According to a piece I saw recently the Concorde never showed a profit and was given to the flagship airlines of both countries.
Boing is said to have scrapped its SST program when it became clear that most countries would not allow over flights because of the sonic booms.
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. For some reason the ground radar signature of the area strongly resembled some prime potential target in the Soviet Union. For about one year in the early 1960's Air Force planes used our metro area as a simulated target range. Several times a day, totally without any warning our house would shake as if a car had run into a corner of it. Then the sonic boom would roll off into the distance like thunder. We should be glad that SST's did not become common.
Perhaps these new designs for trans-sonic (or is it hyper-sonic) craft will fly high enough that sonic booms will not be a major issue.
