Originally Posted by
G0ULI
The laws of physics dictate that there is a rapidly diminishing return as the size of supersonic aircraft increase.
Well, the theory as presented *could* be argued to encompass that, but as far as I could tell from the original journal article, that's not what it was about - it did not distinguish supersonic from subsonic in terms of the conclusions drawn. This is why I pointed out that the mention of Concorde was almost a footnote in the original article, but for some reason bumped up to headline status in the phys.org article linked above.
Concorde was only mentioned in the original journal piece as it was (naturally) an extreme outlier on the general trend.
Geopolitical factors are just one of many things that need to be taken into account with analysis of this kind and it is right for you to point out that not everything is necessarily measurable as a physical quantity.
Of course - however the original journal article was not intended to be a historical precis of relative success of airliners - it was a purely scientific theory which showed that various equations regarding airliner specifications could be used to plot a trend showing how commercially successful they were based on the historical aspects (and presumably extrapolated for future reference if desired).