Maybe I am misinformed but I was under the impression part of the reason concorde was retired is because at those speeds you tear up the ozone.
"From their particle measurements, the authors of the Science study calculate that a future possible fleet of 500 supersonic passenger aircraft will increase the surface area of particles in the atmosphere by an amount similar to that following small volcanic eruptions. In mid-latitude regions, such emissions have the possibility of increasing ozone loss above that expected for nitrogen oxide emissions alone. The increase in the number of particles may also affect the ozone-related processes occurring on wintertime polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in the polar regions."
>Maybe I am misinformed but I was under the impression part of the reason concorde was retired is because at those speeds you tear up the ozone.
That really wasn't a reason for the Concorde's retirement. It was an old plane. It was marginal economically. It had a fatal accident. And then, just as it was returning to service, the travel slump after 9/11 happened.
Environmental opposition was one factor in the cancellation of the Boeing SST program. Although the bigger one was almost certainly that it didn't make economic sense.
>It was an old plane. It was marginal economically. It had a fatal accident. And then, just as it was returning to service, the travel slump after 9/11 happened.
I agree that all those are the primary retirement factors but I did not want to bring them up as they where being discussed elsewhere in the comments.
I'm interested to see that people where complaining about the potential of Concorde stratospheric pollution all the way back in 1972[1]. Maybe it was not so much a reason for retirement but one of the many reasons the concorde received such a poor public reception in the 70s. I think Boom has some serious hurdles ahead of them in this regard. Environmental regulations have done nothing but grow since the 1970s and many countries where outright banning the concorde from their airspace then.
"From their particle measurements, the authors of the Science study calculate that a future possible fleet of 500 supersonic passenger aircraft will increase the surface area of particles in the atmosphere by an amount similar to that following small volcanic eruptions. In mid-latitude regions, such emissions have the possibility of increasing ozone loss above that expected for nitrogen oxide emissions alone. The increase in the number of particles may also affect the ozone-related processes occurring on wintertime polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in the polar regions."
-http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr95/oct95/noaa95-65.html