That would be good in terms of travel time, but a huge downgrade from the 747 in terms of comfort and ability to take large entourages of press and staff. Anyway, it seems unlikely to happen within Trump’s term of office.
13 thoughts on “A Presidential Upgrade”
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A Starship has pretty good seating capacity. Not so good at holding at a short count.
I’ve always thought a converted B-1B would make an awesome AF1.
Full AB take offs. I would love to see one mocked up in photoshop.
By my count there are now five companies that have announced plans for supersonic/hypersonic general and/or commercial aircraft projects. The Mach number targets are 1.4, 1.8, 2.2, 3 and 5. As the linked article notes, the second and fifth are being looked at seriously as potential Air Force 1s.
Reaction Engines, Ltd. and Rolls-Royce also have some kind of airbreathing aeropropulsion project afoot, though there doesn’t seem to be an actual plane in the picture yet.
It seems we have reached another of those “it’s time to railroad” moments.
https://www.sbir.gov/node/1614925
Ownership Information
HUBZone Owned: N
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: N
Woman Owned: N
# of Employees: 2
This won’t last long under the incoming Biden Administration. Fossil fuel burning, check none of the diversity boxes. Not enough employees to shake down for donations.
It’s pretty easy to be “woman owned” in the context of a SBIR contract. Just have your wife/sister/sunday school teacher/ sign the ownership forms. That’s SOP.
…in terms of comfort and ability to take large entourages of press and staff.
Aren’t these mutually exclusive? If we’re converting a B1 (agreed that would be cool), for the press corp, I’d keep the bomb bay doors and ejectors.*
-Dr. Evil.
*You never know when you might need to bombard an adversary with fake news.
B-1 is a lovely plane but there’s no room for a president. They are tiny inside. The bomb bay would only hold enough space for the man and his valet, never mind the secret service agents.
Looked pretty damn big standing next to one. Even converting the bomb bay to usable space?
Nope. It’s tiny inside, cockpit and crew stations are packed full of gear. I was fortunate enough to get a tour back in the late 90’s.
Bomb bay space is around 8x8x45′ divided into three bays. Seems like a lot but that’s un-pressurized space, and the rear bay is likely not accessible from the inside.
See https://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/b-1b.htm .
Well they’d have a lot more space if they got rid of the CRM-114…. 😉
In the mean time, Boeing has a contract for two new 747 Air Force Ones. They should be ready by the time SLS is. I.e., never.
I know some of the top people at Aerion. Not too sanguine about their prospects for success.
For a $1 million SBIR, they are expecting a LOT of deliverables. The whole low-boom supersonic design world is only recently, first with computer studies and then with an F-18 mod that proved some of the basic theory (body shaping to prevent shockwave coalescence). But LockMart has a $247.5 million contract to produce an X-plane specifically designed for low boom (the X-59 QueSST). It’s just a single-engine jet, in development since 2016, and not expected to fly before 2021 or later. It’s a little hard to see how 0.4% of that budget could produce much of a requirements document for a full-size production plane, especially one as complex as an Air Force 1.