Multidisciplinary Analysis of Commercial Supersonic Point-to-Point Travel

The future of commercial high-speed flight is advancing rapidly, with multiple companies making significant progress toward operational aircraft. SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc. has been a key contributor to this evolving landscape, conducting extensive market research and analysis for NASA over recent years. These efforts have evaluated the economic viability of high-speed travel and identified the technical and macroeconomic factors that could enable market success. This manuscript presents SpaceWorks' 2023 findings from the latest research on the high-speed commercial passenger flight market. From the extensive modeling conducting during these trade studies, supersonic flight in the Mach 1.5-2.5 regime consistently had the best economic cases since aircraft were less technically complex, which led to reduced capital investment, lower aircraft prices, and lower passenger ticket prices. The lower prices subsequently yielded increased market capture and increased aircraft production for operators and manufacturers, respectively. This Mach regime also allows for aircraft with longer design ranges and/or greater passenger counts to be developed without drastically raising costs which enables more routes and international markets to be addressed. Flight scheduling and route modeling highlighted that airline operators need to consider local time zones when planning flights and that they will likely need more aircraft to address demand. This has a positive impact for the manufacturers as more units are needed and therefore, economies of scale can help lower prices. However, aircraft prices need to stay low enough that ticket prices aren’t significantly impacted to the point where demand drops so much that aircraft production ultimately decreases. The scenarios that maximized the benefits of flight scheduling (or were the least impacted) were the scenarios that implemented aircraft at lower Mach numbers. Finally, the research emphasized the need for a sufficiently large market willing to pay for high-speed flights. To explore low-cost scenarios, SpaceWorks evaluated alternative fuels such as sustainable aviation fuel, liquid natural gas, and liquid hydrogen. Sustainable aviation fuel and natural gas offer promising business cases in the Mach 1.5-2.5 range due to lower fuel prices compared to Jet-A by the time market sizes reach more significant magnitudes. However, due to external considerations such as infrastructure integration, expected increases in fuel supply, and ease of adoption for airline operators, Sustainable fuel presents the best alternative fuel option in the short-term. The environmental benefits that come with hydrogen fuel would likely require more novel aircraft designs, especially at high speeds where fuel consumption is more significant. Overall, the data indicates that aircraft in the Mach 1.5-2.5 regime will have an easier time entering the market and establishing a sustainable presence. This also gives regulators, airports, and passengers a more manageable understanding into the benefits and impacts of high-speed flight, paving the way for more advanced and faster high-speed aircraft to eventually enter the market.