On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 11:34:11 -0800, kennedymcewen1958 wrote:

> On Saturday, 6 June 1998 08:00:00 UTC+1, Kennedy wrote:
>> In article >, Nick Horianopoulos
>> > writes
>> >Kennedy wrote:
>> >
>> >> In article >, Nick Horianopoulos
>> >> > writes
>> >> >
>> >A supersonic airliner? Who cares? Now, the United States is producing a
>> >HYPERSONIC airliner (the National Space Plane project) -
>>
>> And we all expect to be alive when THAT finally takes to the air - keep
>> taking the tablets Nico, they MIGHT make you live long enough!
>>
> Hahaha. Just found this old thread when searching for something on Google so I had to point out that, 20 years on, your Hypersonic airliner still hasn't got off the drawing board. ;-)

Hope springs eternal. Maybe new technology may achieve where previous
efforts faltered. But the basic idea is not new at all, just the "catamaran"
idea dating back at least half a millennium. By having a dual body/wing, the
two bodies can reflect each other's wave energy back to each other, rather
than letting it escape to infinity. This can in principle kill the supersonic
boom problem, as well as the large power requirements to replenish all that
lost energy.

Of course this is only for supersonic flow. I did not check the actual dates,
but I would be pretty sure the hypersonic airliner idea dated from the time
that crack cocaine was introduced.

Leon
Now in a 2016 Miata and eyeing a 2018.