This proposal seems to ignore so much.<p>Like the intense friction, and heating, supersonic flight produces. Concorde's service speed was limited by heat limits place on the aluminium alloy to ensure a decent service life. They were always white as that was part of the spec - dark colours would have taken heat absorption out of limit!<p>Wing roots varied by >100C each flight if I remember right, and <i>fuel was used as a heat sink.</i> Are we going to use the batteries?<p>If the outer surfaces are conductors, what are we doing about icing conditions?<p>Concorde, or likely most SST, engines put out a <i>lot</i> of thrust in a very fighter-like profile (they were a continuation of a fighter engine, and had reheat). Electric fans aren't going to work efficiently in that profile and would probably be large diameter, which isn't very supersonic friendly.<p>How are we now handling taxiing and subsonic?
Edit: To expand the last point, Concordes were horribly inefficient subsonic, and burnt something like 2t of fuel to get to the runway. Reheat was used at takeoff and going transonic. They pumped tonnes of fuel after reaching supersonic - for weight and balance and reduced drag. They were basically really big fighters.