why cant they make passenger airliner jets travel one thousand mph at fifty thousand ft.?

Answer 1

they can, they have it was called the concord.

http://www.concorde-jet.com/

it was profitable, and because the planes were lighter and better aerodynamics they flew great and flying higher cut down on drag making flight more efficient so don't listen to others that comment there was a fuel issue.


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Answer 2

They can, the concord went quite a bit faster than that, it flew mach 2.2 at 40,000ft, which is 1375mph at that altitude.
The true reason there arent any supersonic airliners left is that supersonic flight over land is against the law.
Its not like 500mph is too shabby though, a 4 hour flight beats the hell out of a 30 hour drive any day.

Oh, and about it being too hard to maintain, thats completely false. There are supersonic aircraft that have overhauls every 12000 hours, which is phenominal. Combine that with the efficiency of today's engines, which have a specific fuel consumption of less than 1/5th what the concorde had, and you would have an excellent aircraft.

Answer 3

Way ahead of you The Concorde had a top speed of 1350 mph, only a had limited market, because the operating costs necessitated very high ticket prices. No supersonic replacement is planned.

Answer 4

We are well-capable of doing so, but the airline transports for ex. the 747 are not designed for those speeds. Traveling at 1000mph would probably cause the engines to break of or cause too much stress for the wing to handle. An airline transport traveling that fast would need a slicker design.

Answer 5

It's just too expensive. That's one reason the Concorde was never quite successful. The other reason is the noise from the sonic boom resulted in heavy restrictions on where they could fly.

Answer 6

i would add to all the others, that there are very few airframes that are designed to fly that high due to the rarifed air up there....the engines have to be designed and have fuel control units capable of metering the fuel at that fuel/air ratio and most don't have the capability....there are very few airframes certified to fly that high....most are certifcated to FL410, and even fewer than that at FL510......the lear 55, 45 and gulfstream 5 are a few that come to mind, but most just aren't designed and/or economical to operate up there, much less over mach 1.0

Answer 7

Plain and simple the faster you go the more drag you create... more drag you create the more thrust you have to add to counteract the drag... That means you burn more fuel...

The concord was a killer aircraft for its time... there was a time when fuel was real cheap... its not anymore... its just too expensive to operate... I am GUESSING when it was bought fuel was at $10? a barrel... now its 10x that... Inorder to see another supersonic heavy were going to have to find a cheap light fuel source...

Answer 8

It requires a great deal of energy (fuel) to do this. Also, the plane would have to be shaped more like a missle.
Basically, there are a lot of engineering obstacles to overcome that make it impractial.

Answer 9

Al Gore for sure! i appreciate those liberal solutions that he can not fly commercial because of protection causes! LMAO! the following is a contact...do not tell lies to the yank human beings and protection might want to change right into a non problem!

Answer 10

It has been done. It turned out the aircraft were too mechanically critical to be practical. It simply cost too much to maintain the aircraft. They operated until their service lives were exceeded, and then it was not considered feasible to replace them with new ones.

It will probably be done again in a few years.

Answer 11

It's called the Concorde.