We will never have another SST.

Today, in an e-mail newsletter, Flight Global writes:

“For a realistic successor to Concorde to emerge, the aerospace industry must find an economical way around the immutable laws of physics.” #

This is correct, but the rest of the article talks about the wrong laws of physics. The challenge is not inlet geometries, sonic boom management, or exotic materials. The challenge is Moore’s Law.

In mid-1976, when Concorde launched, the price for a round-trip ticket between New York City and London was about $8,000[^1]. Through a corporate account, these could usually be bought on a same-day basis, or at worst, next-day. Total flying time was about three and a half hours each way. It was a long day, but you could leave New York in the morning, have a few meetings in London, and get home for a late dinner.

Now, today, we would hop on a quick Zoom call or something if we needed to have a last-minute meeting with someone in London. In 1976, there was no amount of money that could have purchased a last-minute video call with someone in London. The state of the art was about $30,000/ hr, and required four to six weeks advance notice to get the satellite channels set up. Further, this was not an on-site facility; you would have had to go to the Bell System’s building in New York, or the BT building that-didn’t-really-exit in Lodnon.

In this context, Concorde was a major improvement over the status quo. Where there was simply no possibility, now there was something. The world is not the same today. Videoconferencing capabilities have been standard on smart phhones for the past decade.

And that is why I don’t think we will ever have another SST.

[^1] All prices are listed in constant 2024 dollars.

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