I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because you're right: they have the technology, they don't have an engine, and this just looks like a civilian version of a fighter jet pretty much (except it has 3 turbojets).
And what people always fail to mention when it comes to supersonic flights is one of the main issue is neither a technological nor an economical one nor a supersonic boom one.
Traveling west bound is great: you leave in the morning and you arrive, local time, before the local time of your origin point. But traveling east bound isn't that great: you still have to leave in the morning and you land in the evening, so the only thing you gained is a shorter flight time but not a full day of work or shopping or what not.
So on regular flights (because Concorde was profitable, at least on the French side, thanks to charter flights), people would fly Concorde to go to NYC and fly back on a red eye...
As someone who worked for and flew on Concorde, I think what they're doing is amazingly cool though and I hope they succeed. But I'm still unsure what the long term plan is...
Right. Whether I arrive in London at 4pm or 8pm doesn't really make much of a difference. (Admittedly it probably lets you arrive on the continent without a red-eye--depending on supersonic over land rules--as you pretty much have to do today.)
All other things being equal, sure. But I'm probably not paying thousands of dollars to save a few hours. Maybe if that amount of money is basically pocket lint, but that's a tiny percentage of the population.
Concorde holds the world record in both directions actually.
F-BTSD did it:
- westbound in 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds on 12/13 October 1992, LIS-SDQ-ACA-HNL-GUM-BKK-BAH-LIS (Lisbon, Saint-Domingue, Acapulco, Honolulu, Guam, Bangkok, Bahrein, Lisbon)
- astbound in 31 hours 27 minutes and 49 seconds on 15/16 August 1995, JFK-TLS-DXB-BKK-GUM-HNL-ACA-JFK (New York, Toulouse, Dubai, Bangkok, Guam, Honolulu, Acapulco, New York)
And what people always fail to mention when it comes to supersonic flights is one of the main issue is neither a technological nor an economical one nor a supersonic boom one.
Traveling west bound is great: you leave in the morning and you arrive, local time, before the local time of your origin point. But traveling east bound isn't that great: you still have to leave in the morning and you land in the evening, so the only thing you gained is a shorter flight time but not a full day of work or shopping or what not.
So on regular flights (because Concorde was profitable, at least on the French side, thanks to charter flights), people would fly Concorde to go to NYC and fly back on a red eye...
As someone who worked for and flew on Concorde, I think what they're doing is amazingly cool though and I hope they succeed. But I'm still unsure what the long term plan is...