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Considering there's no SST of the present, it's many more than "a few" years into the future.
Without vast improvements in technology that aren't going to come overnight, the economics of SST just don't work out.
The only possible area is in private jets, where money is no object. Even then it's doubtful if the number of potential orders would be great enough to make a return on the investment in the technology.
Taken from their website: "We expect the first customers for the jet will be businesses and their management teams that need to manage global operations more efficiently. They will be able to reach destinations faster, evaluate more opportunities and have a bigger impact on their enterprises."
For the underlined portion, wouldn't the most efficient managers and businesses look instead to video-teleconferencing and hiring an appropriate management team on site to minimize the need for management to track across the globe on a regular basis? And at $80M, that's a lot of airline tickets.
Seriously though, sub-orbital transport would be more likely than an SST. Getting from LA to the other side of the world in a few hours, etc.
Some business cannot be replaced by teleconference. Suppliers selling their business and companies visiting countries where a virtual visit is an insult, and even management cultures where "a presence" of 20-30 people during a visit is needed, etc. all demand air travel. And outside a few big ticket spenders, I don't see more than maybe 10 orders for this airplane.
I wonder how much more it would cost to add actual horizontal and vertical stabilizers and control surfaces...
They're hard to see but painted in blue in the back they have rudder-vators (combination rudder and elevator). It's an effective way to reduce drag, but increases the criticality of each surface. Military drones use this technique quite often.
It depends on how supersonic you're going. If you're barely above 1 Mach, then the shock coming off the nose will slow the flow over the wing enough to be subsonic, but yes I do agree that on the face of it, the engine placement and the wing design are totally off.
What surprised me is to see the wings aren't swept back.
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