I thought another big issue with flying at such fast speeds was that you end up tearing pieces off your fuselage every time... This looks like one piece of a bigger puzzle to achieve what the headline of the article is suggesting.
Air-frame heat is definitely an issue, but it's solvable. According to a BBC documentary that's on youtube, the Skylon design uses the same concept as the SR-71, which is a corrugated skin that allows a great deal of thermal expansion and limits conduction of heat from the skin to the air-frame. They also apparently have a novel composite material, which could be a big advantage since machining titanium alloys like the SR71 used is a serious pain in the ass.
Skylon could fly high enough to moot sonic boom issues, but I think you're right about lack of market demand for transportation. I think aerospace folks may underestimate how continued advances in communication networks will erode demand for travel of all forms, let alone prompt travel.
Of course the military will always be giddy about dropping bombs on whatever poor soul they want as promptly as possible...
According to my Dad (who is clearly the most reliable authority in the world :-() the reason the Concorde failed is because Boeing lobbied the government to get it banned over the continental US so they could sell the 747.
He's basically saying all that stuff about noise is mostly bunk pushed forward by Boeing to get rid of the competition. You'll note BTW the 747 and Concorde both came out around the same time and you probably also know the 747 was never designed to be a passenger plane. It was designed to be a military cargo plane but lost the contract to Lockheed's C-5A so Boeing needed it to sell as something else.
He, my dad, claims the NYC to LA route was the most lucrative and that without it Concorde didn't stand a change.
I have no idea if there's any evidence to back up his story. Maybe someone else out there has more info.
People are willing to pay for supersonic flight. Concorde made a profit on most of it's flights, and it was only after the World Trade Center attacks and subsequent downturn in international commercial flight that it became a problem. Also, because not many Concordes were made, the R&D costs were never properly amortized.
The sonic boom however is an issue - Concorde was limited to a small selection of routes that passed mainly over water (e.g. London -> New York) because it was not allowed to go supersonic over a lot of countries. If you could fly supersonic all the way from London to Tokyo, or San Fransisco, or Sydney, then I'm sure it would be worth even more.
Wikipedia disagrees about the profits on "most of its flights". It says "it is reported that British Airways then ran Concorde at a profit, unlike their French counterpart". That is half the fleet for slightly over half the years of operation.
"British Airways […] was reckoned to make a £20m annual operating profit from its London-New York Concorde service."
But also:
"By 1975, the year before commercial launch, more than £1.2bn - at least £11bn today - had been spent."
So, their margin on investment was 1.6% or so, starting about ten years after the investments were made.
They would have needed a lot more planes to get their investments back. To fill them with passengers, fares would have to drop. Lower fares means they needed even more planes, etc.
Concorde also was limited to long distance flights. On shorter routes, its fuel economy did not compensate for a slightly shorter (boarding+flight+deboarding) time.
I think 9/11 was coincidental and unrelated. The important trend in 2001+ was the growth of telecommunications phenomena that reduced travel demand. I am not sure if the sonic boom was nearly as big a problem as it was made out to be. I think we can do some cursory math.
If 30% was at 50% of the speed, the total distance covered would be 85% less, adding about 20% flight time increase. Something that normally takes 8+ hours now take 3 or 4 hours. Did this kill the concord?
Airline stocks went down almost 40% the next day. Yes, the economy went down because of other factors, but the immediate hit to airlines was definitely caused by 9/11.
