flap 5,
how much would a "sub-orbital" aircraft cost to operate? when asked for everyones ideas for the next generation of airliners (since no one liked boeings) i was counting on ideas that would be achievable and profitable. any sub-orbital aircraft would be incredibly expensive to operate. there is no way it could be operated in todays environment at todays fares. i think that idea will be viable in the next-next generation (30 years or so).
knave and others,
there are several here who seem to take joy in stating that boeing lost to airbus in the very large category. the did not lose. they chose not to compete because they do not believe it will be profitable. they may be wrong in this assessment but at least state the facts correctly. what would happen if ferrari decided to build a new 300 mph car. if porche decided that it was not going to build a competing car because they didnt believe that there was a large enough market for it, would they be categorized as "losing" even though ferrari might sell a few of their fancy new cars?
buck rogers,
i understand the economics of the concorde. the fact is that while it is a wonderful airplane (one of my favorites), it is was not economically viable 30 years ago and it is not viable today. the manufacturers either failed to consider or ignored the environmental, fuel and other negative aspects. whether or not concorde is profitable in a very small niche market is irrelavent. they sold 13 airplanes (to the state owned airlines of the countries who manufactured it i might add). you can guys can blame the U.S. for the problems of the concorde if you want but that doesnt change anything. the airplane doesnt work in todays airline environment. just because something is a technologicical marvel doesnt mean that it makes good business sense.
one last point, do you think that airbus will be building all new aircraft in 10 years from now? or will they be building derivitives of their current airframes? i can almost guarentee that they will not be able to build any brand new airframes for a while because of all the money tied up in the A380 (they better hope that boeing doesnt go ahead, because there is now way that they could compete with it). if this is the case that would mean about 25 years of updating the same airframes. roughly the same as boeing and their "old" airframes. just trying to put things in perspective.
[This message has been edited by LMD (edited 04 April 2001).]