[throw3823423]

An unsung part of the economic disadvantages of supersonic is how often the value of speed in the connection of two cities is not anywhere near even in both directions. Say we are looking at London-NY. The flight takes 3 hours, and the time difference is 5 hours. If you are leaving London, this means you can leave at a reasonable time, and have plenty of useful business meetings in New York: Much better the subsonic flight. But what happens when you fly in the other direction? In practice, it's 8 hours. So leave NYC at 8 am in the morning, and by the time you are at an office in London, the workday is over: Far less valuable for an executive than the other direction. Thus, the price differential over the regular flight in one direction is very different than in the other.

A supersonic jet with concorde-like economics in supersonic routes would be usable if it could fly subsonic at a competitive price on the way back, but that's not how physics works.

[shiroiuma]

If they could get the cost differential down a lot, then paying a little extra for supersonic would be worth it to some people just so they don't have to sit in an airplane as long. Across the Atlantic it's not such a big deal, but routes across the Pacific take a really long time.

[AnthonyMouse]

London to New York, New York to San Francisco, San Francisco to Tokyo, Tokyo to Mumbai, Mumbai to London. Send a subsonic plane in the other direction.

[extraduder_ire]

Sounds like a lot of that is over land, I hear people on the ground really don't like that.

[AnthonyMouse]

You're just not being ambitious enough. You have to make it fly high enough they can't hear it. Use a scramjet accelerated from the ground with a railgun and get the thing nearly into orbit, something like that.

[extraduder_ire]

Or shape the plane like a Busemann Biplane, so it doesn't produce a boom at all. I am a fan of parabolic-arc travel though. ICBT (inter-continental ballistic transport)

[ehnto]

An interesting side effect of that is the impact on ICBM defense protocols. If everything looks like an inbound missle you couldn't protect against them anymore, unless your protocol becomes "shoot down any ICBx trip not registered" but now you have a theoretical gun pointed at every passenger transport, ready to fire automatically for the sake of missing paperwork.