QSST, new supersonic jet, will travel coast-to-coast in two hours

Many of us here at Engadget are, or at least wish we were, the jetsetting type. The type to constantly bounce around to Boston, San Francisco, Hong Kong and other exotic locales. We'd definitely appreciate being able to traverse the continent in two hours, and while our overloads, erm, friendly bosses might appreciate that, our accounting department probably wouldn't. And surely this new generation of supersonic flights, which will reach top speeds of Mach 1.8, aren't going to come cheap. According to Wired News, this new supersonic private jet, called QSST ("quiet supersonic travel") is in production by Lockheed Martin. The new jet sports a "patented inverted V-tail", which will reduce the sound of its sonic boom to less than a hundredth of the original Concorde, one of the reasons why it was met with limited success in the US. The QSST's current price tag of $80 million is still cheap by comparison to the first generation of Concorde jets, which cost $46 million in 1977 (nearly $150 million in 2005 dollars when adjusted for inflation). So save your pennies, kids, we'll be saving ours.

[Lee Richards @ Aug 29th 2006 5:22AM]

It's still hard to believe that there is no commercial supersonic jet in the skies today, despite Concorde coming into service in 1976! Surely this is the only example of humankind actually moving backwards with regard to technology. Hopefully, this new jet might kick-start a resurgence in supersonic travel for Joe Public.

[Monte @ Aug 29th 2006 5:26AM]

Should be available right around the time the Moller Aircars are on the market, right?

[PugRallye @ Aug 29th 2006 5:37AM]

Not having Concorde flying any more is a tragic loss. It was a truely special plane and I now regret not spending the £2000+ for a quick trip to NY. At the time (when Concorde was still flying) it seemed like a lot of money - now I can't, and never will be able to do it, it seems like a bargain.

Sadly, commercial supersonic flight is not financially viable - or someone else would have done it by now. The big carriers just want to carry as many people as possible to make as big a return as possible.

The days of air travel being glamorous and exciting are sadly long past. Now it's more akin to getting a bus or train than actually being an exciting part of the trip/holiday.

Concorde: RIP.

[altman @ Aug 29th 2006 5:58AM]

Not really a valid price comparison, either - Concorde looks like an absolute bargain in terms of cost per passenger (even in 2005 prices) compared to this teensy little private jet.

Ok, so there was a LOT of government money involved in researching and developing Concorde, and this private jet is surely intended to be a profitable private enterprise. It's a shame that supersonic travel is still going to be unattainable for 99.9999% of air travellers.

[Jamie @ Aug 29th 2006 6:03AM]

Is this going to fly financially (HAHAHAHAHA!. Fuel costs aren't likely to be coming back down as the oil runs out, and as carbon taxes finally get going, it's just going to get more expensive to run a heavily polluting plane.

[PAC-3 @ Aug 29th 2006 6:13AM]

Jamie:

Rich people don't care about the price of fuel.

[asdf @ Aug 29th 2006 6:54AM]

Wrong picture, that is the Aerion Supersonic Business Jet. Correct ones of QSST are in Wired's gallery. Certainly looks way cooler than SBJ.

[Dave @ Aug 29th 2006 7:18AM]

PAC-3 I'm rich and I care about the price of fuel. Doesn't matter who you are, $60 to fill up my tank makes me sad =(and I yearn for the days of 0.99c gallons.

I don't think a jet like that will find enough customers to make it viable. Concordes stopped flying because they were losing money. They've got one sitting on display at the Charles de-Gualle airport in Paris that stands as a testament to speeds this world just isn't ready for yet.

Also, I've been wondering how planes are gonna fly when oil dries up...and how are we gonna make plastics o.O

[bob @ Aug 29th 2006 7:48AM]

Like asdf said, you picked the wrong picture. Also, I think you meant "overlords", unless you have "overloads" telling you what to do... Get with it Cyrus

[Ypoknons @ Aug 29th 2006 8:44AM]

The day when I can go home from New York to Hong Kong for thanksgiving will be a happy one. But until then, whatever.

[billybob_jcv @ Aug 29th 2006 8:51AM]

That's really lame - at least Gizmodo got the right picture (notice the photoshop job for Gizmodo):
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/qsst/

Here's the link to the actual source:
http://www.saiqsst.com/

Also, it's nowhere near "production" - SAI is projecting the first test flight in 2011, with the first customer delivery in 2018.

[kip @ Aug 29th 2006 8:52AM]

I'm no expert on this, but I think the FAA banned supersonic flights over land long ago, and for good reason: do you really want to hear sonic booms on a daily basis if you live within 30 miles of an airport? This is why no new supersonic jets have been developed in the last thirty years. Technology has only just now advanced to the point where supersonic flight is quiet enough that the FAA will allow it to fly over land. I think that in the next decade or two we will see many more quiet supersonic jets, and the price will come down significantly.

[Alex @ Aug 29th 2006 9:41AM]

So you can fit, what, 10 people in there? Very cost-effective. I doubt it'll fly...
sry

[PDubNYC @ Aug 29th 2006 9:44AM]

Congratulations Cyrus! You got the picture wrong, the details wrong, couldn't let us know that Mach 1.8 is roughly 1200mph, and spelled overlords wrong.

The fact that this is still being designed is VERY different from being in production. Seriously, what story were you reading?

Maybe you shouldn't post at 4:30 in the morning anymore.

[Vesh @ Aug 29th 2006 9:48AM]

Ha, actually 12. The real picture looks much better, as people have already noted.

[Craig @ Aug 29th 2006 9:57AM]

"Fuel costs aren't likely to be coming back down as the oil runs out, and as carbon taxes finally get going, it's just going to get more expensive to run a heavily polluting plane."

Actually a supersonic aircraft is at its most efficient operating speed at above mach 1. Engine technology is vastly better than when Concorde's Olympus engines were designed in the early '60s (the same engines by the way that powered Mirage fighter aircraft...no wonder they required so much maintenance!). The proposed jet from Aerion will use a modified version of a P&W engine utilized today in thousands of MD-80s, so maintenance and fuel costs shouldn't be that much higher for the new aircraft.

[captain dan @ Aug 29th 2006 10:43AM]

Kip is correct: supersonic flight is against the law in the United States. Presumably Lockheed thinks they can get a waiver for this airplane. In any event, you won't have to worry about sonic booms close to airports. I highly doubt this airplane will be supersonic during its departure climb, and no civilian aircraft is allowed to go faster than 250 knots below 10,000 feet anyway.

[asv @ Aug 29th 2006 10:46AM]

2 hours? Unfortunately, every commercial flight in the US flies an IFR flightplan. So accounting for IFR vectors, your probably looking at 3 hours of flight time.

[Brad Johnson @ Aug 29th 2006 10:51AM]

1. This is a business jet not a commercial airliner like the Concorde.

2. "it costs too much" doesn't apply here. This is aimed at the ultra wealthy citizens of the world who will spend what amounts to pennies to them to literally buy time.

3. Dave, if you know what it costs to fill up your car ($60) then you may be comfortable but you're so far from rich that you have no concept of what it looks like.

[Joe Alien @ Aug 29th 2006 11:31AM]

The better way to do this is similar to what Burt Rutan did for Spaceship One. Carry a spaceplane up to about 30,000 feet, drop it and then blast up into low space to an altitude of about 120 miles up, getting up to 10 or 11,000 mph and then coast and glide the rest of the distance to the destination airport. Burt Rutan could probably do this, flight time would be one hour vs. nearly 3 hours coast to coast, and make more money.

[John Stracke @ Aug 29th 2006 11:37AM]

I'm not sure the negative evidence of the Concorde is very convincing. The Concorde had a lot of strikes against it that don't need to apply to this plane:

* It was designed brute-force, in the days before CAD and computers to simulate hydrodynamics; its shape was just barely good enough to make Mach 1 without shaking itself to bits. By contrast, a supersonic jet designed with modern methods should be much more reliable and fuel-efficient.

* Because it was a brute-force effort, its sonic boom was much louder than a modern SST would be. This is what kept it from flying over the US. Without that, its only use was for transatlantic hops, where it saved only two hours.

* Because it was so inefficient on fuel, it could not carry enough to cross the Pacific, where its extra speed would have been welcome.

* Because there were so few made, replacement parts had to be made by hand, which drove up the cost of maintenance.

I wouldn't say that the death of the Concorde set us back thirty years. Rather, it brought the reasons for the Concorde's failures into the public eye, and drew the attention of those who thought they could do better.

[Longshotx @ Aug 29th 2006 11:55AM]

They should build a nuclear powered supersonic plane. Hell they got submarines powered by nuclear with energy output in the range of decades.

[CJ @ Aug 29th 2006 12:27PM]

You would think by now all comercial planes would be supersonic... its been over half a century since the first supersonic flight... charge whatever you need for a speedy beast of a plane some of us need to move around a quite a lot no matter what the price is it would be great to spend less time traveling more time enjoying my destination...

[shindullin @ Aug 29th 2006 12:33PM]

Longshotx, you wouldn't be so hot about nuclear powered jets if a terrorist blew one up over your city.
Rich guy, people who buy jets like these have so much money they have someone else put the gas in the tank. I recall a Simple Life episode where Paris and Nichole had to put gas in the their SUV but couldn't figure it out. The show tried to edit things to make them look stupid but lets be honest, they're so rich they never had to exit their car at a gas station. Paris has lots of money but I'll bet you even she wouldn't have enough to buy one of these jets, and staff/fly/maintain it. The market on for the planes is very small, and very, very, very wealthy.

[Craig @ Aug 29th 2006 2:59PM]

"Because there were so few made, replacement parts had to be made by hand, which drove up the cost of maintenance."

Also, because they were using military jet engines they had to be overhauled MUCH more frequently than commercial fanjet engines. The lack of a low-maintenance engine capable of going supersonic, combined with the sonic boom issue has until recently deterred manufacturers from building a new SST.

[L0s @ Aug 29th 2006 3:40PM]

"We'd definitely appreciate being able to traverse the continent in two hours, and while our overloads, erm, friendly bosses might appreciate that, our accounting department probably wouldn't."


I think you meant OVERLORDS, not OVERLOADS

[keith waddington @ Aug 29th 2006 10:40PM]

The concorde was banned in much of the US because it was not made by a US company. Do you really think if BOING (!) had developed it there would have been any problems? Well, maybe the French would have banned it!

waddo
http://www.waddo.net/

[Torrey S. Raymond @ Aug 30th 2006 2:47PM]

The picture you have posted is from Aerion Business Jets' website.
The last I saw Aerion was trying to find backers to get a working full scale prototype of the plane pictured here.
it loks like they wound up forming an alliance or partnership with Lockheed Martin.

Well if things go well enough I might try to book a flight just for the hell of it!

I miss seeing the Concorde, but I am eager to see that the United States is trying to get into the hypersonic commercial flight after so many years of being stagnate in this particular field.

If they can find a way to rescind the strict law restricting the rate of speed a civilian jet can fly over the United States, then I just might try to book a flight just for the hell of it.

In most parts of the world the rule is: you can fly as fast as you want as long as there is no "boom" to be heard from the ground.

[Torrey S. Raymond @ Aug 30th 2006 2:48PM]

Also after reading some of the comments after submitting my own, some of the criticsms about the fuel, I'm sure that the designers and engineers will be able to contrive some kind of fuel efficiencies just like we're having to adjust to with hybrid or alternate technologies.

As far as th noise factor,for over ten years now Boeing has been using a class 3 engine to greatly reduce noise greatly.
Compare the decibell levels of the 747's with the 777's and you'll see that the noise factor is being looked into.

After all those years of the Concorde flights, you know that there is great deal of improvement to caome on this smaller plane.

Any way you look at it ,technology will march on despite the protest, one way or another it's just a matter of time before it becomes a common thing in life... look at how we work today as opposed to 25-30 years ago. You can't stop progress.

[John Sununu @ Aug 30th 2006 8:24PM]

"So accounting for IFR vectors, your probably looking at 3 hours of flight time."
Plus showing up two hours ahead of departure, due to security, and transportation to and from airport, and that 2 hour flight now looks more like 6+ hours total travel time.

[D @ Aug 31st 2006 12:12PM]

Off Topic:
The typo and incorrect picture are unfortunate. A mistake often made by mutilinguals. Saying that, it is utter overkill to complain about it repeatedly. Ever hear about beating a dead horse?

On Topic:
This is very promising. I love following aviation and especially commercial and business jets as opposed to military aircrafts. I have flown on business jets a couple of times (mid-sized) and as nice and comfortable the ride is, it was more about not having to deal with commercial airports, security checks, lines, attitudes from check-in personal, TSA, and fellow air travelers. I think this will be a big hit with governments looking to add and replace VIP aircrafts. I believe the ultra-rich would prefer a bigger, more comfortable , more customizable plane than a smaller but faster bird.

Question:
What do you call someone who only speaks one language?

Answer:
An American.

[Nathan McKelvey - Private Jet Charter @ Sep 1st 2006 11:47AM]

The Citation X currently holds the title of the fastest business jet and is one of the most popular charter planes. I would suspect strong demand for such a private jet.

[J.Neutron @ Sep 6th 2006 9:26AM]

You guys are missing the real problem, If you leave NY at 5am, you arrive at LAX at 4am. Then there it is, the universe implodes.

[Tommie @ Aug 21st 2008 3:56AM]

i flowen in the concorde when i was 8 and it makes me feel sad that they had to take this kool looking jet out of service