How It Works-Amazing Vehicles

I

n 1976 we could fl y commercially from London to

New York in just three and a half hours. That’s

over 5,550 kilometres (3,460 miles) at an average

speed of 27 kilometres (17 miles) per minute. For

context, the same journey in a Mini Metro travelling

continuously at 97 kilometres (60 miles) per hour

would take close to 58 hours (almost two and a half

days) – and that’s not considering the fact a Mini

can’t fl y!

Today, crossing the ‘pond’ – ie the Atlantic Ocean

• takes more like seven and a half hours, a trip that
  defi nitely puts the ‘long’ into long-haul fl ight. So,
  this raises the question: what went wrong? A
  one-word answer is suffi cient: Concorde. The
  Concorde supersonic jet, the piece of technolog y
  that allowed such outrageous fl ight times was

retired for good back in 2003 after 27 years of ser vice

(for more information see the ‘End of Concorde’

boxout on p76). Further, no other supersonic jet has

been introduced in its absence – leaving customers

stuck travelling at subsonic speeds no matter where

they wish to fl y around the globe, and having to

endure the longer fl ight times.

Things, however, are all about to change. Driven

by the ever-growing notion of the global village – the

interconnectedness of all nations – and fi red by the

gaping void left behind by Concorde, a new wave of

supersonic jetliners have been put into production,

aiming to pick up where Concorde touched down.

The aim is to radically transform the speed,

effi ciency and impact of future commercial

supersonic travel.

From Lockheed Martin’s Green Machine

concept (a supersonic jet capable of mitigating

the effects of sonic boom) through Aerion

Corporation’s Supersonic Business Jet (a machine

that introduces a radical new technolog y called

natural laminar fl ow) and on to Boeing’s Icon-II

design (an aircraft that boasts far greater noise

reduction and fuel effi ciency) the future of this

industr y is already looking ver y exciting. For the

fi rst time, private companies are collaborating with

the best research institutes in the world (one of

which being NASA) to make supersonic fl ight a

realit y once more, outside of the militar y sphere

that is.

Of course, while the roadmap to realisation is

becoming more concrete with each passing day,

Concorde’s successors are now on the horizon, offering

Mach-shattering speeds, alongside hugely reduced noise

and fuel consumption compared to their famous forebear

THE NEW

CONCORDE

Fuselage

The fuselage has been

designed in line with the

Sears-Haack body, a cigar

shape that grants the lowest

theoretical wave drag.

Engine

Key to the concept design is

its inverted-V engine array,

with each turbine inlet

engineered to produce a low

boom noise output.

AIR