I wonder how a Seattle diagram justifys a statement in the general meaning of 'people became more aware of harming the environment'. Really? I also wonder how 2011 concerns influenced a 1960+ plane. However, thanks for the information on 'most things I have read'.

On a side note, I think one has to be aware of what the term 'emissions' really means as it can be used in different ways, some are more technical. Another interesting one is the actual funding that went into SST projects around the world. You may find out that the Concorde one wasn't the highest, but the only one producing a plane that went into service.

I've read some of Sutter's work. It's really interesting stuff, but I've also read what actual engineers of a working SST thought about the 'unfeasibility concerns' of his. I can tell you that this had nothing to do with carbon emissions, but much with 'how the h... is this thing going to fly?'.
When looking at the target values of the planned SST, nobody was really surprised to see a lot of money going into it, but being held back by technology limits of that time.

As said, Concorde flew and operated right on the edge of things. This does mean that planning a Mach3+ passenger transportation plane with more than two guys in space suits was as ambitious as leaving the Moon out and flying directly to Mars. At least, a lot of tax payer money was lost to find out about the limits of 1960/70s tech in that regard.


Now with the environmental aspects, which sometimes become oh so 'important', I think the threads from Pina and Peter are the ones to look for.
On a large scale, Earth and the environment as we call it does not care if you harm her with a plane or a car using 'much less fuel than others'. It does care for the overall value of harmful things and this one actually grew and grew because, thanks to lower ticket prices, nowadays a vast of amount of people can afford flying and the advertisement of course stresses this 'need' to do spend money it. Depending on the actual country, this 'need' may already be established as common thing to do, regardless of the actual reasons in place.
Shopping trips, cheap holidays in the warm weather, visiting foreign countries to enjoy the tourism industry setup there, giving you a 'typical' impression? Nice! And also a large portion of nowadays passenger volume. In fact, the largest one.
So it's not about doctors trying to reach their patients or certain goods for feeding hungry people, it's about selling tickets for all other sorts of travel interests. Money business. The rest is insignificant when it comes to volume, costs and environmental effects.
Strange matter of fact, this insignificant amount of useful things often gets used as the justification for all the rest. Evil to whom evil thinks.  

Environmental awareness? We may remind ourselves about the difference between 'being aware' and 'acting aware' to catch some drift. Only the last part helps the environment, while the first one just calms the conscience and is a major factor with advertising by the way.


So, on the overall numbers, more fuel efficient planes never lead to weaker environmental footprint, but to a much larger one. That's by design since the planes don't get designed fuel efficient to 'take care of the environment', but to counteract higher fuel prices, which prevent selling cheap tickets, which blocks the new markets and the growth of them.
So whenever a company introduces a new 'green' thing, it wants you to look just to the tip of your nose and not beyond. Yes, that one product harms us less (they don't use those words, the turn it into 'it's friendly'), but they plan to build a lot of them. Much more than from its predecessor. So far, a new 'environmental friendly' technology in transportation always had this effect. And, with always I mean .. always.
With air transport markets easily growing in the ranges of 10% per year (much higher in Asia for example), this plan will get fulfilled for some time to go.
Who takes care of the environment when looking at it in that way?  

You can make a lot of money with selling tickets. So much that even expensive new planes justify themselves. This has nothing to do with concerns about Mother Earth, but more with a rather common human character trait. Still, who would want to look at this mess?  

Approx 1 billion people travelling by plane in 1990 and, 20 years later, 2.3 billion are flying. No current technology in the world can counteract that environmental impact. Think they are all flying to their patients or transporting vital goods? Well ..


And what about a SST? Well, it's not blocked by anything else than its market value. So as soon as some clever financial guy comes up and can explain that even the nice values of business and first class subsonic tickets can be beaten by a supersonic service, you will see them starting to work on it right away. Environmental concerns? Well, we couldn't care less, do we?

CoolP, if you got that information from a quote from a statistician I apologize, but I'm not sure about it. There was a great graphic Boeing made that would show what I mean, though I can't seem to find it on the 787 page on newairplane.com anymore--I'll post it if I find it. Anyway, it showed how new jets, particularly ones such as the 787 and A320neo (though the Airbus ones were of course not mentioned by name for advertisement purposes  ) have a far lower fuel consumption rate than the first-gen jets like the 707 and anything else prior. In addition, they carry more passengers. Do they fly more often? Yes. Are their more of them to account for the growing amount of passengers? Yes, but if more passengers are being transported with less fuel, there must be some improvement--and just imagine if we were still using fuel-guzzling 707's. Also, you seem to be skeptical that companies were actually concerned with environmental impact. This is true, but you also have to look at it from a PR standpoint. As more people become aware of the ecological impact of aircraft and other vehicles, they would not look kindly upon SST's.  And if anybody can find a graph of the main sources of carbon emissions in the world, please post it.

Markoz wrote on Nov 18^th, 2011 at 1:10am:


Well it depends. Its like the car vs. motorcycle story.

See, yes a Motorcycle might 75mpg (per-say) but the car gets 35mpg, yes, the motorcycle might burn less gas than teh car, but the car has more emissions standards.SO the motorcycle may be emitting more toxic gases and carcinogens than the car, but less CO2 than the car. So would you rather has less CO2 or less ozone, sulphur, and other things?

So yes, you're replaced 1 plane with 5, the original made 100, the new five make 130. But you get to take 1,000 passengers (each plane holds 200) with the new five, and only burn 130. But with the old, you only carry 200 for 100. So that equates to a 2:1 (two passengers to each until of pollution) with the old, and 7.69:1 with the new five. Thats how a 747 going from LAX to JFK can be more effecient than a single person in a car. You get 467 people to new york over a shorter distance than 1 person over a longer (ditance & time).

The consideration for SST's won't be so much environmental concerns as economics. The airlines chose the 787 over the Sonic Cruiser; the Sonic Cruiser would go at Mach .92 for the same cost as the 767, but airlines wanted to cut cost, since the demand for ultra-high speed wasn't great. With 787 technology, we don't need to worry about emissions when going that fast, its all operating costs, seat revenue, and effeciency. Delta has the biggest gas bill this year, over $2.5 Billion. If passengers don't really demand for supersonic travel, Delta, or any airlines, won't go for an SST and raise the gas bill to $3 Billion, they'd rather have it at $1 Billion.

Mark points it out correctly. The overall value counts for the environment.

Since the beginning of the jet age, big passenger planes made overall efficiency improvements or approx 50%. That's from the very first jet planes up to the most current ones like 787 and A380.
So please tell me how the 1990 technology, which already includes the modern things like 777 and A330 planes, should ever be able to counteract that impact happening in just 20 years.

Maybe it helps to see that e. g. New York grew from 7.8 million to 8.2 million people, while, within the same time span, the amount if people over New York went up x2.3!
Mother Earth still does not care if you've improved efficiency on a single plane (while the passenger count goes up as shown), that's pure company and advertisement thinking, guys. Well done, PR branches!

I might add, as a side note, that it may not be too clever to ask the guys actually selling planes about the environmental impact they might have while expecting useful/valid answers. However, that may add to the 'awareness' people aim for.  


The problem with some environmental awareness isn't the data basis. The data is there, no one can really hide it and rather simple maths show numbers like the ones above.

Now, an industry isn't interested in that awareness taking place in people's minds. The bias is 'earn money!' and any passenger in doubt about the environmental impact of his not so important journey has to be avoided. So, nowadays, everything comes with a friendly green image plus promoting the 'right' data, while leaving out the more obvious one. As if trees would start growing when you park (and run) a modern plane in front of them.  
And, at the same time, people aren't really interested to care about this and that when they can have an industry that tells them that 'everything is fine'. Qui bono?  
Lobbyists and PR work are vital parts of a big money business, so it's not only about the products. You may guess why.

I don't blame people in general, that would be unfair and too cross-the-board alike. But I'm really surprised when some guys (with access to data) fail to realize or even defend some naive fallacy of theirs. However, maybe I can learn something from that behaviour.  

As Peter shows, there is hope.
Quote:

Ah, thanks, Peter. I've seen pictures of that before. It's a shame it wasn't developed, as it seems like a pretty good idea.

And CoolP, you have provided copious information, but all I really said was that environmental concerns play a role in the development of SST's (which is what I read in 747 and a history of flight book I own), and nothing more.  

         They didn't have environmental concerns like they do today, during the 1960's and 1970's. For awhile, they were worried the world would freeze-over!

         SST concepts are there, but as NASA states, the only way to make them viable, which includes over-continental flying rather than over-water, the sonic boom must be either done away completely, or quiter than a baseball bat hitting a fastball. The sonic booms done over Oklahoma City proved that long-term sonic booms over a city cause complaints, and airliners flying over large cities daily (with a boom equal to that of any fighter jet or Concorde) would surely entail complaints. NASA's concepts for technology that would enable an SST to produce a negligable sonic boom outline an airliner with capacity of 50-85, which is no greater than a Bombardier CRJ700. The Concorde didn't hold many passengers either, 92-120 passengers. However, the problem is gettign it effecient. The inherint design is effecient, per-say, but to get the massive gain that widebodies got over narrowbodies, was range and capacity. If a supersonic airliner were to only hold 80 passengers, it would have to be both incredibly effecient, and fly very far. Ticket prices would be astronomical, and it wouldn't make much sense business-wise. I can see business jets like the Aerion SBJ possibly taking wealthy people and weel-to-do businesses to far places supersonic, but that still is stretching it.

Yeah, I can see why the Sonic Cruiser wasn't developed, but making an aircraft that cruises just below the speed of sound is an interesting idea.

CoolP, you are right, and I never disagreed that big companies don't really care about their affect on the environment. I can see that the 787 was made to be 20% more efficient so that airlines will spend less money on fuel. However, it is also true that people have become more aware of what we're doing to the environment--I didn't say who, and I certainly did not say large companies, but some people are. Recall how I mentioned the new Australian restriction on carbon emissions. Almost everything I said about the Concorde was based off of this line:

"Attacks from the ecological lobby (responding to the threat of high levels of pollution and noise) mean that the Concorde was banned from many of the world's airports."

-In an excerpt on the Concorde in Flight: The Complete History, produced by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum