[J. T. Toad]

hmmm.... Could a 747 survive Mach flight?

Phantom F4f's had to nose over for supersonic flight...

Super sonic fuel consumption in airplanes is not so linear....

"Furthermore, aircraft are equipped with throttles that allow a pilot to adjust the amount of thrust an engine produces. A good example is the SR-71 Blackbird equipped with Pratt & Whitney J58 turboramjets that produced a combined static thrust of 65,000 lb (289 kN). Even though the Blackbird could reach speeds in excess of Mach 3, however, it actually needed very little of this thrust in cruise flight. Most of the thrust was required to accelerate through the speed of sound, but once at Mach 3, the SR-71 engines were throttled back to only 30% or so."

this reminds me....ah, the classics,

"http://imdb.com/title/tt0086197/"

Take an F18 which needed full after-burner (major raw fuel pumping) to brake the envelope, compared to F-22 which doesn't.