Author Topic: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital  (Read 51375 times)

Offline simonbp

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #20 on: 01/05/2011 09:58 pm »
Well, hopefully Virgin/Branson will see enough demand to give a solid answer.

But I noticed that Branson had commented early on about the idea of using SpaceShipTwo for quick intercontinental travel. Obviously it's not designed for that. But it then makes me wonder if a flashy-yet-conventional enterprise like his would have more eagerly leapt at the idea of a rapid intercontinental transport over a space tourist vehicle.
Aiming at space tourism means you get to be flashy first, and worry about paying the bills later. With suborbital intercontinental transport, you get to serve a more conventional market first, to pay the bills, and you have the possibility of evolving into something more flashy and Buck Rogers later on.

Well, point-to-point travel is where Branson makes most of his money, so it's obviously come up. I think the idea is more that the high altitude "space tourism" will build up a safety record for the SS2 system, which can then be used to make the case at the FAA for a point-to-point license.

I know for the SOFIA airborne telescope, the largest obstacle right now is FAA approval for the many modifications they've made to the 747SP, and that approval is much harder since they are technically carrying passengers point-to-point. The microgravity aircraft get around that by having an experimental certification, and requiring all passengers to go through depressurization training in a hypobaric chamber...
« Last Edit: 01/05/2011 10:03 pm by simonbp »

Offline sanman

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #21 on: 01/05/2011 11:17 pm »
So you're saying that maybe Branson is being extra-clever by doing "Space Tourism" thru SpaceShipTwo, because his real goal is to use it as a stepping stone to go for suborbital point-to-point transit? So he's not just another billionaire with a flair for throwing money on expensive toys? (Honestly, that's what I've really been seeing him as uptil now - just a rich guy who suddenly got bit by the space bug. Kind of like Bush launching the Constellation program after being emotionally impacted by the Columbia disaster.)

Since nobody's put any money into resurrecting or upgrading the Concorde as an intermediary step, can I take it that the Bransons of the world want to "go superfast or go home"?

Offline kkattula

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #22 on: 01/06/2011 02:26 am »
Concorde (in the end) couldn't make money on the busy trans-atlantic route by reducing the transit time to less than 4 hours.

How do you expect a far more expensive system to do better?

For a rocket, you will need 10 to 20 times the weight of payload in fuel. For RP-1/LOX that's about $15 to $30 per kg of payload, just in fuel.

Offline kkattula

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #23 on: 01/06/2011 03:26 am »
Or for a more practical solution, mag-lev trains running in vacuum tunnels at hypersonic speeds. Very expensive to build, but massive throughput of passengers.
I've heard a speed of 6000km/h for such trains. So you have any paper on that?

Not much: http://www.impactlab.net/2008/06/27/trans-atlantic-supersonic-maglev-vacuum-tube-train/

But for the cost ($50M+ per km) you're going to want very high volumes. i.e. the trans-atlantic market.

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...South America would be the ideal place since the distance between big cities are big (thousands of km), and there are no techtonic plates boundaries.

IIRC, the Nazca & Antartic plates are subducting beneath the South American plate, causing those big pointy things. What do you call them? The Andes?

Offline simonbp

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #24 on: 01/06/2011 05:40 am »
So you're saying that maybe Branson is being extra-clever by doing "Space Tourism" thru SpaceShipTwo, because his real goal is to use it as a stepping stone to go for suborbital point-to-point transit?

Saying it's his real goal may be exaggerating, but it would an interesting side-effect of SS2 succeding. Given the huge amount of reservations on Virgin Galactic, he's already building up a potential customer base...

Offline sanman

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #25 on: 01/06/2011 06:16 am »
Concorde (in the end) couldn't make money on the busy trans-atlantic route by reducing the transit time to less than 4 hours.

How do you expect a far more expensive system to do better?

Well, I wasn't necessarily thinking about bringing back Concorde itself, but whether supersonic travel could be revived with a Concorde replacement that would be fasterbettercheaper.

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For a rocket, you will need 10 to 20 times the weight of payload in fuel. For RP-1/LOX that's about $15 to $30 per kg of payload, just in fuel.

Well, if you use just the RP-1 without the LOX (ie. high-mach ramjet like RanulfC said) then your fuel costs are closer to existing airliners, although obviously still much higher, since you have to burn much more at lower efficiency.
Later on, when scramjet tech is more solid, you could upgrade to that.

I have another question for RanulfC or anyone else - would hypersonic flight produce enough shockwaves to be heard on the ground? That's one of the things that hurt Concorde, so that's why I'm asking. Let's assume a waverider as the worst scenario.

Btw, just as an aside, I saw a recent nice article on Hondajet on MIT's Techreview, where they mention that the engines are mounted above the wings to help reduce the noise traveling downward to the ground:

http://www.techreview.com/energy/27026/?p1=MstRcnt

Offline Archibald

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #26 on: 01/06/2011 06:40 am »
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For example, a flight of about 10,000 kilometers would require a delta-V of over 7,300 meters/second, which is already about 80% of that required to reach low Earth orbit.

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During my involvement with a hypersonic vehicle program in the late 1980s, the rule of thumb was that once you got over about 5,000 meters/second, the difference between that and an orbital reentry environment were small.

There's certainly a "sweet spot" between the two - I mean a reasonable distance balanced with a reasonable speed. 
Perhaps rocket powered hypersonic point-to-point transportation could be done for a range of 1000 to 3000 km
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline kkattula

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #27 on: 01/07/2011 05:28 am »
Well, I wasn't necessarily thinking about bringing back Concorde itself, but whether supersonic travel could be revived with a Concorde replacement that would be fasterbettercheaper.

The major airliner maunfacturers have looked at that many times, but concluded there wasn't a market. In 2001 Boeing announced their Sonic Cruiser, which would fly at Mach 0.95 to 0.98, 15-20% faster than regular airliners, while being just as fuel efficient. The airlines said they would rather have a Mach 0.8 aircraft that was 20% more fuel efficient.  Hence the 787, which is small enough to be point to point, rather than hub to hub like the A380.

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Well, if you use just the RP-1 without the LOX (ie. high-mach ramjet like RanulfC said) then your fuel costs are closer to existing airliners, although obviously still much higher, since you have to burn much more at lower efficiency.

Actually the LOX, although more than twice the mass, is less than 10% of the cost. LOX is dirt cheap, around $100 per ton in bulk.

Ramjets can be quite efficient. Far more so than a rocket. They use exterior air as reaction mass as well as oxydizer.

Hypersonic flight is always going to be many times the cost of high sub-sonic flight. Most people are not willing to pay that premium to cut their transit time by 40-50% (when you include time spent in transfers, check-in & customs)

Offline sanman

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #28 on: 01/07/2011 07:05 am »
The major airliner maunfacturers have looked at that many times, but concluded there wasn't a market. In 2001 Boeing announced their Sonic Cruiser, which would fly at Mach 0.95 to 0.98, 15-20% faster than regular airliners, while being just as fuel efficient. The airlines said they would rather have a Mach 0.8 aircraft that was 20% more fuel efficient.  Hence the 787, which is small enough to be point to point, rather than hub to hub like the A380.

Look, Boeing and Airbus are in the business of selling thousands of aircraft, and not in the business of pushing the envelope to sell just a few. What's required is a smaller, higher-end company that will make just a small number of vehicles which would then have free reign over that high-end niche market.

if a Concorde successor were in existence today, it could thrive in its niche market, provided that it managed to address some of the deficiencies of the original - noise pollution, fuel consumption, and low passenger capacity. A successor should have at least double the passenger capacity of the original, and address the noise pollution problem, perhaps by flying higher.

If Mach-3 passenger carriers could be designed a half-century ago, I would hope that by now technology could come up with something that can fly faster, quieter and more efficiently.

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Actually the LOX, although more than twice the mass, is less than 10% of the cost. LOX is dirt cheap, around $100 per ton in bulk.

Ramjets can be quite efficient. Far more so than a rocket. They use exterior air as reaction mass as well as oxydizer.

Hypersonic flight is always going to be many times the cost of high sub-sonic flight. Most people are not willing to pay that premium to cut their transit time by 40-50% (when you include time spent in transfers, check-in & customs)

There will be niche markets that can sustain a certain minimum demand.
The world is big enough for that.

If world markets can support the construction of luxury cruise ships with ever fancier and expensive amenities, or ever taller skyscrapers with fancier architecture, then there's a market for faster transport aircraft.

A suborbital vehicle could still offer passengers the momentary once-in-a-lifetime thrill of space tourism, for which they might be willing to pay that extra premium cost.


Offline RanulfC

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #29 on: 01/10/2011 08:49 pm »
I have another question for RanulfC or anyone else - would hypersonic flight produce enough shockwaves to be heard on the ground? That's one of the things that hurt Concorde, so that's why I'm asking. Let's assume a waverider as the worst scenario.
FYI, as long as you're flying over 100,000ft the sonic boom doesn't touch the ground :)

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Look, Boeing and Airbus are in the business of selling thousands of aircraft, and not in the business of pushing the envelope to sell just a few. What's required is a smaller, higher-end company that will make just a small number of vehicles which would then have free reign over that high-end niche market.
Actually... That was the entire POINT of the "sonic-cruiser" design, faster service for a little more fuel but fewer passengers. The airlines said thanks, but no thanks. Of course that wasn't as fast or as far as we're discussing but to make money it has to be both economic to design, test, and operate.

You might want to keep in mind that "sub-orbital" (ballistic and/or skip-glide) passenger travel has been "just-around-the-corner" since the mid '40s.

As addressing the various issues with supersonic travel the technology is there for fast, fuel effcient flight it's just that supersonic aircraft don't lend themselves well to high-capacity shapes. The "Oblique-Wing" flying wing airliner MIGHT have been such a vehicle but outside of DARPA no one is willing to work on the design beyond scale models so we may never know for sure. As it is, airlines can get much more profit out of a subsonic 747 than a supersonic aircraft with half the passengers.

About the only added value an ICBPV (Inter-Continental Ballistic Passenger Vehicle) would have is the possibility of some "free-fall" time during the trip and the passengers getting astronaut wings. But that isn't going to be enough to interest large investment all by itself.

Having said that:
Well, hopefully Virgin/Branson will see enough demand to give a solid answer.

Sanman wrote:
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But I noticed that Branson had commented early on about the idea of using SpaceShipTwo for quick intercontinental travel. Obviously it's not designed for that. But it then makes me wonder if a flashy-yet-conventional enterprise like his would have more eagerly leapt at the idea of a rapid intercontinental transport over a space tourist vehicle.
"Virgin Galactic" (noteably NOT Branson) said that SS-3 would originally have been the P2P vehicle, while later it has been said that SS-3 would be an orbital vehicle. Branson I've noted has a tendency to address mix and match the markets depending on who and where he's talking so I'm not sure at this point if P2P has anything to do with his plans.

kkattula wrote:
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Hypersonic flight is always going to be many times the cost of high sub-sonic flight. Most people are not willing to pay that premium to cut their transit time by 40-50% (when you include time spent in transfers, check-in & customs)

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If world markets can support the construction of luxury cruise ships with ever fancier and expensive amenities, or ever taller skyscrapers with fancier architecture, then there's a market for faster transport aircraft.

A suborbital vehicle could still offer passengers the momentary once-in-a-lifetime thrill of space tourism, for which they might be willing to pay that extra premium cost.
This isn't that cut-and-dried unfortunatly. Cruise ships are 5-star hotels that move between points of interest on the ocean. Their market is well understood and point-of-fact they could (and often do) stop nowhere and STILL make money just from the on-board experiances offered.

Skyscrappers leverage efficency by allowing a higher density of use of already expensived land.

Neither has anything to do with the operations of or possible markets for suborbital vehicles.

Suborbital "tourism" is an hour long experiance wrapped up within a two-week stay at a luxery hotel. Attending "training" classes and such is just an excuse to offer similar "experiance" additives based on the overall "theme" that you are going into "space" but actually are added costs to operations and maintenance that are not associated with the vehicle or its operations. Hence they drive already high prices higher even if the vehicle is somehow less costly to operate than a normal aircraft. (Not a given at this point)

Outside of that SINGLE "niche" market no economical business plan has been advanced that nails down a diffinative incentive capable of sustaining a supersonic, hypersonic, or suborbital fast intercontinental cargo or passenger vehicle.

It is not at all clear that there is any "incentive" for the "experiance" of space flight outside of the "tourism" market and what historical examples of transportation trends we have says that people won't pay "extra" for JUST the thrill connected to a new form of travel unless there is "added" experiance in some form or fashion. People pay more to get where they are going faster, yes, but only to a point and that point is far short of the difference between a ticket on a 787 and the cost of a ticket on a faster vehicle.

Does this mean that the idea of an intercontinental suborbital transport is never going to happen? Not at all, but we have yet to even prove that suborbital transport of ANY kind is economical at all, let alone comparable with "normal" transport methods.

Right now there are people moving towards showing that operations and maintenance of rocket powered vehicles has reached a point where they can be cost-competative in operational use. Once that is established it should be easier to either "down-grade" an orbital vehicle or "up-grade" a suborbital one to offer P2P type services, but the operations, maintenance and other aspects of proving something is "transportation" grade ready to go is not there yet.

At a "guess" (on my part) one or more of the "suborbital" launch companies that are currently working on "booster" models can modify their vehicle to carry cargo/passengers or someone will take an actual Reusable Booster vehicle and refit that to meet the P2P market. But it won't happen before it has been established that such vehicles can fly often and without large operations and maintenance budgets.

Randy
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline 93143

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #30 on: 01/11/2011 12:12 am »
The Reaction Engines A2 is supposed to do Brussels to Sydney in around four and a half hours (top speed of Mach 5) for a ticket price of €3940 (2006) if the hydrogen is produced by electrolysis.  The price is cut in half if steam reforming is used instead, indicating strong sensitivity to fuel costs and thus relatively cost-effective hardware design.

This is according to REL themselves.  I am not aware of an independent review confirming these numbers, but the Skylon business plan was recently subjected to such a review and passed with flying colours...

The problems with Concorde are avoided by having antipodal range and good subsonic performance coupled with much higher top speed.  The ability to go anywhere in the world at up to six times the speed of a modern airliner might be worth making the leap, where the ability to do transatlantic routes at two and a half times the speed of a modern airliner isn't.

EDIT:  I know the A2 is only tangentially related to the thread topic, but it was mentioned, and dismissed rather casually I thought...
« Last Edit: 01/11/2011 12:15 am by 93143 »

Offline kkattula

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #31 on: 01/11/2011 02:42 am »
The Reaction Engines A2 is supposed to do Brussels to Sydney in around four and a half hours (top speed of Mach 5) for a ticket price of €3940 (2006) if the hydrogen is produced by electrolysis.  The price is cut in half if steam reforming is used instead, indicating strong sensitivity to fuel costs and thus relatively cost-effective hardware design.

This is according to REL themselves.  I am not aware of an independent review confirming these numbers, but the Skylon business plan was recently subjected to such a review and passed with flying colours...

The problems with Concorde are avoided by having antipodal range and good subsonic performance coupled with much higher top speed.  The ability to go anywhere in the world at up to six times the speed of a modern airliner might be worth making the leap, where the ability to do transatlantic routes at two and a half times the speed of a modern airliner isn't.

EDIT:  I know the A2 is only tangentially related to the thread topic, but it was mentioned, and dismissed rather casually I thought...

Which sector of the market is going to pay that much?

Backpackers?  They would rather spend the money on hugely extending their time in Australia.

Families on holiday? They want the lowest cost flights to leave more money for accomodations and entertainment.

Business travelers? Only the highest executives' time is worth the added cost.


The market is basically the same one Concorde catered for: VIPs, the ultra wealthy, and people wanting a once-in-lifetime experience.

« Last Edit: 01/11/2011 02:42 am by kkattula »

Offline alamo

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #32 on: 01/11/2011 05:18 am »
kkattula : "The market is basically the same one Concorde catered for: VIPs, the ultra wealthy, and people wanting a once-in-lifetime experience."

and people for whom time is really precious, and are willing to pay gold for it ..
question of the right size
plan to build a supersonic "bizjets", the world has an incredible amount of


http://www.tupolev.ru/images/Pictures/CivilProject_Planes/Tu-444/Tu-444_4.jpg

for not long time no longer, will exist actually

http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/11/aerion-takes-fi.html
probably find that they are slow, then ...
« Last Edit: 01/11/2011 05:22 am by alamo »

Offline RanulfC

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #33 on: 01/11/2011 03:02 pm »
Actually? The original "two-person" (no cargo) ROTON was designed from the start as an SSTO vehicle. It was only when it grew bigger that it lost the SSTO ability and started having heavier issues.

I don't see any reason it wouldn't work.

I remember reading that "2 guys and a ham sandwich" slogan for original Roton, but I recall the original design also had other hangups, like trying to position the rocket combustion chambers on each of the rotor-tips, etc. That seemed a little weird and eccentric. When they switched to the FASTRAC engine, that seemed more mainstream and sober.
Well the original rotor-rockets was part and parcel of the efficiency and technically there weren't any issues with building and operating rockets that way.

The only "hangup" was that the design didn't scale well due to rotor scaling. That's why they had to go with the rotating rocket engine, (again doable, but at that time they were running out of money and needed to scale back engine development in favor of getting something flying) since at the scale for satellite deployment they needed an additional rocket boost-engine in addition to the rotors/rockets so they decided to just make the rotors a passive landing system and go with the rotating rocket engine. Announcing they were going to use the NASA developed FasTrac engine was business smart, but since NASA never really got the FasTrac development program up and running the point was moot.

The "rotors-on-top" design was a compromise at best given how unstable a top-mounted rotor design is under-power. It was pretty much a given that the "flight-test" vehicle was going to be unweildy and dangerous, but the top-rotor design gives a higher stability during un-powered (auto-rotation) descent.

Having discussed it with Bevins/Hudson and through my own research I'd have probably gone with starting out simply demonstrating SSTO capability with a smaller ROTON. I'd have gone with the more stable-under-power bottom or mid-mount rotor and low-or-mid-mount cabin.

Aggressive rotor positioning control and throttleing would be needed to stay below Mach-1 until after you passed 80Kft, and I'd have backed off the rotor speed at take off as the planned speed would have required some active and hefty sound suppression since the rotors would be close to or exceeding Mach-1 under full power prior to take off.
(I've thought it might be even a good idea to apply swept "unducted-fan" scimitar type airfoils for the rotors but they probably wouldn't give the same braking effect as would be needed)

Then again, I see type of vehicle as a way to go about "barnstorming" suborbital and "space" access being easily usable as a self-recovering booster stage even if you can't quite make SSTO with it.

If you can do SSTO with "2-people-and-a-ham-sandwhich" then you have an even better start on demo-ing operations and maintenance costs coupled with a high(er) flight rate that is going to be needed to prove out the various assumptions that have been made concerning reusable launch vehicles.

The small size of the payload (being generous, a "man-and-sandwhich" would probably only come up to around 200-250lbs of payload-to-orbit) commercial viability is probably marginal if it exists at all, but its quite possible IF the rest of the "RLV-assumptions" work out economically.

Flying a ROTON type vehicle out of county-state fairs is quite possible even if you don't manage to get fully into space from them the overall operability and general public access would be a tremendous boost in and of itself.

And of course I have a firm belief that such a vehicle, modular and able to be configured for various staging and velocity increments would easily match the Marine SUSTAIN program goals. So "I" personally have a lot of hopes for the vehicle type. Now... Getting someone to lend me the money to TRY this stuff... That's another story :)

Randy
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline RanulfC

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #34 on: 01/11/2011 05:48 pm »
EDIT:  I know the A2 is only tangentially related to the thread topic, but it was mentioned, and dismissed rather casually I thought...
Nope it's actually "on-topic" since practically any type of transportation is "technically" a "Single-Stage, Sub-Orbital" Intercontinental Transport :)

However, we should note that the major direction is something that actually leaves the atmosphere in general if not specific :)

alamo; The problem with any of the currently proposed supersonic business jets is still the same. Note that Aerion "took" its first order in 2007, as of 2010 they still had not fully developed or flight tested their aircraft and are in fact far short on the money to do so. The Japanese SSBJ project has government funding but even so it's not at all clear there will actually be enough buyers to justify production of an aircraft.

Hundreds of studies done in the last 40 years SAY that there is a market for supersonic travel, but the reality hasn't been proven. A 3-hour savings in time for NY to Paris, 41 minutes saved coast-to-coast across the USA, @5-hours saved on trips to Asia, so far NONE of that is important enough in the business world to justify the extra costs involved. So far the majority of orders is from the Middle-East which is most certianly NOT indicative of actual interest!

Now if a trip from NY to Paris takes less than an hour in transit, that's something else. Likewise going from coast-to-coast across the USA in under an hour, or a little over two hours to Asia, NOW you're talking enough time savings to pay for. But only up to a point and it is a VERY, very fine point! Anything under 2000miles is probably not viable no matter how little it costs as your time in and around the airports exceeds your flight time bay a factor of at least two. The problem is it probably WON'T cost "little" but a lot as supersonic and hypersonic aircraft are NOT built the same as standard aircraft and they don't carry as much cargo or passengers as subsonic aircraft. A business jet that CAN go supersonic but is only used at high subsonic speeds for flights around the US has a lot of added capacity and costs that are part of the overall maintenance and operations costs but are never fully re-cooped over the airframe lift time unless you charge much higher rates. And saving "about-41-minutes" is just not going to justify the extra expense.

Overall there was a LOT of misconceptions and false-assumptions (albeit, mostly based on pretty sound "forward-thinking" but rapidly dated information and possibilities) on things like advanced transportation. One could ask why "Intercontinental Mail Rockets" were never put into operation! (That's a bit of a "trick" though as they WERE, the "mail" they were designed to deliver consisted of nuclear weapons though :)

The "Mail-Rocket" was obsolete before it ever got off the drawing board, doomed by a telecommunications revolution that rapidly followed the on-set of the space-age.
Example:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/04/15/mail-via-rocket/
"Mail via Rocket!"

Predicting Rocket-Mail in by 1965, or in less than 10 years! A classic business case doomed by the invention of the fax-machine! Safety? We don't need no "safety" around here, I mean look at the "loading" crew high up on the side of the rocket as the one next door blasts-off!
(Yipe!)

The discovery of the Van-Allen belt(s) put a damper on enthusiasm for Intercontinental Ballistic Passenger Transport, the coffin lid was pretty much nailed shut by the combination of costs surrounding rocket vehicles and the extreme difficulty of telling if a dozen flights were being launched from the US/USSR carrying paying passengers or a cargo of H-Bombs.
Example:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/06/06/coast-to-coast-in-40-minutes/
"Coast-To-Coast in 40 Minutes!"

"300 miles up at 2-miles per second" (So you can spend time deep within the Inner Van Allen belt? ;) )

Note the ship reenters somewhere over Illinois and pull into a gliding flight around 25 miles up. So far so good but look at that again, because somewhere just over the Rockies they are going to be doing around Mach-4 right over 'Vegas and well below 100,000ft. Second or third time casino's on the strip have to replace glass and you just KNOW what's going to happen to the company that runs the rocket planes don't you? :)

And you might want to recall that the oft mentioned but little detailed "rocket" motors are going to be similar to those used on the Atlas or Delta launch vehicles. Now where are you going to launch THAT from in or around New York? LA? Chicago?

While there are still a lot of assumptions involved in projecting a market for such services today, the very basic fact remains that a lot of the basic costs of "space" flight remain far higher than any comparable aircraft price point. And that more than anything else is what has yet to be addressed.

Early enthusiasms, rhetoric, hopes and dreams are all well and good in their place, but we've moved beyond that one would hope and so we need to set out sights on finding a REAL business case and coming up with the facts and figures to back them up. Then we'll really be on our way....

(Not that I'm NOT going to still be enthusiasticly spewing rhetoric, hopes and dreams all over the forums if given a single chance. Ye have been warned! ;) )

Randy
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline tnphysics

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #35 on: 01/11/2011 06:45 pm »
I can see only one market: business travel. The military might be willing to pay for a rapid global deployment capability, but the massive network of bases around the world probably makes it unnecessary.

The problem is that such business executives must be able to go where they need to go, when they need to go. Thus, they cannot be batched. A hypersonic business transport would most likely need to be small, capable of being where and when it was needed. More like a fast business jet than the Concord.

Online mmeijeri

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #36 on: 01/11/2011 07:10 pm »
What did the military want TAVs for? I can imagine very rapid transport of special forces teams and their equipment might be useful in some circumstances.
Pro-tip: you don't have to be a jerk if someone doesn't agree with your theories

Offline alamo

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #37 on: 01/11/2011 10:39 pm »
RanulfC : "A 3-hour savings in time for NY to Paris, 41 minutes saved coast-to-coast across the USA, @5-hours saved on trips to Asia, so far NONE of that is important enough in the business world to justify the extra costs involved."

I say to.. probably find, that they are slow, then ...
and evolution "biz jet", of anything faster mach 3,4,5,  will require a large money

"Predicting Rocket-Mail in by 1965, or in less than 10 years! A classic business case doomed by the invention of the fax-machine!"

..and internet, and teleprezentation..

all in full agreement
In addition to this:
"Safety? We don't need no "safety" around here, I mean look at the "loading" crew high up on the side of the rocket as the one next door blasts-off!"

VTOVL-SSTO is potentially more secure than any airliner,
if the cabin "top", can be added LAS


Offline aero

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #38 on: 01/12/2011 12:34 am »
Quote
, @5-hours saved on trips to Asia,
As one who has made that trip several times, I can assure you that if, after about 10 hours outbound, airline cabin crews offered a supersonic upgrade option for the return flight, they would overbook every time.
« Last Edit: 01/12/2011 12:36 am by aero »
Retired, working interesting problems

Offline 93143

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Re: Intercontinental Single-Stage Sub-Orbital
« Reply #39 on: 01/12/2011 08:14 am »
The Reaction Engines A2 is supposed to do Brussels to Sydney in around four and a half hours (top speed of Mach 5) for a ticket price of €3940 (2006) if the hydrogen is produced by electrolysis.  The price is cut in half if steam reforming is used instead

Which sector of the market is going to pay that much?

I just did a search for Sydney-to-Brussels first-class and business-class tickets.  The cheapest one I found was just under €6000.

A more permissive search on a specific day (Jan. 31, 2011) ranged from about €1300 (economy class, two stops) to over €9000...

Assuming REL's economic analysis is sound, either steam reforming of natural gas or cheap Polywell power for electrolysis could easily drop the ticket price on an A2 below $3000, which is actually quite reasonable for a fast trip to the other side of the world.  I once paid $1300 for an economy-class round trip halfway across Canada...

 

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