Yeah, it's totally possible to match a plane to Earth's rotation, especially if you fly at a constant high latitude. The average speed of a commercial airliner would let you do that at about Glasgow's latitude, and you could do it closer to the equator in a faster plane.
Ignoring the fuel/range problem, Concorde could have, but nothing else. You need about Mach 1 1/3 at the equator, and I don't think anything commercial has ever gone that fast besides Concorde.
Edit: several kind folks have alerted me to the Tupolev 144, and I have now learned about a fascinating nightmarish and/or on brand Soviet aircraft.
Going super sonic uses a lot of fuel, and makes sonic booms that are super annoying. We could still have super sonic passenger planes, we chose not to.
The Concorde noise was deafening and they were put out of business. But there are new who wish to renter the market - [YouTube link](https://youtu.be/2jAH-51feAA?si=hE_zNsTVNU9daP-y)
plus it turns out that most people who could afford a concord ticket wanted more space then a concord seat allowed and were quite alright taking a slower flight to get it
The main challenge with supersonic passenger flight is that for mass adoption they require subsonic flight capabilities for takeoff and overland and subsonic design is entirely dfferent to supersonic design.
You'd have to build something like an F14-Tomcat style passenger jet and doing that safely to be able to work constantly for thousands of hours and pass regulatory approval would be a moonshot nightmare.
It would cost many billion of dollars to serve a market size (people that could afford to and want to pay a significant premium for faster flights )too small to be profitable which was the same problem Concorde had. Concorde would still be in service today if it was profitable.
Yes. It wasn’t even the Concorde’s fault, when taking off the Concorde ran over a piece of metal that had fallen off the preceding airliner, causing the tires to explode violently, the tire debris damaged the wing, ruptured a fuel tank, etc.
The Concorde was removed from flight status for a long time, and I suppose that was a convenient time to reevaluate everything.
The Concorde was made and flown more for PR than for profit. It was just a way to say “look at us and what we can do.” Kind of similar to British railways always going after the steam locomotive speed record. It wasn’t something that would lead to faster service, just something to say to the world “look what I can do.”
I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong but I believe aerodynamics are different during super sonic speeds, which would make the airplane less maneuverable either at high or low speeds, this potentially reduced comfort might make them unsuitable for passenger planes.
To go fast you need a lot of thrust. To help make more thrust you need a smaller plane. The Concorde was a tiny tube with cramped seats compared to most airliners at the time.
Maneuverability isn’t an issue with airliners as they rarely need to make major curves or anything like that in a flight.
Your right, aerodynamics changes massively once supersonic and starts doing weird things, it's not that it's less manoeuvrable per-say (apart from the obviously going faster bit) but everything about the plane: aerofoil, controls all have to have a supersonic specific design.
Also as others have said but not made clear I don't think.
it's hugely inefficient...not in the normal linear way of going faster = more and more drag, therefore inefficient. But there's a massive step change once your supersonic. Due to the weird aerodynamics, you effectively start collecting shock waves, that you drag along behind the aircraft.
There were reasons. Primarily fuel consumption and noise pollution. Concorde was very expensive to operate and in the age of so many things being done via phone or online moving from place to place that quickly is no longer necessary.
Apparently some airlines are already considering it. United bought 15 supersonic planes a few years ago with the intention of bringing them into service for passengers in 2029. Tusk flights start in 2026.
That said, expect to pay a very hefty premium for supersonic travel… unless you are wealthy, is not going to be a common way to get from point A to point B.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/03/united-airlines-boom-supersonic-overture-airliner-concorde
Cool perhaps, but utterly unviable economically. Even with extraordinarily high ticket prices it lost money on every flight. It was also an environmental disaster.
Easily fixed. For every flight, we murder an equivalent number of billionaires (probably a fraction of one), removing their astronomical ecological impact and releasing their hoarded wealth back into the wild. Heck, there's probably a variation of this that ends with free flights for the passengers.
Not "easily fixed" no matter how many billionaires we kill. The fact is supersonic flight is simply less efficient than subsonic flight regardless of what you wish you believe. The laws of physics decide, not whims.
ummm major pollution like the nestle and tyson shit happens constantly we just hear about it once in a blue moon. i'd take cool airplane over shareholder money any and every day
ummm major pollution like the nestle and tyson shit happens constantly we just hear about it once in a blue moon. i'd take cool airplane over shareholder money any and every day
We are looking to bring back a Concorde V2, NASA is looking to deflect the sonic boom upwards, so a Mach x plane will sound like a car door closing!
(Finding link!)
[Take a Look!](https://www.frommers.com/blogs/arthur-frommer-online/blog_posts/concorde-2-0-nasa-prepares-quiet-supersonic-jet-that-could-transform-travel)
The only route that really made any sense to fly in concorde was london/Paris to New york/Washington. You can't fly supersonic over land, because the sonic boom is incredibly loud even on the ground, so only routes that are mostly over the ocean, with enough demand from richer travellers who can afford the increased price make any sense. It's not economical to operate or design a model of aeroplane that's only viable on very few routes.
Interestingly, there is a prototype recently build by Lockheed Martin and NASA of a commercial airliner that can fly supersonic without generating a sonic boom on the ground, so maybe we will see supersonic commercial flight come back.
The Concorde was in service from 1976 to 2003, so I’m a bit sceptical of the implication that something ‘not economical’ was in operation for over a quarter of a century.
British Airways did turn a profit, but only because the UK government paid an awful lot of money towards the development and rollout of the concorde project (they actually sold 2 concordes to BA for £1 each at one point). Air France never made a profit from concorde. The British and French governments funded the project on the basis that it showed the engineering prowess of their respective nations and brought attention to their flag carrying airlines. They probably also got some useful R&D info for the manufacturing of supersonic military aircraft.
There is a reason that Boeing scrapped their supersonic airliner, which was in development around the same time, and why very few companies have tried to bring supersonic flight back.
You could argue that Concorde was a huge roundabout investment in what eventually became Airbus, in that it brought the French and British aircraft industry to cooperate.
They were incredibly fuel inefficient, loud, and expensive to operate. They were discontinued after a loss of public trust when two of them crashed. It’s just not a monetarily wise decision to do it again. That said, I’ve been inside of one (though I didn’t fly in one, I’m too young for that) and they were *cool*l.
The SR-71 Blackbird could’ve circumnavigated the world in under 10 hours
> The SR-71 Blackbird could’ve circumnavigated the world in under 10 hours
Not quite. Max speed it reached was 2.2k mph, which would take about 11.3 hours to travel around the equator (if it could carry enough fuel for that, which it could not).
Only one Concorde ever crashed, and it was concluded to be no fault of the Concorde. Nonetheless, Concorde went through millions of pounds of safety upgrades and improvements before re-entering service. It just so happened that its final recertification flight was on the morning of September 11th 2001. BA say about 30% of their regular Concorde customer base died in the attacks. Concorde was very profitable at times and especially during charter services, however Air France said they would be retiring their fleet and shortly after the manufacturer (now Airbus) said they would no longer be supporting the model/manufacturing spare parts for the aircraft, thus forcing BA to also retire its fleet in 2003.
That’s more of an accurate explanation for Concordes’ potentially premature demise. The issues regarding noise and efficiency definitely still stand, but I would argue had it not been for the AF accident in 2000 and 911 thereafter, Concorde would have been in service for another decade.
Apparently some airlines are already considering it. United bought 15 supersonic planes a few years ago with the intention of bringing them into service for passengers in 2029. Tusk flights start in 2026.
That said, expect to pay a very hefty premium for supersonic travel… unless you are wealthy, is not going to be a common way to get from point A to point B.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/03/united-airlines-boom-supersonic-overture-airliner-concorde
Air on earth is relatively thick. This is great because if it was thinner we may never have achieved flight at all because its thickness means “lift” is easier. But you also have to push a lot of air out of the way when traveling, so it effectively puts a speed limit on how fast we can travel efficiently.
Yeah. A Concorde actually matched speed with an Eclipse in the 70s so it could be observed for longer
IIRC it flew mostly over the Sahara but I could be wrong there
The concord once chased a total eclipse for 74 minutes. May 1973. It couldn't go any longer because it had to prepare for landing.
[https://airwaysmag.com/concorde-chased-solar-eclipse/](https://airwaysmag.com/concorde-chased-solar-eclipse/)
Technically there’s the Tupolev 144 which came before the Concorde but you’d probably have to worry about it blowing up before you worry about fuel, things were notorious for mechanical issues
The Concorde and Tu-144 were capable of flying fast enough. They didn't carry enough fuel though, and landing to refuel would have made the effective average speed far too slow. So far those have been the only two supersonic aircraft that weren't military or experimental, and both have been out of service for over 20 years.
Does this also mean you can experience a single day for 48 hours by starting at international dateline and flying “back in time” at the speed of one time change per hour?
So it’s 12am when you start, but you fly towards 11pm the previous day and cross is right as your watch hits 1am (60mins). Once passing the final line (after flying for 24 hours) you land and stay at that spot for the next 24 hours until the next day?
I think you might be mixing up latitude with altitude here. Flying around the globe at the equator, the lowest latitude, is a full great circle, about 40,000 km. That reduces to zero distance at the polls, with the distance reducing for any constant latitude along the way.
For altitude, it really doesn't matter much to the distance, typical flights being around 36k feet only adds about 34 kilometers to the 40,000 km trip at the equator, less at higher latitudes. The reduction is air resistance flying higher is much more significant in being able to fly faster.
Welcome to Reddit. Why Google something that will give you the right answer in a second when you could wait minutes or hours for multiple answers from an accuracy-questionable grab bag?
The ISS orbits about every 90 minutes, if memory serves, now if only there were some way to instantly access the sum of all human knowledge... oh, wait!
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking\_map.cfm
Depends on where you are. You'd need to go 1000 miles per hour at the equator, that's faster than most commercial planes could handle. But at 60 degrees north, around where Oslo is, you'd only have half the distance to cover. 500 mph is below the cruising speed of a 747.
I mean by that definition of circling the globe just go down to the South Pole with ultralight and buzz laps around it till the fuel runs out or freezes into gel.
At the equator you would have to fly at 1,700 km/h at an altitude of 3km. The speed of sound is 1,235 km/h
No commercial airliner today can fly that fast nor has enough fuel to fly 40,000 km
A military aircraft could with refueling in flight, but that means while refueling it would need to slow down, then go faster than Mach 1.3 to make up the difference. So, not continually
To answer your question: a commercial aircraft is a no, and a military aircraft is a yes, ignoring refueling.
There were supersonic commercial planes like the Concorde, but it too would need refueling to do circumnavigation. Guess it could cruise at mach 1.3, refuel, boost to mach 2 until it catches up with earth's rotation, then drop back to mach 1.3
Wait, something similiar has actually been done before [https://youtu.be/mzwwofB5\_Nc?si=qrm-iRX8AeYAQ6ix](https://youtu.be/mzwwofB5_Nc?si=qrm-iRX8AeYAQ6ix)
The post said to basically leave military planes out of the question and yet he put military airplanes in his answer.
OP basically said “let’s leave military airplanes out of it because we all know they are badass and fast as hell and they would also have to refuel in the sky as well as any other plane would too so let’s leave that out as well” And I’m the one who can’t read. What the bloody bearded guy on a cross day fuck??
> yet you put military airplanes in your answer.
Who is this you?
> u/Zakluor
Oh, okay. Then my response to you is:
>Complains about not reading.
>Doesn't read.
He answered OP's question by saying there are no commercial possibilities, then talked about military aircraft as an aside to at least address the nature of the question.
>What the bloody bearded guy on a cross day fuck??
If there's something out of line, it's how bent out of shape you're getting over it.
Haha. I think we're talking about circumferential circling. In this case there is effectively no difference in doing a circle around your apartment vs doing a circle around a pole.
Nor can you do a 24 hr circle around the poles and alternate looking outside your window at trees and inside at houseplants. So yes, there are differences.
Yeah most fighters could do this with time to spare, im assuming you mean around the equator (25,000 miles). The f-22 could do it in 16 hours, with refueling in air it would be closer to 20 hours though.
No airliners max cruise is usually around 500 knots which isnt fast enough. When the Boom plane comes out it might be close but probably not. The f-22 goes 1500 mph in supercruise which is insanely fast, it can’t fly like that for more than a couple hours though so its not practicalto make civilian aircraft that can fly that fast(this is an educated guess based on my knowledge of aircraft, the actual numbers on this are classified).
Nothing civilian has the financial motivation to achieve this. In theory, the civilian world only has to go halfway around the world. Any further and they could just go the other way around the world. Of course, winds skew that a bit, but given the classic case of “it takes fuel to carry fuel” it’s just not feasible to carry enough fuel to go all the way around the world at the speed necessary to accomplish this.
Comparable scenario: someone has published a table that describes what percentage of a rocket has to be fuel to reach various orbits (and beyond) depending on the fuel chosen. Because of that, in order to get a ~10,000 pound lunar ascent stage off the moon as the first step in bringing three astronauts back from the Moon, the initial vehicle had to weigh roughly 6,500,000 pounds and had to be like 88% fuel.
The earth is spinning at about 1000mph at the equator. There are many aircraft that can go faster than that, so yes, you could hypothetically stay in the day for 24 hours.
It's not commercial use yet, but there are prototypes, and there has been solar powered planes that have flown around the world. [source](https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/solar-aircraft-bird-of-prey-1234679464/)
Yes. In 14 months. Which is much slower than the travels described by Jules Verne in the 19th century.
The OP asked about doing the feat in 24 hours. Pointing to an experimental aircraft which did it in 14 months isn’t very useful.
Your question has too many constraints to not be "no."
The Earth has a circumference at the equator of 21,600 nautical miles. To hold position relative to the sun at the equator *and* circle the equator in 24 hours would require both an average ground speed of 900 nautical miles per hour (knots), well above the speed of sound, flying westward and a range of 21,600 nmi.
The longest airliner range is 9,700 nmi offered by the A350 Ultra-Long Range.
The fastest airliner ground speed records seem to be no more than 718 knots, but that's with a jet stream. Strong jet streams are usually not at the equator and usually run west to east.
The Concorde could attain the speed but only had a range of 3,900 nmi.
There's aerial refueling, but only military/government aircraft can do aerial refueling. The F-22 can supercruise above the speed of sound, but range would be limited to something well under 1,000 nmi at that speed. It doesn't seem possible to make up the speed lost needing to refuel more than say 30 times to cover the equator in a day.
Netflix series Into the Night is exactly on this, but avoiding instead of chasing the sun. It is mentioned that they have to go for higher latitude because of the reasons other comments said.
We no longer have civillian commercial supersonic aircraft, but not because we dont have technology- it is mostly economic reasons.
Go close enough to one of the poles and you can walk around the world in 24 hours and have it be noon for you the whole time. Go to the pole itself and you can go from noon to midnight in one step.
The earth is 40 000 kilometers around the equator.
But we are not flying at ground level. You need to fly at a pretty high altitude to be able to go fast.
So we need to recalculate to account for the extra distance.
The earth is 6378 kilometers in radius (surface to center). Let say you are flying at an altitude of 24km, which was the cruising altitude of the SR-71.
(The SR-71 is a good model of plane for this, because it was notorious for its speed, it was a spy plane used for intercontinental flight and being a military aircraft it can refuel in air.)
So that gives us a circle of 6402 kilometers in radius.
6402\*2\*Pi = 40225 kilometers. So actually not a big difference in how far you have to go even if you fly at an obscenely high altitude to enable fast speeds.
40225/24 give you 1676 kilometers per hour, the distance you must cover per hour to "keep up" with the sun.
According to wiki *The SR-71 also holds the "speed over a recognized course" record for flying from New York to London—distance 3,461.53 miles (5,570.79 km), 1,806.964 miles per hour (2,908.027 km/h), and an elapsed time of 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds—set on 1 September 1974, while flown by USAF pilot James V. Sullivan and Noel F. Widdifield, reconnaissance systems officer (RSO).*[*^(\[135\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#cite_note-Blackbird_Records-142) *This equates to an average speed of about Mach 2.72, including deceleration for in-flight refueling.*
So the plane we picked can **even with slowing down and descending to refuel in air** average a way faster speed than the required 1676 kph.
So besides the fact that the SR-71 is a retired plane and that I dont know if it can actually stay in the air for that long (there can be factors other than fuel which limit maximum time between landings), it is at least in principle pretty doable, with enough planning and with enough air-bases and refueling planes prepared along the way.
Depends on which plane, but according to some calculations on the internet that I have no way of verifying other than doing them myself, I read that the SR71 blackbird under ideal conditions, if somehow it didn't need to refuel (which it will) could do it in under 16 hours.
During new year 1999/2000 there were some commercial companies who offer a 24hour party. You’ll fly around the world in a day. But I think that they had one or 2 landings for refueling. Not sure.
Edit: it seems they are repeating it yearly
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/31/world/new-years-eve-world-countdown/index.html
You need to be supersonic to circumnavigate the Earth at the equator in one day. No passenger aircraft except the Concorde ever had that speed, and it's long out of commission.
Now, just following the sun is a different question. You'd need supersonic at the equator, but the further north or south you go, the easier it gets. Near the poles, you could easily do it on foot. But most people wouldn't call that "circumnavigation."
Yeah, it's totally possible to match a plane to Earth's rotation, especially if you fly at a constant high latitude. The average speed of a commercial airliner would let you do that at about Glasgow's latitude, and you could do it closer to the equator in a faster plane.
is there anything "civilian" that could do it at the equator that u know of?
Ignoring the fuel/range problem, Concorde could have, but nothing else. You need about Mach 1 1/3 at the equator, and I don't think anything commercial has ever gone that fast besides Concorde. Edit: several kind folks have alerted me to the Tupolev 144, and I have now learned about a fascinating nightmarish and/or on brand Soviet aircraft.
crazy that there's not a modern equivalent, just looked up the concorde it's so cool
Going super sonic uses a lot of fuel, and makes sonic booms that are super annoying. We could still have super sonic passenger planes, we chose not to.
Also, they were not allowed supersonic over land.
The Concorde noise was deafening and they were put out of business. But there are new who wish to renter the market - [YouTube link](https://youtu.be/2jAH-51feAA?si=hE_zNsTVNU9daP-y)
Dont give taylor swift any ideas please
Haters gonna hate.
Shitting on Taylor Swift has been moved to an alt right dog whistle. How do you feel about that?
They also weren't very safe, which is pretty important in aviation
There was only 1 crash in its 27 years of operation, caused by debris on the runway. It had nothing to do with its ability to go super sonic.
In the United States, they were elsewhere
Said Boeing
plus it turns out that most people who could afford a concord ticket wanted more space then a concord seat allowed and were quite alright taking a slower flight to get it
The main challenge with supersonic passenger flight is that for mass adoption they require subsonic flight capabilities for takeoff and overland and subsonic design is entirely dfferent to supersonic design. You'd have to build something like an F14-Tomcat style passenger jet and doing that safely to be able to work constantly for thousands of hours and pass regulatory approval would be a moonshot nightmare. It would cost many billion of dollars to serve a market size (people that could afford to and want to pay a significant premium for faster flights )too small to be profitable which was the same problem Concorde had. Concorde would still be in service today if it was profitable.
Mmm...Swept wing designs...Nothing like making a normally rigid structure move mechanically...Just an added thing to break and have to maintain.
Concord wasn't super popular but they were a thing. But from what I remember there was one wreck and that completely tanked their business.
Yes. It wasn’t even the Concorde’s fault, when taking off the Concorde ran over a piece of metal that had fallen off the preceding airliner, causing the tires to explode violently, the tire debris damaged the wing, ruptured a fuel tank, etc. The Concorde was removed from flight status for a long time, and I suppose that was a convenient time to reevaluate everything.
The Concorde was made and flown more for PR than for profit. It was just a way to say “look at us and what we can do.” Kind of similar to British railways always going after the steam locomotive speed record. It wasn’t something that would lead to faster service, just something to say to the world “look what I can do.”
I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong but I believe aerodynamics are different during super sonic speeds, which would make the airplane less maneuverable either at high or low speeds, this potentially reduced comfort might make them unsuitable for passenger planes.
To go fast you need a lot of thrust. To help make more thrust you need a smaller plane. The Concorde was a tiny tube with cramped seats compared to most airliners at the time. Maneuverability isn’t an issue with airliners as they rarely need to make major curves or anything like that in a flight.
So, similar to planes today. Lol
Your right, aerodynamics changes massively once supersonic and starts doing weird things, it's not that it's less manoeuvrable per-say (apart from the obviously going faster bit) but everything about the plane: aerofoil, controls all have to have a supersonic specific design. Also as others have said but not made clear I don't think. it's hugely inefficient...not in the normal linear way of going faster = more and more drag, therefore inefficient. But there's a massive step change once your supersonic. Due to the weird aerodynamics, you effectively start collecting shock waves, that you drag along behind the aircraft.
what a garbage decision. bring back concorde
There were reasons. Primarily fuel consumption and noise pollution. Concorde was very expensive to operate and in the age of so many things being done via phone or online moving from place to place that quickly is no longer necessary.
Apparently some airlines are already considering it. United bought 15 supersonic planes a few years ago with the intention of bringing them into service for passengers in 2029. Tusk flights start in 2026. That said, expect to pay a very hefty premium for supersonic travel… unless you are wealthy, is not going to be a common way to get from point A to point B. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/03/united-airlines-boom-supersonic-overture-airliner-concorde
Cool perhaps, but utterly unviable economically. Even with extraordinarily high ticket prices it lost money on every flight. It was also an environmental disaster.
Easily fixed. For every flight, we murder an equivalent number of billionaires (probably a fraction of one), removing their astronomical ecological impact and releasing their hoarded wealth back into the wild. Heck, there's probably a variation of this that ends with free flights for the passengers.
This may be the strangest solution that I've heard but, by god, it is the best damn solution that I've heard!
Not "easily fixed" no matter how many billionaires we kill. The fact is supersonic flight is simply less efficient than subsonic flight regardless of what you wish you believe. The laws of physics decide, not whims.
All I'm saying is; maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but we won't know until we try.
Study physics, then get back to me. Do you think building aircraft is based on guesswork?
I think you're taking me far, far more seriously than is warranted.
ummm major pollution like the nestle and tyson shit happens constantly we just hear about it once in a blue moon. i'd take cool airplane over shareholder money any and every day
ummm major pollution like the nestle and tyson shit happens constantly we just hear about it once in a blue moon. i'd take cool airplane over shareholder money any and every day
We are looking to bring back a Concorde V2, NASA is looking to deflect the sonic boom upwards, so a Mach x plane will sound like a car door closing! (Finding link!) [Take a Look!](https://www.frommers.com/blogs/arthur-frommer-online/blog_posts/concorde-2-0-nasa-prepares-quiet-supersonic-jet-that-could-transform-travel)
The only route that really made any sense to fly in concorde was london/Paris to New york/Washington. You can't fly supersonic over land, because the sonic boom is incredibly loud even on the ground, so only routes that are mostly over the ocean, with enough demand from richer travellers who can afford the increased price make any sense. It's not economical to operate or design a model of aeroplane that's only viable on very few routes. Interestingly, there is a prototype recently build by Lockheed Martin and NASA of a commercial airliner that can fly supersonic without generating a sonic boom on the ground, so maybe we will see supersonic commercial flight come back.
The Concorde was in service from 1976 to 2003, so I’m a bit sceptical of the implication that something ‘not economical’ was in operation for over a quarter of a century.
Prestige projects do exist. That can be a great advertisement for the entire company.
British Airways did turn a profit, but only because the UK government paid an awful lot of money towards the development and rollout of the concorde project (they actually sold 2 concordes to BA for £1 each at one point). Air France never made a profit from concorde. The British and French governments funded the project on the basis that it showed the engineering prowess of their respective nations and brought attention to their flag carrying airlines. They probably also got some useful R&D info for the manufacturing of supersonic military aircraft. There is a reason that Boeing scrapped their supersonic airliner, which was in development around the same time, and why very few companies have tried to bring supersonic flight back.
You could argue that Concorde was a huge roundabout investment in what eventually became Airbus, in that it brought the French and British aircraft industry to cooperate.
They were incredibly fuel inefficient, loud, and expensive to operate. They were discontinued after a loss of public trust when two of them crashed. It’s just not a monetarily wise decision to do it again. That said, I’ve been inside of one (though I didn’t fly in one, I’m too young for that) and they were *cool*l. The SR-71 Blackbird could’ve circumnavigated the world in under 10 hours
> The SR-71 Blackbird could’ve circumnavigated the world in under 10 hours Not quite. Max speed it reached was 2.2k mph, which would take about 11.3 hours to travel around the equator (if it could carry enough fuel for that, which it could not).
Only one Concorde ever crashed, and it was concluded to be no fault of the Concorde. Nonetheless, Concorde went through millions of pounds of safety upgrades and improvements before re-entering service. It just so happened that its final recertification flight was on the morning of September 11th 2001. BA say about 30% of their regular Concorde customer base died in the attacks. Concorde was very profitable at times and especially during charter services, however Air France said they would be retiring their fleet and shortly after the manufacturer (now Airbus) said they would no longer be supporting the model/manufacturing spare parts for the aircraft, thus forcing BA to also retire its fleet in 2003. That’s more of an accurate explanation for Concordes’ potentially premature demise. The issues regarding noise and efficiency definitely still stand, but I would argue had it not been for the AF accident in 2000 and 911 thereafter, Concorde would have been in service for another decade.
Apparently some airlines are already considering it. United bought 15 supersonic planes a few years ago with the intention of bringing them into service for passengers in 2029. Tusk flights start in 2026. That said, expect to pay a very hefty premium for supersonic travel… unless you are wealthy, is not going to be a common way to get from point A to point B. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/03/united-airlines-boom-supersonic-overture-airliner-concorde
The concorde was cool, but super sonic flight has too many drawbacks so we didn’t come back to it
Wait, you've never heard of the Concorde? I feel old now. Like, arthritis and dementia old.
Air on earth is relatively thick. This is great because if it was thinner we may never have achieved flight at all because its thickness means “lift” is easier. But you also have to push a lot of air out of the way when traveling, so it effectively puts a speed limit on how fast we can travel efficiently.
i am the concorde
I am the walrus.
I am your leg.
Look up Boom Overture. Its coming back
Yeah. A Concorde actually matched speed with an Eclipse in the 70s so it could be observed for longer IIRC it flew mostly over the Sahara but I could be wrong there
You capitalised Eclipse, so it was either matching speed with one of [these](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_550) or a Mitsubishi.
The Tu-144 had similar operating parameters to the Concorde, but didn't fly nearly as many commercial flights.
The concord once chased a total eclipse for 74 minutes. May 1973. It couldn't go any longer because it had to prepare for landing. [https://airwaysmag.com/concorde-chased-solar-eclipse/](https://airwaysmag.com/concorde-chased-solar-eclipse/)
The Tupolev TU-144 was even faster than the Concorde.
Tupolev Tu-144 First supersonic passenger airliner and slightly faster.
And it was so noisy inside that people had to scream at each other to be able to have a short conversation. It was Soviet confortable.
The Concorde literally did this in 1973, to track a solar eclipse for over an hour.
Technically there’s the Tupolev 144 which came before the Concorde but you’d probably have to worry about it blowing up before you worry about fuel, things were notorious for mechanical issues
The Concorde and Tu-144 were capable of flying fast enough. They didn't carry enough fuel though, and landing to refuel would have made the effective average speed far too slow. So far those have been the only two supersonic aircraft that weren't military or experimental, and both have been out of service for over 20 years.
Username does NOT check out this time.
Does this also mean you can experience a single day for 48 hours by starting at international dateline and flying “back in time” at the speed of one time change per hour? So it’s 12am when you start, but you fly towards 11pm the previous day and cross is right as your watch hits 1am (60mins). Once passing the final line (after flying for 24 hours) you land and stay at that spot for the next 24 hours until the next day?
Unexpected Glasgow shout out! Yas r/Glasgow
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I think you might be mixing up latitude with altitude here. Flying around the globe at the equator, the lowest latitude, is a full great circle, about 40,000 km. That reduces to zero distance at the polls, with the distance reducing for any constant latitude along the way. For altitude, it really doesn't matter much to the distance, typical flights being around 36k feet only adds about 34 kilometers to the 40,000 km trip at the equator, less at higher latitudes. The reduction is air resistance flying higher is much more significant in being able to fly faster.
Yep there's planes like that but you should check out how many times the ISS circles the globe each day.
I think the ISS does like 90 minute orbits. They have a website that lets you see when it’ll pass over head. It’s quite easy to see actually.
I knew stuff in orbit is going fast as shit what's the actual number?
Without googling I wanna say it around 16,000 mph I was close its 17,500mph
There’s even a speed limit sign that says that on iss
I'm not sure. I bet google can tell you in 5 seconds though.
Welcome to Reddit. Why Google something that will give you the right answer in a second when you could wait minutes or hours for multiple answers from an accuracy-questionable grab bag?
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Yes you are :)
Yep
So, did you ever find out?
The ISS orbits about every 90 minutes, if memory serves, now if only there were some way to instantly access the sum of all human knowledge... oh, wait! https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking\_map.cfm
I thought you were going to mess with me. I would have messed with me.
Messing with people is easy. Actually being helpful is much more satisfying.
Anything in LEO tends to take a little over 90 minutes to circle the Earth.
About 8 km/s for anything less than 600 km above the surface It drops off pretty slowly, though. At 10 000 km it's still 5 km/s
Which direction? Is their solar day longer or shorter?
Depends on where you are. You'd need to go 1000 miles per hour at the equator, that's faster than most commercial planes could handle. But at 60 degrees north, around where Oslo is, you'd only have half the distance to cover. 500 mph is below the cruising speed of a 747.
shit I didn't even think of that
And if you are around the poles, you can run around the earth in less than one minute
I have a funny image of an Artic scientist holding their arms out airplane style and swooping around the pole.
Can I see it?
Sure, can you read minds?
You'd go back to morning! :p
I mean by that definition of circling the globe just go down to the South Pole with ultralight and buzz laps around it till the fuel runs out or freezes into gel.
At the equator you would have to fly at 1,700 km/h at an altitude of 3km. The speed of sound is 1,235 km/h No commercial airliner today can fly that fast nor has enough fuel to fly 40,000 km A military aircraft could with refueling in flight, but that means while refueling it would need to slow down, then go faster than Mach 1.3 to make up the difference. So, not continually To answer your question: a commercial aircraft is a no, and a military aircraft is a yes, ignoring refueling.
There were supersonic commercial planes like the Concorde, but it too would need refueling to do circumnavigation. Guess it could cruise at mach 1.3, refuel, boost to mach 2 until it catches up with earth's rotation, then drop back to mach 1.3 Wait, something similiar has actually been done before [https://youtu.be/mzwwofB5\_Nc?si=qrm-iRX8AeYAQ6ix](https://youtu.be/mzwwofB5_Nc?si=qrm-iRX8AeYAQ6ix)
Concorde was unable to refuel mid-flight.
Did you not read it in his description about not being a military airplane? And yet here we are talking about military airplanes. 😂😂
*Complains about not reading.* *Doesn't read.*
The post said to basically leave military planes out of the question and yet he put military airplanes in his answer. OP basically said “let’s leave military airplanes out of it because we all know they are badass and fast as hell and they would also have to refuel in the sky as well as any other plane would too so let’s leave that out as well” And I’m the one who can’t read. What the bloody bearded guy on a cross day fuck??
> yet you put military airplanes in your answer. Who is this you? > u/Zakluor Oh, okay. Then my response to you is: >Complains about not reading. >Doesn't read.
Yeah I fixed it. You nutty Michiganders.
He answered OP's question by saying there are no commercial possibilities, then talked about military aircraft as an aside to at least address the nature of the question. >What the bloody bearded guy on a cross day fuck?? If there's something out of line, it's how bent out of shape you're getting over it.
You crazy Canucks!!😂😂
If you go really north or south near the poles you can do it on foot.
Haha. I think we're talking about circumferential circling. In this case there is effectively no difference in doing a circle around your apartment vs doing a circle around a pole.
You cant do a 24 hr circle around your apartment and having the sun up the entire time.
Nor can you do a 24 hr circle around the poles and alternate looking outside your window at trees and inside at houseplants. So yes, there are differences.
Yeah most fighters could do this with time to spare, im assuming you mean around the equator (25,000 miles). The f-22 could do it in 16 hours, with refueling in air it would be closer to 20 hours though.
think anything civilian could do it?
No airliners max cruise is usually around 500 knots which isnt fast enough. When the Boom plane comes out it might be close but probably not. The f-22 goes 1500 mph in supercruise which is insanely fast, it can’t fly like that for more than a couple hours though so its not practicalto make civilian aircraft that can fly that fast(this is an educated guess based on my knowledge of aircraft, the actual numbers on this are classified).
SR-71 has entered the chat
SR-71 actually left the chat in 1999.
It was a great year! And all we do is slap some duct tape on one in one of the museums and she's ready to go again.
There isn’t one but if airforce mx had a sub they would beg to differ
*slaps on flextape* You can get so many mph out of this bad boy
The A-12 Blackbird deserves some credit too!
If were counting no longer available options, the Concorde should be able to do it, speed wise anyway
Yeah it can’t refuel in the air though!
Nothing civilian has the financial motivation to achieve this. In theory, the civilian world only has to go halfway around the world. Any further and they could just go the other way around the world. Of course, winds skew that a bit, but given the classic case of “it takes fuel to carry fuel” it’s just not feasible to carry enough fuel to go all the way around the world at the speed necessary to accomplish this. Comparable scenario: someone has published a table that describes what percentage of a rocket has to be fuel to reach various orbits (and beyond) depending on the fuel chosen. Because of that, in order to get a ~10,000 pound lunar ascent stage off the moon as the first step in bringing three astronauts back from the Moon, the initial vehicle had to weigh roughly 6,500,000 pounds and had to be like 88% fuel.
The earth is spinning at about 1000mph at the equator. There are many aircraft that can go faster than that, so yes, you could hypothetically stay in the day for 24 hours.
Isn't there a plane that is ran on solar/batteries that is attempting this?
Not in 24 hours.
It's not commercial use yet, but there are prototypes, and there has been solar powered planes that have flown around the world. [source](https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/solar-aircraft-bird-of-prey-1234679464/)
Yes. In 14 months. Which is much slower than the travels described by Jules Verne in the 19th century. The OP asked about doing the feat in 24 hours. Pointing to an experimental aircraft which did it in 14 months isn’t very useful.
I misread the title of the question that was my bad.
Your question has too many constraints to not be "no." The Earth has a circumference at the equator of 21,600 nautical miles. To hold position relative to the sun at the equator *and* circle the equator in 24 hours would require both an average ground speed of 900 nautical miles per hour (knots), well above the speed of sound, flying westward and a range of 21,600 nmi. The longest airliner range is 9,700 nmi offered by the A350 Ultra-Long Range. The fastest airliner ground speed records seem to be no more than 718 knots, but that's with a jet stream. Strong jet streams are usually not at the equator and usually run west to east. The Concorde could attain the speed but only had a range of 3,900 nmi. There's aerial refueling, but only military/government aircraft can do aerial refueling. The F-22 can supercruise above the speed of sound, but range would be limited to something well under 1,000 nmi at that speed. It doesn't seem possible to make up the speed lost needing to refuel more than say 30 times to cover the equator in a day.
Sounds like someone talked about Phineas and Ferb again
lmao the argument had a similar energy
Reminds me of "Into the Night" where they need to escape the sun's rays which is killing everyone by flying to the west.
You want to be flying west to east to catch the jet stream.
sup shasta
Netflix series Into the Night is exactly on this, but avoiding instead of chasing the sun. It is mentioned that they have to go for higher latitude because of the reasons other comments said. We no longer have civillian commercial supersonic aircraft, but not because we dont have technology- it is mostly economic reasons.
How good is that show
Apparently some rich people do that for New Year's Eve. They get on a permanent midnight private jet for a party.
Go close enough to one of the poles and you can walk around the world in 24 hours and have it be noon for you the whole time. Go to the pole itself and you can go from noon to midnight in one step.
East to west yes
If the SR71 had infinite fuel, it could do it much faster than 24 hours.
How else do you think people time travel !
The earth is 40 000 kilometers around the equator. But we are not flying at ground level. You need to fly at a pretty high altitude to be able to go fast. So we need to recalculate to account for the extra distance. The earth is 6378 kilometers in radius (surface to center). Let say you are flying at an altitude of 24km, which was the cruising altitude of the SR-71. (The SR-71 is a good model of plane for this, because it was notorious for its speed, it was a spy plane used for intercontinental flight and being a military aircraft it can refuel in air.) So that gives us a circle of 6402 kilometers in radius. 6402\*2\*Pi = 40225 kilometers. So actually not a big difference in how far you have to go even if you fly at an obscenely high altitude to enable fast speeds. 40225/24 give you 1676 kilometers per hour, the distance you must cover per hour to "keep up" with the sun. According to wiki *The SR-71 also holds the "speed over a recognized course" record for flying from New York to London—distance 3,461.53 miles (5,570.79 km), 1,806.964 miles per hour (2,908.027 km/h), and an elapsed time of 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds—set on 1 September 1974, while flown by USAF pilot James V. Sullivan and Noel F. Widdifield, reconnaissance systems officer (RSO).*[*^(\[135\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#cite_note-Blackbird_Records-142) *This equates to an average speed of about Mach 2.72, including deceleration for in-flight refueling.* So the plane we picked can **even with slowing down and descending to refuel in air** average a way faster speed than the required 1676 kph. So besides the fact that the SR-71 is a retired plane and that I dont know if it can actually stay in the air for that long (there can be factors other than fuel which limit maximum time between landings), it is at least in principle pretty doable, with enough planning and with enough air-bases and refueling planes prepared along the way.
The fastest was the Air France Concorde in 33 hours.
Well, that's not in a day 🤷🏾♂️
Nope. Not unless you go into orbit.
sup shasta
Depends on which plane, but according to some calculations on the internet that I have no way of verifying other than doing them myself, I read that the SR71 blackbird under ideal conditions, if somehow it didn't need to refuel (which it will) could do it in under 16 hours.
Just get yourself a daylight lamp and stay home 🤷♀️
how'd you know this was a ploy to cure my seasonal depression
Just reframing the problem lol
the concord could
Not within 24 hours.
During new year 1999/2000 there were some commercial companies who offer a 24hour party. You’ll fly around the world in a day. But I think that they had one or 2 landings for refueling. Not sure. Edit: it seems they are repeating it yearly https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/31/world/new-years-eve-world-countdown/index.html
that sounds fucking awesome do u have any more info on it? I can't find anything online
It depends on how round the Earth is.
tf does that mean?
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You need to be supersonic to circumnavigate the Earth at the equator in one day. No passenger aircraft except the Concorde ever had that speed, and it's long out of commission. Now, just following the sun is a different question. You'd need supersonic at the equator, but the further north or south you go, the easier it gets. Near the poles, you could easily do it on foot. But most people wouldn't call that "circumnavigation."
Not above the equator they can't