Expert: Praveen Prakash Sathaye - 6/4/2002

Question
Why has the USA shown no interest in developing supersonic passenger airliners? The UK and France developed Concorde over 30 years ago, even the USSR produced a Concorde copy, but the US, usually at the forefront of technology, has never had a supersonic airliner programme. In an age of bigger, better, faster I would have thought the US would have shown some interest.

Answer
It would be wrong to say that the USA has shown no interest in Supesonic transport but the thing remains that the sound barrier was first broken by an american aircraft, the Bell X 1.

American air travel has always concentrated on bulk rather than the speed and that is evident from the Boeing series of aircraft.Boeing 707 was named so because it travelled at 0.707 times the speed of sound i.e. Mach 0.707 and they had plans to have a boeing 1000 which wud be a supersonic airliner..but that was not what the market wanted..so their fighhter aircraft development took a front seat while passenger aircraft looked more into size and comfort  ..something which is the ameican culture. Typical american cars are big and comfortabe..and not fast as such


Currently Boeing and Tupolev are jointly working on the SST supersonic transport aircraft which can be realiyty in just a couple of years. And also lead to teh Hypersonic Space Craft which will belike a space shuttle and work like a normal airliner.

so the future is to watch out for..