Civilian supersonic flight may not have made its anticipated revival yet but there’s still a need for speed as shown by Bombardier, which has announced that its Global 8000 business jet is entering service with a claimed top speed of Mach 0.95.
Before Concorde was retired in 2003, it routinely reached a top speed of Mach 2.04 – and that was just the top authorized speed. Its massive Olympus engines could have pushed the envelope further but to go any faster would have heated the airframe beyond safety limits.
Today, while a new generation of supersonic transports is under development, civilian aviation is consigned to speeds below that of sound, though some business jets can go over Mach 9-and-a-bit. That may not be quite supersonic, but it is well inside the transonic range where an…
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Source newatlas.com
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