I dont think this is comparable to the concord. The concord was more like an oversized fighter jet. It had more issues with it than just cost. Like sonic booms. Just wasn’t practical. This is more like an SR-71. Much more practical as it flies much higher and theres less air so sonic booms arent an issue for people on the ground so much. In general air travel started out really expensive and got more affordable over time. The concord never did as it just failed outright. This has potential tho. Mainly for more long distance travel. Like 5-10k+ miles the time it saves is gonna be huge at those distances.
Hopefully this goes somewhere, but even with a modern price of 5,000 dollars. I’m still confused as to who this plane is meant to serve. It is outclassed by trains for regional travel, and is entirely uneconomical for long distance flights since while it can save fuel while cruising, it will chew through a massive quantity of fuel while accelerating and climbing.
Also the Blackbird sacrifices a LOT to be as light and aerodynamic as it is, as is evident by the pilot requiring an entire spacesuit. That’s not really conducive to commercial travel.
The saving is time. An suborbital flight could get you from NYC to Beijing in under an hour theoretically. Altho idk how fast this specific plane is. But ur not understanding what i mean about price starting high. Its not “modern” pricing. Its just that things like this start out as a very niche luxury market and then over decades they expand and prices come down as they get practice and refine designs, and techniques to lower costs, and economy of scale takes over. So if it suceeds as a luxury time saving product for a niche use (Like business people, politicians etc) then over time it can be expanded to everyone and prices can come down.
As for sacrifices the SR-71 made the SR-71 was a military craft made for stealth bombing. It had a lot of equipment and stuff going on a normal plane wouldnt need.
I think you misunderstood what I meant by the word modern, I should have worded myself better, but what I meant is that even if prices were reduced significantly to 5-10 thousand dollars per ticket as compared to a current day valuation of the approximately 60,000 dollars that a 20,000 dollar concorde ticket would have cost in 1985… who is able to afford that price?
It doesn’t matter what technology comes into play, bringing the price of a suborbital liner to modern day airfare prices would be impossible. 5-10 thousand dollars from 60 thousand is already an astronomical drop. What customers have 5-10 thousand dollars lying around for a single flight?
There is no economy of scale for a niche luxury product with more economical alternatives. You have an incredibly small subset of customers, and dropping the price from 10 thousand to 8 thousand isn’t going to drive up business at all. Especially when a one way flight from New York to Beijing is 400-1,500 dollars, and as has been shown through endless industry studies, the primary concern for airline customers is by far price.
