayer £164m to manufacture, BA paid £16.5m for each of 5 aircraft and just £1m each for the other pair (total £84.5m), with the Govt also benefiting until 1984 from a profit sharing agreement entered into a few years previously. Profits become easier when you don't pay full whack for the aircraft.

It was only after Concorde was set up as a separate division within BA in about 1982, able to set its own fare rates above those of comparable sub-sonic fares, because market research showed the market would stand it, that it really became profitable to BA.

Had the airlines had to absorb the development costs into the cost of the few aircraft built, they could never have made money from the aircraft.
Click to expand...

Yes, that the French and British government had to absorb the development costs goes without saying, both it and the US SST were government funded vanity projects with questionable economics from the start. However the point is that it is possible to set up a business model where Concorde operations run at a tidy profit, despite the high fuel and other costs.

If the Concorde project had delivered faster and the US SST had flown on a similar timetable to the Concorde I could see these Government vanity projects delivering maybe 25-50 Concordes and a similar or greater number of (more appropriately specc'd) US SSTs. With 100-150 SSTs built their operations would likely become normalised and many of the issues dealt with.
 
riggerrob said:
Amusing how those maps mainly show east-west routes.
Click to expand...
The one that gets me is the route that has the aircraft casually flying the length of the USSR with a refuelling stop in Novosibirsk. As you do. Apparently they had the landing approach to it on the simulators.
 
Siberia said:
The one that gets me is the route that has the aircraft casually flying the length of the USSR with a refuelling stop in Novosibirsk. As you do. Apparently they had the landing approach to it on the simulators.
Click to expand...

Casually, leaning back, one foot on the dash and elbow out the window. I don't know about anyone else but all my mach 2 flights through the Soviet Union were like that.
 
EwenS said:
So for a fleet of 7 Concordes that had cost the taxpayer £164m to manufacture, BA paid £16.5m for each of 5 aircraft and just £1m each for the other pair (total £84.5m)…
Click to expand...
Just to double check when you wrote £165 million to manufacture was that for all 7 aircraft or just 1?
 
One of the things that really killed the US SST was the 1973 Oil Crisis. When the cost of fuel quadruples, airlines look long and hard at how much fuel they're buying.

I think that if the US SSTs had been in service in the mid-late 1960s or 1971 at the latest and given time to establish themselves as the way to travel, they likely would have survived 1973. Yes, their ticket prices would have quadrupled along with all the rest of the airline tickets. But it could have shown that SST operations were no more annoying than DC8s or 707s at takeoff and landing, and would have shown how loud the booms would be for a 60,000ft cruise altitude.
 
I mean if one of the senators from Washington hadn't voted for a tobacco law about 30 minutes before the sst vote had happened then a senator from vergina wouldn't have voted no and there for at least the flying prototype would have been funded.
Wether that would have created enough pressure for at lest a few boing 2707s to be built I have no idea.

Really a better idea is if lockheed had been chosen insted of boing, not only would there desine have not need the costly 2 year redesign (there for meaning the flying prototype would have already been flying by the above congress vote) but lockheed considered supersonic aircraft there ticket back into the Comercial aircraft industry and we're there for willing to actually lobby in congress, compared to boing which was trying it's best to completely divest itself from the sst project and spent 0 dollars trying to sway anyone congress for that vote (after spending millions to get the sst progect in the first place).
 
I just finished reading Sir Stanley Hooker's book "Not Much of an Engineer."
Hooker worked for Rolls-Royce and Bristol developing engines for Harrier, Concorde, etc. and he provided some valuable insights into the Concorde design process.
One issue was deciding upon cruise speed. Concorde cruised at about Mach 2.2 which avoided problems with aerodynamic heating and allowed them to use conventional aluminum construction. Much faster are aerodynamic heating would have required re-tooling for titanium or stainless steel construction, which they knew very little about in 1960s Britain.
They also calculated that a faster cruising speed (say the Mach 3 proposed by some Americans) would only have shaved a few minutes off of the time to fly from Paris to New York, but vastly increased operating costs.
 
The Lockheed proposal should have been adopted as it was effectively Concorde B it would have stymied the European project. Boeing swing wing could have been funded as a military Strategic Bomber think Mach 3 B-1
 
Scott Kenny said:
One of the things that really killed the US SST was the 1973 Oil Crisis. When the cost of fuel quadruples, airlines look long and hard at how much fuel they're buying.

I think that if the US SSTs had been in service in the mid-late 1960s or 1971 at the latest and given time to establish themselves as the way to travel, they likely would have survived 1973. Yes, their ticket prices would have quadrupled along with all the rest of the airline tickets. But it could have shown that SST operations were no more annoying than DC8s or 707s at takeoff and landing, and would have shown how loud the booms would be for a 60,000ft cruise altitude.
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I concur in the sense that in my best estimation, even (or especially?) given the oil crisis and its aftermath (but then again, whoever actually does the math *after* making a decision?), there would still have been a viable upscale prosperity market - in fact, the fuel price bump might have been an incentive for a certain shall we say ostentatious clientele to flaunt their wealth, if at least British Airways had kept a stiff upper lip and iron nerves after the French accident and marketed the Concorde accordingly (some more Spotted Dick and supersonic thrills for you, Milady?).
 
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danwild6 said:
The Lockheed proposal should have been adopted as it was effectively Concorde B it would have stymied the European project. Boeing swing wing could have been funded as a military Strategic Bomber think Mach 3 B-1
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Boeing ended up dropping the swing wing for the 2707-200, going with that double-delta+LERX wing shape that Concorde used.
 
Michel Van said:
it was 1973 Oil Crisis that killed the SST
Oil price went 3$ to 12$
Airlines were fighting for survival in 1973
PanAm never recover from this
Click to expand...

One interesting thought experiment would be tackling the economics by changing the fuel source to LNG.

This isn't terribly practical in many ways, but it is interesting to think about. Changing the engines to use it should be easy but the rest is not. It would probably use up most of the cargo hold space and require massive airport infrastructure changes to start.

What it would offer is utilizng a domestic fuel source and the US had just started exporting LNG to the UK and soon France around that time.

Still, overall, I don't think it would make much economic sense in the grand scheme of things unless we are talking alt history with some major incentives pushing LNG use.
 
Conc Costs: RoC #19 et al. We should not dwell on SST £: that was never an issue: K.Owen.(Ed),ICBH Conc.Witness Seminar, 19/11/98, pub.02, P85: BA's £160Mn. as “price” for 5 was erased from the Accounts in 1978 in exchange for an 80/20 profit-share scheme to 3/84, when BA (=us) “bought” and £16.5Mn. was shuffled in Treasury Ledgers for spares/support, plus £2 for 2a/c. That was all to ease the Prospectus to sell BA, 6/2/87 (long delayed by Laker's (successful) lawsuit).

France did it for prestige, with a vague notion that Mirage IV/Force de Frappe would benefit from high supersonic utilisation data; so then UK did it because "PM Mac came in (to Cabinet) with ‘I am not going to allow (CDG) to do it alone’ ” Owen/ICBH,P.36, so UK/France Collaboration Agreement 29/11/62. We had Applied to join EEC 9/8/61. If CDG's Non had been earlier than 14/1/63...no UK SST.

“(it) bore straight comparison to T.167 Brabazon, no questions (on) operating costs” e.g.: by Bristol Ch.Eng,T.167,BAC MD/Filton Sir A.Russell, Span of Wings, A'life, 92,P.178.

BA's operating "profit" was...an interesting notion, ignoring the cannibalisation issue (some BA Conc tickets were for folk who would have bought subsonic First Class: that's why BA has abandoned LCY-New York).
 
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Scott Kenny said:
Boeing ended up dropping the swing wing for the 2707-200, going with that double-delta+LERX wing shape that Concorde used.
Click to expand...
Yeah i know like Lockheed's design as well. But as a military design it would have been fine like the B-1 and Soviet B-1 copy lol
 

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