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From March 1969 until October 2003, we had supersonic passenger travel. With Concorde,
we could travel from New York to London in just 3 hours, a journey that would previously take at
glamorous way to travel. Fast forward to now, and airplanes are much safer, efficient and cheaper.
But that New York to London flight time is now slower than it was prior to Concorde’s arrival.
After 50 years of aircraft development, how can we have gotten slower? And could the
future of spaceflight give us the next big leap in technology just like Concorde did?
To answer this, we need to know why Concorde failed in the first place - and why faster
airplanes aren’t necessarily better. The simple answer is money, but it’s a little
more complex than that. The fuel efficiency of airplanes has gotten much better over time.
This is largely down to the demand for increased efficiency, which reached an all-time high in the
2000’s, when the price of jet fuel rose from 70 cents per gallon to 3 dollars.
So engineers had to look for new ways to increase the fuel efficiency of modern airplanes. They
found that by increasing the size of the engines, it could drastically change their efficiency.
This is because the air can take two different paths through a jet engine. Some of the air
passes through the center, where it goes through a series of compressors before it gets ignited by
the jet fuel. This creates additional thrust and also powers the fan. The rest of the air simply
bypasses this section and is thrown out the back, also creating a large amount of thrust. In the
past, engines would typically get most of their thrust from the jet section. But engineers found
that by increasing the fan size and bypassing more air, the engines could produce more thrust with
less fuel, therefore increasing the efficiency. In contrast, Concorde used turbojet engines which
got almost all of their thrust from burning fuel, making them much less efficient than
modern day engines. As aircraft manufacturers continue to lower their emissions, it’s clear
that Concorde’s fuel guzzling image wouldn’t be very popular today. A long haul Starship flight
would produce around 700 tonnes of CO2, this works out at around 0.8 tonnes per passenger.
Compare this to a 747 and the amount per passenger is very similar, if not a little bit less.
Concorde’s CO2 output would be around 6 times more than this per flight. Thanks to these newer and
more efficient engines, modern airplanes really separated themselves from Concorde in terms of
their emissions. But these new larger engines had one weakness that ended up affecting flight times.
If too much air passed through these larger engines, the fan would basically act like a wall,
slowing the plane down and requiring more jet fuel to be burned. This is why aircraft manufacturers
recommend an optimal cruising speed between 880 and 925km/h, where the engines are most
efficient. To put that into perspective, a typical passenger jet in the 60’s would fly much closer
to 1,000km/h. Flying at these slower speeds saves airlines an enormous amount of money.
JetBlue saved 13 and a half million dollars in a single year by simply adding 2 minutes to their
flight times. With newer airplanes being much more focused on efficiency and cost saving, Concorde’s
extreme running cost of 10,000 dollars per return trip started to seem more and more absurd.
The running costs for Starship will no doubt be high as well, but one of the differences is
that Starship will be able to carry many more passengers - around 8 times more than Concorde.
With an estimated running cost of just over 1 million dollars per Earth flight, that puts
the average ticket price at around 1,200 dollars. This is a major improvement over Concorde’s ticket
prices and opens up a new way of travelling to more people than Concorde ever could.
But even with these ticket prices, it’s difficult to see how Starship could take over traditional
airplanes. A passenger today is much less likely to pay more for a quicker flight. We now have the
ability to conduct business meetings from anywhere in the world and all the inflight entertainment we
need on our phones. None of this was possible when Concorde was around. Despite this, Starship might
be a preferred transport method if the ticket price can match that of a business class ticket.
The goal for any aircraft or rocket is to eventually pay off its purchase cost
and break-even. For a typical aircraft, this usually happens around 5 to 10 years after it
was purchased. Airplanes are expected to operate many years after this point and continue making
a profit. But for an airplane, it’s not just the number of years that contribute towards its age,
but how many pressure cycles it has gone through. Every time an aircraft takes off,
its cabin needs to be pressurized to make sure that everyone can breathe at high altitudes.
This pressurization puts a considerable amount of stress on the airplane's fuselage and wings.
Over time, this stress causes cracks to appear in the airplane, which will eventually become
too dangerous to fly. Once the airplane has reached its maximum number of cycles,
it has to be either scrapped or put through a costly amount of maintenance.
An Airbus A380, which typically has a lifespan of around 27 years, can make about 35,000 flights
before being retired. Concorde was flown much less frequently, with an average number of flights at
around 5,000. The same ageing process happens with rockets. Starship is meant to be capable of
hundreds of flights before any refurbishment is needed, but realistically, no one knows exactly
how many cycles it will be capable of. Although it's unlikely to reach an airplane's number of
flights, it does have one advantage that sets it apart from Concorde or typical airplanes.
The production cost for each Concorde was around 200 million dollars. Once Starship
is fully operational, the cost for a full
Starship stack could be as low as 40 million dollars. This is because in many ways, rockets
are more simple to manufacture than airplanes. The majority of the rocket is just a giant fuel tank
with the engines taking up most of the cost. If SpaceX can reach its cost target for Starship,
then it might be capable of breaking-even much sooner than Concorde ever could.
In many ways, it seems like Starship could potentially get around the pitfalls that
ended Concorde. And although the idea of rockets replacing airliners is currently just a dream,
it’s important to remember that the same thing was once said about airplanes.
In the early 20th century, the only airplanes that existed looked like this and they were
being built by crazy and ambitious engineers. As soon as money got involved, the technology
started to develop extremely quickly. Engines became more advanced and the planes themselves
started to grow larger and larger, allowing them to carry more people and more cargo.
Fast forward to now and it’s easy to see how much things have improved.
Air travel is now one of the safest forms of transport and airplanes are capable of flying
9,000 miles whilst carrying 850 passengers at a time. We really have come a long way!
So although it's unclear whether Starship will revolutionize how we travel around Earth,
it’s incredible to be alive at a time when so much history
is being made. In order for Starship to live up to its dreams, it will require
a team of skilled engineers and technicians, just like the team that built Concorde back in the day.
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