AH Challenge: SSTs become the norm

Pretty much impossible, as SSTs only have an advantage for flights over 4-hours subsonic and have problems flying over land. You might be able to have a substantial SST segment surviving to the present day if Concorde-B was built- with the range for more transatlantic flights, but not needing afterburners.

SSTs will only ever monopolise long-haul if we get to cheap hypersonic/suborbital flights.
 

Archibald

Banned
I agree with Alexius statements, particularly about hypersonic flight.

But there's a way of having hypersonic/suborbital flight.

It's Burnside-Clapp Black Horse/ Black Colt/ Pathfinder way.

Have an aircraft with two jet engines, a non-cryogenic rocket engine, and in flight refueling.

Take-off using the subsonic turbofans only, and fly to a modified KC-10 Extender.
Transfer rocket oxydizer, light the rocket engine to accelerate to mach 12 or mach 15 and 500 000 ft.

Good thing with this method is, the rocket engine accelerate your machine so fast and so high that you have no sonic boom.

This is doable since the early 70's at least. :)

I've imagined two machines based on this idea, an american and an european "hypersonic airliner".

The US machine have two Boeing-2707 GE-4 engines, and a LR-87 rocket motor from the Titan rocket.
It burn N2O4 and kerosene.
The tanker is a KC-10.

The European machine use H202/ Kerosene engines from the Black Arrow rocket, and two "Concorde-B" Olympus engines without reheat.
The tanker is a modified Airbus A300.

N204 and H202 are non-cryogenic oxidizers; they are much more practical than LOX for aerial transfer.

First users of these machines would be the military; a cryogenic upper stage (powered by a RL-10 or a HM-7) would send 3 tons in LEO.

Then civilian variants would replace the upper-stage by LD-3 or LD-6 containers, to carry cargo over the Atlantic in one hour (imagine if Fedex had such machines! )

Next step would be carrying passengers...
 
to make this TL
you have ceep aircraft fuel cheap
the rise in price kill all SST project and killt on longterm the Concorde

don't take Zip Fuel as alternative (Syntectic fuel from Bor)
is cost more as normal Jetfuel and do very ugly thing to Jetengine
 
Have the Avro Canada designs from the laste 1950's be built. 15-20 years of SST travel before the oil crisis.

I'd imagine by that time, SST travel would be ingrained in the industry.

Also, Avro Canada had designs for planes that could cruise at Mach 1.2 without creating a sonic boom, facilitating supersonic travel over populated areas.
 
A TL with super advanced trains everywhere that makes medium haul flights pointless?

And piston airliners aren't obsolete, they're still used for a lot of short haul flights.
 
But there's a way of having hypersonic/suborbital flight.

It's Burnside-Clapp Black Horse/ Black Colt/ Pathfinder way.

Have an aircraft with two jet engines, a non-cryogenic rocket engine, and in flight refueling.

Take-off using the subsonic turbofans only, and fly to a modified KC-10 Extender.
Transfer rocket oxydizer, light the rocket engine to accelerate to mach 12 or mach 15 and 500 000 ft.

Good thing with this method is, the rocket engine accelerate your machine so fast and so high that you have no sonic boom.
I don't think that this approach would ever be cheap enough to be used by the masses (as opposed to the rich few). What would be needed to get ordinary people flying supersonic?
 
A few possibilities. Note that these refer to "supersonic" (between Mach 1 and Mach 3.5ish) and not "hypersonic" aircraft:

1. More readily available fuel. The gas crisis really put a damper on SSTs OTL. Either earlier development of alternatives, no gas crisis (US not seen as supporting Israel? US-backed Israel kicking butt so many ways that it holds big oil stockpiles - probably Egyptian? Saudis afraid the US would do something bad to them if they stopped shipments? Iran refuses to cooperate with OPEC ban? Who knows...), greater development of domestic resources (perhaps an Alaska pipeline in the 1960s), no cold war, greater use of nuclear energy meaning less oil burning, and earlier, less severe gas crisis (after 1956, probably) leading to more efficient cars earlier, or any of a thousand other possibilities.

2. Cut back on shorter-range flights. One easy way to do this would be to encourage the production of Rotodynes or similar craft instead of regional jets, to replace DC-3s on shorter flights. This leaves the jet market to longer-range and larger flights. It could also save the British aviation industry, but that's another story. (What in the hell did British government officials in the 1950s-70s smoke? Or did Nazis conduct horrible experiments to extract and concentrate stupid from their victims and launched it in V-2s? Its not just aviation, a whole bunch of forced mergers and government mismanagement also killed the British car industry).

3. More tolerance of noise. One major factor in anti-SST sentiment was the claim (generally exaggerated, but with some merit) that sonic booms caused property damage. Among other things, this banned using supersonic passenger travel over transcontinental (not transoceanic) routes.

4. Have the US / British build supersonic heavy bombers like the B-70 Valkyrie (I know the British worked on something similar at one point as well), or maybe supersonic transports (less feasible but makes later conversions easier). In the pre-stealth era, most of the really heavy aircraft were closely related to civilian counterparts (the B-29 and the postwar Boeing 377 shared a lot, for example) ; even without this, development of bombers would allow for cheaper components and greater expertise in supersonic development - basically, military government funds would indirectly reduce the need for civil government funds to build heavy aircraft. There were even plans to build a 72-passenger variant of the B-70 (though its not a very good platform for it, and anyway flying at Mach 3+ requires special/expensive fuels; you can only fly ~Mach 2.4 on regular jet fuel).

5. Don't cancel the Boeing 2707. Yes, it required a ton of government subsidies to build OTL. But a 200+ passenger SST is going to be a lot cheaper to fly and operate per-seat on major routes than a 100-passenger model like the Concorde. Will it be as cheap as a normal plane, especially without other factors? Hell no. But it might be almost competitive with First Class accommodations on a normal aircraft - and get you there in less than half the time (about the same speed increase over a conventional jet as a jet has over a late-model propeller aircraft like a Boeing 377).

Oh, and there are still some piston engined aircraft (not turboprops, piston engines) used for very short, low-passenger flights, often between small regional airports (sometimes a general aviation airport with a few civil air flights) and hubs.
 
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