I'd so love for there to be a cool new SST flying, but I'm inclined to believe the economic pessimists are right, especially with such rapid increases in the capability of videoconferencing, online collaboration tools, etc. I have no doubt there is some market for extremely high-priced seats that will get you somewhere very quickly, but enough to cover the R&D and construction costs? And what are likely to be higher operating costs? Not many pax are even willing to pay a premium to get non-stop transcontinental flights vs changing planes anymore (at least a 2 hr savings).

If you can build an SST that carries people at Mach 3 for the same per-mile cost as a 787 then sure, there'd be a huge market. But I'm afraid we're a very, very long way from there.