[arp242]

It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though. And that's with professional astronauts knowingly taking the kind of risk you can't do with a passenger aircraft, unless you want to do a OceanGate.

That's the tricky bit. I guess they can put something together in that amount of time. But making sure it's safe? More skeptical on that. Look at the recent woes at Boeing for example, and while Boeing's organisational issues are at fault for no small part, it does show all of this is tricky business. Also many other aircraft have had serious design issues, including Concorde.

Also not convinced on the economic potential on all of this. There may be also issues with increased noise, environmental impact (possibly via regulations), and things like that.

[class3shock]

Or getting it certified that it's safe.

https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...

"Amended type certificates typically take 3-5 years to complete. By comparison, the certification of a new aircraft type can take between 5 and 9 years."

[Turing_Machine]

> It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though.

Given that manned flight occurred in 1903, manned supersonic flight occurred in 1947, and manned spaceflight didn't occur until 1961, it appears that manned spaceflight is considerably more challenging.

At this stage, supersonic flight is 77 years old.