ThirtyEcho From United States of America, joined Dec 2001, 1634 posts, RR: 1 Posted (11 years 3 months 1 week 4 days 10 hours ago) and read 1136 times:
What are the chances that the Sonic Cruiser "evolves" in its development into an SST? That compound wing looks more like a variable geometry wing; as does the canard in the front. Could we be seeing the first of a new generation of SSTs? Is this eventually a Mach 2.5, 450 pax, 11,000nm Sonic Cruiser?
EA CO AS From United States of America, joined Nov 2001, 12559 posts, RR: 64 Reply 1, posted (11 years 3 months 1 week 4 days 7 hours ago) and read 1111 times:
The subject of the Sonic Cruiser having supersonic capability has been discussed in another post.
The general consensus (along with remarks made by an aeronautical engineer) is that if you can get it to hit a M0.98 cruise speed, you can easily tweak the design to punch it up to around M1.25 or so. Going much faster would be inefficient, but the aerodynamics required to economically sustain a high subsonic cruise could be pushed a bit farther to get into a low supersonic cruise.
It's likely that while Boeing knows they can make travel at M0.98 economical right now, the airlines would go nuts if they can get an airframe capable of doing M1.25 or better for the same money.
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From United States of America, joined Dec 2001, 1634 posts, 
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