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FAA issues rules for supersonic jet flight testing in the US

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued new final rules to help pave the way for the re-introduction of supersonic commercial flight. The U.S. airspace regulator's rules provide guidance for companies looking to gain approval for flight testing of supersonic aircraft under development, which includes startups like Boom Supersonic, which has just completed its sub-scale supersonic demonstrator aircraft and hopes to begin flight testing it this year. (www.yahoo.com) Mehr...

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linbb
linbb 22
Wonder how much is going to change as cap and trade, the new grean deal and such are coming our way. Oh and higher taxes have already been promised by Biden. Watch the market respond to those things in a bad way.
TimDyck
Tim Dyck 17
Only time will tell but sadly I see travel returning to the days were only those with lots of money can afford annual vacations. The green wave will not be good for those who cannot afford it.
charlie02vy
Charlie Roberts 13
Hit the Nail on the Head!!
Exactly, sir.
SmittySmithsonite
With the stringent emission standards of the green new deal, it might kill the whole program outright.

My town is wasting no time - neighbor just had a $350 per QUARTER property tax increase here in central MA ... get ready!!!
RECOR10
RECOR10 3
Sir, Florida is open.We are willing to accept "right minded" folks from any background or industry. Just no libtards ;-)...oh, no state income tax!
SmittySmithsonite
Been trying to convince my wife for 18 years. Ain't happening, unfortunately. If it were up to me, I'd have been Southbound 2 decades ago.
WhiteKnight77
WhiteKnight77 3
I don't see anything wrong with this, or allowing for supersonic passenger flight again, with ways to carry more passengers than Concorde did, but I doubt that such flight will be allowed over Continental US.
kerimparrot
Mike Williams 1
Here in the Tucson, AZ and DM AirForce base some time ago some ago maybe not flying again for the Guard or other not 100% military flyer did go supersonic and broke windows in a small community near.
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly -1
Supersonic travel is a seriously bad idea due to the enormous amount of CO2 released per passenger mil. The heating effect of the CO2 is amplified by the amount of water vapour released at high altitudes.

see: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Supersonic_Impact_Working_Paper_20190130.pdf
RECOR10
RECOR10 3
Next your going to want to ban my 14mpg V8...
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 0
Do you actually want a planet to live on? Or are you one of those who disregard the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change cause by CO2 emissions?

We do need to get down to zero carbon emissions and maybe get to a negative emissions number. It is indeed an inconvenient truth.

SST travel just emits a lot of CO2 on a per mile basis. There is no way around it. Traveling fast takes a lot of energy, even at high altitudes. (Note Concorde flew at ~60,000 feet and still had problems with surface heating- it actually flew faster at night when it was cooler) .

Energy consumption goes up with the cube of the speed (more or less ignoring other factors around the sound barrier) … ie double the speed requires eight times the energy. That is why there are lots of cars that will do 100mph, quite a few that will do 150mph but very few that can exceed 200mph (depending on frontal area and drag ratio around 600 hp is required – as well as a lot of open road).

Even if, and that is a really big if, we could engineer an SST aircraft to run on non-CO2 fuel (hydrogen perhaps) that still leaves the problem of the climate heating effect of water vapor in the stratosphere.

Getting back to you 14mpg pickup….. It is not necessary to ban them; any reasonable, sane, carbon tax that offsets the environmental damage that they do will make them uneconomic to run…or you could have one that run on (green) hydrogen.
RECOR10
RECOR10 2
Um, it is not a pickup, it is a family station wagon...from there, I do not care about your feelings, delusions or theories until such time you can tell me who killed the dinosaurs and who melted the glaciers....

Thank for using the word "perhaps" with the SST comment, as you know it is nothing more than a (weak) theory.
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 1
Please explain the "weak" theory you mention as I am not sure which one you are talking about... the only "weak theories" (as there are more than one) I know of are such easily disproven "theories" as the one where people have proposed the idea that climate change is NOT caused by human caused burning of fossil fuels, or the planet is NOT warming, or volcanoes are responsible for the increase of CO2, or it is the motion of the earth around the sun etc etc.

Sorry about the pickup comment, my bad, it just the only people I know of with 14 mpg vehicles these days are driving pickups.....most of them use in their actual work and even there V6s are rapidly replacing V8s.

Also we have some good ideas about why big dino's went extinct..however their successors are still with us, I hear them singing every day at my house. As for glaciers it all depends on which ones you are talking about. The current ones are clearly being melted by us.....Snowball(s) Earth we are not so sure it was a long time ago (+650 mya) and evidence is mostly gone....

FYI unlike probably most people on this thread I have actually been on a Concorde (LHR on the ground after it got in from NYC) and have actually felt the heat given off the leading edge of the wings. The plane got impressively hot traveling at SS speed ( it grew about 8 inches in length from cold to hot). Skin temperature kept the operational speed at Mach 2 as the skin could not take the heating at the designed Mach 2.2 and still retain its designed service life.

As my Dad used to say to me: a closed mind is a sad thing.
RECOR10
RECOR10 1
I am not closed-minded at all - but, if you do not have facts you have only theory (and you admit that). The entire "Green" movement is nothing more than a theory. Remember, not too long ago "Science" said the Earth is flat and if you did not agree you would be put to death....

Plus, I do use my vehicle for work (to and from and errands). See, if I want to drive a 700HP V8 wagon as if I were mad at my tires and gas card :-)

And for trucks, the family owns a few...the "small" one is a V8 F150, the others are all F350 and a 450...
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 1
Clearly you don't understand what a "theory" is.
Climate change science has just tons of facts to back up the understanding of what is happening with the planet. The data is just overwhelming.

Science, nor scientists never said the world was flat, only dumb uninformed people did. The Greek thinker Eratosthenes calculated the value at around 24,000 mile back in 240BC. He use geometric "theories" and measurements to come up with a pretty close answer at around 24,000 miles.

Other theories such as the one that relates matter to energy E=MC2 is just a "theory" but that theory is behind every atom bomb and nuclear power plant on the planet.... Ditto the use of GPS which also relies on Einstein's theories for accuracy.

Newton's gravitational theory is just a "theory" but we use it every day to navigate space probes all the way out to Pluto, and to calculate the path of a ballistic shell....However in the 20th century we learnt that it was only an approximation and did not take into account effects that are only really measurable at speeds much closer to the speed of light.

Theories do not have to be perfect to be very useful as long as one understands the limitations.


Most of the time the facts come first and then smart people work hard to come up with a theory to explain those facts and then validate those theories against more facts... if the theory fails it is replaced by a better one. The usual standard for testing a theory is to use it to make predictions about the future.

In the case of climate change predictions made back in 1980's are now being shown to be correct. Not perfect, but more than good enough, just as Newton's theory was not perfect but good enough to get to Pluto. The climate predictions being made today are even better due to 40 years more data and better models.


Theory + facts = understanding. Rinse and repeat.


BTW : I don't have any problem with you having a 15 MPG vehicle AS LONG AS you don't expect the rest of world to subsidise YOU to pay for the damage that you do.

Right now we have a situation where people are having a big old party and then are throwing their trash out on the street and expecting somebody else to pick up the trash at no cost to them. (perhaps not a perfect analogy but more than good enough).

RECOR10
RECOR10 1
So, I do not find your theory reasonable. Being as I have the right to drive any car I want...well, I guess your brethren can stay "Triggered". I also change my oil at 50% of its life...am I that much more hurtful to the earth????
RECOR10
RECOR10 1
Oh and 40 years? Really? 40? Come on...that is NOTHING.....not even a blip. Hell, not long ago Hiroshima was NEVER going to be habitable and Prince William Sound.......wait, the Enviro Nuts were wrong (as usual)
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 1
It is not my "theory" but the actual science based on tons and tons of research.

Climate change is true whether you believe it or not.

For myself I try to base my opinions on facts, what do you use?
RECOR10
RECOR10 2
Again, "science" once said the Earth is flat.....
WhiteKnight77
WhiteKnight77 2
Have you any idea where used wind turbine blades end up? How about worn our photovolatic panels used in solar energy generation, at least in the US? Neither can be recycled. Blades are cut up and buried in landfills. There is no way to recycle those fiberglass blades.

Solar panels are costly to recycle and special equipment is needed to reycle the silicon glass used to make them. This does not discount the lead used in the soldered electrical connections.

As it is, we as a species is headed back to living in caves and using fire to provide light and a cooking source due to no one wanting to do "dirty" jobs.

Green energy is not necessarily green. Are you willing to give up your yearly European or Australian vacations due to the needed time to sail across said oceans using just wind power? Does supersonic travel really produce more carbon than a typical airliner? A flight from NYC to London is from 7 to 7 1/2 hours whereas a supersonic flight is about 5 hours. Using supercruise similar to an F-22 means less fuel used as well. Surely such can be incorporated into a civilian jet engine.
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 1
Clearly you did not read the article on how much more fuel is used per passenger mile by a supersonic jet travel!

Repeat after me: drag goes up with the cube of the speed (all things remaining equal).

So to cut down the air travel time by half you have to go twice as fast and to go twice as fast you have to use 8 times a much energy for half the time. The net is 4 TIMES as much energy is used.

This drag is why supersonic aircraft get so hot. Literally at speed Corcorde's wing leading edge was above the boiling point of water. It was the temperature of the skin that controlled the speed of the aircraft (especially the wing leading edges). Concorde had the power to do Mach 2.2 but to get the airframe life they desired it was limited to Mach 2.0 ...the plane could actually fly faster at night when it was cooler! This heat problem also caused the airframe to stretch by about 8 inches from when it is on the ground.

Supercruise does nothing to change those numbers, what does change is the fact the SS travel using afterburners is even more inefficient than the "raw" theoretical numbers state. (remember the bit above about all things being equal)

You are mixing up the required amount of power to actually fly at those speeds with the efficiency of the engine to produce that power. The amount of thrust required remains the same. Super cruise is just a more efficient way of producing the required thrust. Afterburners are just a horribly inefficient way to produce thrust.


As for used wind turbine blades...Really! They are nothing compared to the tens of millions of tons of fossil fuel waste. (just look at one tiny issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_coal_slurry_spill)

Also the blades ARE being recycled, ditto solar panels, and batteries for EVs. The raw materials in solar panels and especially EVs are way too valuable to throw away (if you don't believe me just go check out the price of a "scrap" Prius battery!)

Not sure what to say about "green energy is not necessarily green" except for the fact that "green energy" is hugely, orders of magnitude less polluting than incredibly damaging and dirty fossil fuels... Also in many parts of the world Solar power is THE cheapest means of producing electricity bar none.


WhiteKnight77
WhiteKnight77 1
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=5214ed3e121c

This article shows how dirty solar is, and who, if any are or will suffer from inscrupulous "recyclers" who are out to make a quick buck.

There is a reason why the SR-71 was made out of titanium and had loose fit panels as well as corregated panels, to allow for heat expansion. Of course the Condorde got hot, it is a by-product of friction.

A more efficent way of producing thrust means a reduction of fuel needed. An afterburner does use more fuel of course, but if you can fly at the speeds normally reached by afterburner without using such, then less fuel is used. This is sort of how my truck's engines works. It will shut down 4 cylinders and will cruise on 4 of the 8.

And no, wind turbine blades are not recyclable. https://www.americanexperiment.org/2019/08/wind-turbine-landfill-mass-grave-report-decide/ and http://insideenergy.org/2016/09/09/where-do-wind-turbines-go-to-die/ show what is going on with them, though the video in the second article does say research is happening on how to reuse the fiberglass composites that the blades are made from. This is what is meant by green energy is not so green. Toxic wastes and unrecyclable materials are part of it and will be for quite some time.
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 2
I find it interesting that people would use the disposal of wind turbine blades as a significant issue. (BTW the articles are out of date).

If one does even a quick back of the envelope calculation of "waste" produced by comparing wind turbine blades vs the waste a fossil fuel plant produces blade disposal is a laughable concern. Not that it should not be addressed but in comparison to the bigger picture it is a very small issue.

For example: Assuming a 30 year life span for blades, weighing 30 tons for a 6MW turbine with a capacity factor of 40% for the wind turbine, a coal plant, just in CO2 waste ALONE, produces something of the order of 20,000 to 30,000 times as much waste (to produce 1 MWh using coal produces about one ton of CO2). If you add in coal ash the number increases significantly (one ton of ash is produced for every 4 to 8 tons of coal burnt). To really compare apples to apples one would need to add in the CO2 etc produced getting the coal mined and transported to the generation station etc. etc. so the true ratio could be somewhere north of 40,000....

There is an old saying "perfection can not be the enemy of the good". This is a clear case of that.
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 0
Oh by the way americanexperiment.org is run by a known rabid climate science denialist John Hinderaker and the author Isaac Orr used to work at the Heartland Institute which is also rabidly anti-science.
WhiteKnight77
WhiteKnight77 3
And you also want to think that coal plants still output the amount of carbon that they once did. With plants that had to install more and more pollution controls such as Southern Company had to after increasing capacitiy at many of its plants across the southern tier after losing a lawsuit by the EPA, those new scrubbers (such as the ones I had to pay for in Georgia and unironically inspected welds for) work to reduce the amount of CO2 released. Sure fly ash is still an issue, but just as big an issue as cadmium from PV panels.

More power companies have moved to industrial gas turbines (of which I inspected parts for as well) to use natural gas or other cleaner fuels, of which the exhausts go through scrubbers as well. Something that does not degrade is not enviornmentally friendly no matter how you look, or any other environmentalists, at it.

People want green energy and to do away with fossil fuels, but as noted, recycling of those components, if is being done is expensive and is not cost efficient. Would you be willing to start up a recycling company? Taxpayers are will have to pay for those faciities once bankrupt.

Until people realize that nuclear is the way to go, and that all power generation causes pollution of some sort, no one will come to a consensus of the type needed.
RECOR10
RECOR10 2
Seems they hate nuke too...want to tax the crap out of them and on and on...then, when they say "fuck it, I am out" the citizens BEG them to stay (Byron Il for one).
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 0
Right now something like 24% of US electricity is generated from coal and 38% from natural gas. If one does the same back of the envelope calculation you get somewhere around 10,000 times. Even going to the very best numbers for the most modern combined cycle units you are at around 8000 TIMES.

The numbers I quote are NOT including other pollutants just the CO2. Scrubbers do not reduce CO2 emitted. Two totally separate things. There are limited installations that do carbon capture but they are currently very limited and expensive.

Again comparing the sheer volumes of pollutants the amount of cadmium (not used in most panels anyway) vs ash produced by coal, which is the second largest waste produced by the nation makes is not rational. We have something like 1.5 Billion tons of ash stored around the country. It is nasty stuff and contains a lot of heavy metals.

As for nuclear there are some significant issues. Most people do not realize that your "average" 1GW reactor produces about 25 tons of heavy metal waste per year that we still have no means of disposing safely. Within those 25 tons is enough plutonium for almost 2 nuclear bombs. This number does not include other high level nuclear waste produced. This stuff has to be protected essentially forever.

Nuclear has also the highest cost.
RECOR10
RECOR10 2
I just checked - I still do not care. Then again, I am prepping to drive my V8 wagon to go to my boat that has two 6.7 or some such thing diesel engines through the pristine waters of Clearwater Beach....
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 1
Please don't ask for help when the next hurricane comes along. Climate change will make hurricanes stronger and as sea level rises flooding will be worse.

The link below is to a map of what Clearwater and Tampa area will look like by 2100 given current CO2 production. This is the mean case, the 90th percentile case is above 8ft.

The areas in red are below MSL (ie underwater). Checkout where your house is.

https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/11/-82.6601/27.9462/?theme=water_level&map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=false&elevation_model=best_available&refresh=true&water_level=6.0&water_unit=ft
RECOR10
RECOR10 2
You know that the fact is there are no more, or less hurricanes than ever before, right? Oh, and as for your great-grandkids? I could care less what world they live in either.

Plus, I do not live near Tampa or Clearwater....the boat? Well, it floats.
WhiteKnight77
WhiteKnight77 1
You missed the part about all sources of power generation causes pollution. As far as costs, nuclear is still cheaper overall.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
LeftlySC
Stephen Leftly 1
No nuclear is probably the most expensive. LCOE numbers are what you should be looking at not operational numbers.

It is the enormous upfront capital costs and build cycle that do nuclear in. just look at the numbers for recent attempts of building new reactors see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reactors_in_the_United_States
Also see https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/failed-v-c-summer-nuclear-project-timeline/


If you only consider the "operational" numbers of Solar and Wind are very, very small.
See: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 for a full understanding of what it really costs.

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