Slashdot Mirror
Oh, Your Private Jet Is Just Subsonic?
zerogeewhiz writes "Found this article here at The Sydney Morning Herald . It seems that Bill and his mates need to move a bit quicker these days and for a cool US$80 million, you too can overtake the Concorde on a dash to Harrods for dinner.
As described in the article, the main complaint about Concorde is that it can only fly supersonic over water and creates those nasty sonic booms that punch holes in buildings and shatter windows. They reckon they can get rid of these waves by making the plane longer. These are gonna be fast but hideous. 737-700s are suddenly passe as a corporate jet..."
Everything can be remotely administered, why, just SSH into,
Ahh, nevermind.
There's no mention of any customer at all. Are we taking potshots at MS for absolutely no reason now? There's no connection here at all.
I'm somewhat confused on this count. Would extending the length of a plane actually prevent a sonic boom? According to Britannica : "If the aircraft is especially long, double sonic booms might be detected, one emanating from the leading edge of the plane and one from the trailing edge."
Has new technology been developed with regards to this?
Have you seen a photograph of a Concorde cockpit? It looks like something straight out of a 707, it's ancient. There's not an LCD, CRT, or even an LED to be seen. The typical "flight computer" is usually the pilot's own handheld PDA, ditto for GPS. If I were going to pay $big for private use of a Concorde, it by gosh better have some real avionics.
Even the B-52H has a nice modernized cockpit with screens galore. If that old clunker can be up to date, there's no reason why a Concorde can't.
Article = cool technology + attack on Bill Gates + class envy + conspiracy + neo-liberalism.
He paid only $300 000e ws id_1438000/1438362.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/n
for a cool US$80 million, you too can overtake the Concorde on a dash to Harrods for dinner
Er, for that kind of money you might as well pick up a used F-14 Tomcat. It may not have a cushy interior and cleverly-shaped bourbon dispensers, but show me another corporate transport that mounts Phoenix missiles. You'll be envied (and feared) by all your rivals chugging around in those wimpy Learjets.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
The original Telegraph article is much longer and talks about the economics of production, and other developments in the fast-plane industry.
There's a very cool article over at newscientist.com about this (http://archive.newscientist.com/archive.jsp?id=23 044700 free reg required), I read the print version of it. They've got a number of technologies they want to bring to supersonic travel, lengthening the plane being just one of them.
"If you unscrew Bill Gates' navel will the bottom fall out of the software market?"
but have you ever seen one? Check out this image I found a little while back.
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010221.html for the concerned web surfer)
When I read stuff like this, I can't help but wonder how long it's going to be before we'll all travel at super-sonic speeds for our presonal excursions, not just the ultra-rich.
I posted to
Geez, Larry Ellison flies a MiG! And Gates flew in coach, sleeping with a blanket over his head, until the mid 90's, IIRC.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
A dedicated 100-Mb fiber link should be sufficient. Imagine hardball business negotiations in 9-channel Dolby surround sound.
Some of the my most memorable journeys have been long train trips. So what if it takes you three days to travel coast to coast? You get to relax, get up, walk around, meet some of your fellow travellers...it's great fun and a hell of a lot more civilized than being strapped into a supersonic missile like so many Aztec sacrifices...
Besides, you know how much we get pissed-off when some Yuppie asshole's cell-phone starts ringing when we are trying to enjoy a nice restaurant or theatre performance? "Look at me! I'm so fucking important that I need to disturb everyone around me!" Well that's just going to get a whole lot worse. "Look at me! I'm so fucking important that I need to smash out everyone's windows as I race off to yet another "important" meeting!"
Anyone know where I can get a Patriot missile battery cheap?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Concorde is "the world's dirtiest and loudest aircraft?" That's pretty sloppy reporting. It's probably true for commercial airliners, but there are probably many military planes that are louder and belch more smoke. I'll bet that the B-52 is dirtier and the SR-71 is louder.
I seem to remember Bill flew in Coach class until his well-known appearance made that a non-starter, so I don't think Bill's that great a candidate.
.80 and you can get up to Mac .93 on a Cessna Citation X. So it might not be worth the extra money to go supersonic unless you're doubling or tripling the speed of sound (as you do with the Concorde). The long and thin design also might not be as comfortable as the Gulfstream.
Larry Ellison, on the other hand, will buy the first one available, the microsecond it comes up. And Warren Buffet will buy a few for his Executive Jet fleet.
You can charter a Gulfstream V for $8,500 per flight hour, which means a transcontinental flight would cost about $ 38,000. Skyjet.com reports round trip charters on an IV at $60,000 for the same flight. Ownership is, of course, mind-bendingly expensive; a Gulfstream V is in the $45 million range, and the Citation X (fastest bizjet around, but less luxurious and with half the passenger capacity) is $18m. You also need a full-time pilot and copilot, together with very expensive maintenance, all of which amounts to an overhead of tens of thousands of dollars a month.
After being squeezed in like a sausage in the USAIR tourist class cabin, I can very much see the appeal of having your own jet. I'm sure that if I was as rich as Bill or Larry, a jet would be one of the first things I'd get. Bear in mind that the Gulfstream has a top speed of Mach
The aforementioned Citation X is about 100 knots (or 25%) faster than a typical commercial flight, and you can arrive at a general aviation airport about 15 minutes before takeoff. Since general aviation airports are most likely a lot closer to you than commercial ones, you can save literally hours by just getting there in ten minutes and taking off almost immediately instead of taking an hour to get to the airport and taking off an hour later. This speed and flexibility is the jet's main advantage compared to, say, simply buying a first-class ticket on a scheduled airline.
In other words, if your time is worth a lot, you probably want a jet. And if you can fill it to capacity, it's not that much more expensive than first-class airfare. A Gulfstream IV can fit 19 people; first-class airfare coast to coast is about $3,068 for a non-stop flight. So if you're paying $60,000 for your round trip flight, you're paying $3,157 per person instead of $ 3,068 for first class; not too shabby.
(I spent quite a bit of time flying with a friend who owned a small propeller plane, so I can attest first-hand to the ease and convenience of general aviation airports. Sadly, I have yet to fly on a private jet).
D
...you know the rest. Besides, pilots are like any other user. They get used to a certain type of display and moan like hell if it's changed.
You're using her as bait, Master!
How come companies make tech's like us always economy?
That way we, man and women that have most right to it, will never fly supersonic.
I bet those MBA people will!
42 + 1 = 42
The government takes a dim view of sonic booms over the US land mass.
i tl e_14/14cfr91_00.html
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfrhtml_00/T
91.817 Civil aircraft sonic boom.
(a) No person may operate a civil aircraft in the United States at a true flight Mach number greater than 1 except in compliance with conditions and limitations in an authorization to exceed Mach 1 issued to the operator under appendix B of this part.
(b) In addition, no person may operate a civil aircraft for which the maximum operating limit speed MM0 exceeds a Mach number of 1, to or from an airport in the United States, unless --
(1) Information available to the flight crew includes flight limitations that ensure that flights entering or leaving the United States will not cause a sonic boom to reach the surface within the United States; and
(2) The operator complies with the flight limitations prescribed in paragraph (b)(1) of this section or complies with conditions and limitations in an authorization to exceed Mach 1 issued under appendix B of this part. (Approved by the Office of Management and Budget under control number 2120-0005)
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I could have anyone in the world kidnapped and brought to my secret Caribbean base while coffee colored lesbians peel me grapes and fan me.
Take a look at a photo of a sonic boom.
And for the record, the Lameness filter sucks.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
it was just a comment toward rich bastards in general, you twit.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
Paul Allen comissioned a barge to land his helicopter on - because it was on water, it skirted the local laws banning helicopters. Rumor has it that some guy with home-made model rockets put an end to that idea.
on Boeing's site. The Boeing Sonic Cruiser was unveiled a few months ago.
.98, at roughly 40,000 feet in altitude, and can be configured to fly non-stop from London to Sydney.
:)
From what I gather the Boeing offering is not longer than Concorde. It DOES have a longer range. It flies at Mach
The images at this point in time are still concept but I like the look. The dual inswept tail fins, and the dual canards at the front along with the delta wing make this beastie look really sleek.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Technology marches on, and to me it seems inevitable that supersonic transport will eventually become available to businesses and individuals. According to the article this technology will be available in 5-10 years' time. Isn't that what people were already thinking 10 years ago? And have we seen it yet? I'll be interested in a story on this technology when it is more than vaporware. After all, it's really easy to idly say that just about _any_ technology is about 5-10 years away from ubiquity.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
"Engineers say the baby Concordes will herald a new supersonic age, something that seemed impossible when the Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris just over a year ago."
Maybe it's just me, but I recall that the Concorde flew supersonically for years before one of them crashed, and the one that bit the dust was due to metal on the runway, not a major design flaw. When the first automobile crashed, did we mourn the end of the age of the car?
I read the damn thing twice trying to figure out who the hell Bill is. Why do people need to add things to articles that are not there? Isn't that what Katz's columns are for?
'Same speed C but faster'
Concorde can fly perfectly well across land, but Boeing successfully lobied US government to ban it from being used across continental USA.
This came as a rude shock and completely fucked the economics of concorde which was explicitly designed for long-haul, eg LA-London flights. It's the main reason so few were built.
Morons - what did they expect ? The US will always protect it's own corporations from competition if it can get away with it. This occurs at the expense of it's citizens, but nobody cares about that. Just like any other nation of course, but it's a lot harder to bully the US into accepting competition than smaller countries.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Color me confused, but the whole behavior of a sonic boom is that "information" (such as the length of the craft) cannot travel upstream across shock waves, so the nose "boom" won't know how long the aircraft is. Besides, it is the Mach number of the craft in flight that determines the angle of the primary nose shock, not the geometry of the nose (or remainder of the craft) itself. So I figure the story has to be horribly mangled from the original source at this point to imply that stretching the craft can even "flatten" the generated shock waves. Very little to see here folks.
Oh, stop flattering yourself.
I'm well off. I've got a PhD in Physics and I'm currently a founding member of a semiconductor spin-off firm that's about to make profit for the first time next year.
Yet, I've got no problem when it comes to paying my 30% income tax that's being used to pay for the excellent public health care, public transportation and public services. As a result there's no population living below the poverty line, the unemployment level is 5.7%, literacy out of total population is 100% and I believe this achievement is certainly worth defending! If it means accepting that there will be people who'll abuse the system, so be it. It's the same thing as with the western legal systems where it's preferable that a criminal escapes punishment than an innocent gets punished. To my mind, protecting and helping the less fortunate is a worthwhile goal even if it means that some people will abuse this generosity.
Is it just because my mindset, being a native to a northern European country where the function of the society still is seen as "to take care and protect the weak" instead of "to protect the interests of the wealthy", is so different?
This article had an annoying lack of details. These stories have more information on why this is being explored now:
aviationnow
and
savannahmorningnews
... an interview I read with Shaquille O'Neal in a local magazine (shoddy translation by me).
Obviously having a private jet can be topped by simply not using it:
[...]
O'Neal:[...] Be young, have fun!
Do you wanna know how I travelled to germany?
Reporter: In your private jet?
O'Neal: No, in a Boing 747. We bought all tickets and the front of the plane hang down somewhat, because we all sat in first-class and everything else was empty. That's the way I wanted to live and so I do.
The B-52H [bombnav.org] does have a cool looking CRT in it, but we are NOT talking glass cockpit here. All of the instruments are conventional dials (and, with 8 engines, that's a lot of dials). The CRTs are merely used to see outside.
...
Of course, seeing outside the aircraft is pretty important, too. Especially when you consider that, when these aircraft take off in a nuclear scenario, all the cockpit windows are covered with heavy (and opaque) thermal curtains. The only way the crew can see out is by looking at the CRTs.
For those who might be curious, the B-52H has two cameras mounted just below the nose: an infrared camera, and a visible-light camera. The view from those cameras is displayed on the cockpit CRTs, along with radar-derived terrain-avoidance data. Very handy for skimming the ground at night over hostile territory, with intermittent thermonuclear detonations occuring in the middle distance
Now, for a truly cool-looking glass cockpit, check out the B2. Yours for only $1,999,999,999.95 [Prices are MSRP including delivery, plus any options. Your final price may vary, contact your dealer.]
please replace that non-functional lump of tissue in your cranium out and replace it with a bowl of tapioca. the results will be better for all of us.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
Way back when I was in High School and the Cold War ended, there were articles in Aviation Leak...err...Week and Popular Mechanics about how the NeXT Big thing was going to be corporate jets that were transonic.
Rumor at the time was that Boeing and Sukhoi were working with Lear on a supersonic 40 seat corporate jet, and they had 50 confirmed orders.
So this kind of thing is kind of old news.
I'd expect Boeing to ship the Sonic-Crusier cheaper and more flexable than any other corporate type jet, even thought the article mentions Boeing. I'd see the Sonic-Cruiser being the replacement for the 737 and 727 in these circles.
Sure, I've been tempted by corporate jets in the past, but they were never quite right for me.
Too slow or too big or too cramped or too something or the other.
These new supersonic jets sound like just the ticket.
Wonder how much I can get for my old Plymouth Laser in trade? It needs a new clutch, and the radio is, um, random, but it runs ok if you ignore the oil smake starting out.
Hope they'll give me plenty, because I'll need to keep the monthly payments down.
I would still consider Apple a major turnaround, even if the stock doesn't reflect that at this point. Just look at them compared to, say, the equivalent PC makers. They are making money where everyone else is losing their shirts. Since we're in a downturn, the stock isn't doing great, but for the mid to long term, I'd count Apple as a better bet than its competition.
And quite honestly, I think that's worth a jet. Did you know Steve has to pay for his own maintenance? That surprised me a bit, since that's one of the most beneficial things to have under a corporate umbrella.
D
The remaining fleet of Tu-144 would be a much better choice -- they are more streamlined toward speed which makes them about 40% faster than the Concordes. I presume they would cost quite a bit less as well.
I live near Oceana NAS. And the roar of fighter jets flying overhead is commonplace. People that live there complain about it. My thoughts on it are, "Well, you live near a fighter base. This is something that I'm sure you knew about when you moved there and if it's that big a deal you can move elsewhere."
But what always brings a smile to my face is that when I drive around town, I often see cars with bumperstickers on their rears proudly proclaiming, "I Love Jet Noise."
Although I've always wanted to ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Or the Orient Express. And from what I understand, if you're sight-seeing in Europe, a Eurail pass is hard to beat.
Neither Microsoft nor Bill Gates owns a corporate jet, and Bill still flies coach on commercial airlines. So does everyone else in the company for that matter--unless you either pay the difference yourself or use your frequent flier miles. The only exception is international flights more than 8 hours long, in which case the company will (grudgingly) pay for business class.
"Bill and his mates" do, however, allow themselves one excess--they get to ride the executive shuttle buses around campus. These buses go directly to the execs' destinations, rather than making stops along the way. When your time is scheduled in 10-minute increments throughout the day, this is a necessary perk.
welcome to the rainforest... dialtone69@hotmail.com
I never mentioned protecting the interests of the wealthy -- I was merely suggesting that it would be better to protect the rights/freedoms/interests that allows one to become wealthy.
IMHO, giving anyone "anything" for free is a waste of resources.
First, about 10 years ago, I heard that Dassault was looking to build a supersonic bizjet. Then it was Suhkoi. Then it was Dassault and Suhkoi together. Now it's Dassault working with Gulfstream and Suhkoi working with Boeing.
I'm not holding my breath for this to become a reality. But I sure hope my old flying instructor who flies Gulfstreams gets a job on one.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
The Concorde has a history of tire problems. When the crash happened last year, it was due to debris from the Concorde's own blown tire perforating the fuel tank, which led to the ignition of the leaking fuel.
Now, I'm no aeronautical engineer, but i'd say that when a flying chunk of blown tire can punch a hole in your fuel tank and lead to the loss of the entire aircraft and the death of all souls aboard, that's a pretty Goddamned major design flaw.
You might as well have said, "...the Ford Pinto's tendency to go up in flames was always due to a rear-impact, not a major design flaw."
~Philly
The only reason the concorde can't go supersonic over land is because of noise pollution, and has nothing to do with it's actual abilities. It can certainly go supersonic anywhere it feels like it, as long as the altitude is high enough.
... that looked like that, back in 1982. Of course, it was made to kill capitalist pigs, not ferry them around in comfort to meetings with other capitalist pigs. :-)
~Philly
The maglev train's inventors have posted a proposal for a mach 3 train that would get you coast to coast in an hour and a half. Make the tube ultra straight and you can make the same trip in 45 minutes.
A Swedish engineering firm recently built the world's longest tunnel through hard rock for less than $10 million/mile. If the trans-continental tube came in at around that cost, it'd run $22 Billion. The trains themselves are estimated to cost around $5 million per car - a lot cheaper, and faster, than a $80 Million Gulfstream V.
Among the different classes of aircraft,
private jets (including corporate) have one of
the worst accident rates.
That's Part 91, which is what individual pilots fly under. The airlines and charter services fly under different Parts. Granted, I suspect the regs are substantially similar for those people as well.
I read that, and thought, gee, if I have to pay attention to that rule, I'll be doing very very well in life.
Let me put it this way - all of the "afforable" general aviation planes are well under subsonic.
A new Cessna 172 will run you about $160,000 and it has a top speed of ~160kts, and a sane speed of about ~100kts. Sonic speed is about ~400kts, depending on temp and pressure. And the prices for new ceritified planes go up from there. And no propeller plane will go supersonic (well unless you pull a powered dive). And turbine engine$ are expen$ive. If you can afford a plane that can go supersonic, you are doing so well, you should be patting yourself on the back constantly.
First of all, I am a pilot, I'm just finishing my commercial Licencse.
According to most aviation magazines I have read, and from experience during my training, LCD's are more reliable. This is because they have almost no moving parts, so they can't really wear out or break like mechanical instruments. Mechanical instruments are still installed as back-ups, in commercial aircraft in case of something like an electrical failure, even then there is always a backup electrical system.
They LCD's display information similarily to older instruments because it is generally easier to read. They have changed the displays, especially with respect to navigation (moving maps with almost everything shown, like aircraft and navaids) and altimeters(usually a vertical bar and a digital read out).
The place I'm flying at has had about 5 mechanical instruments fail in the past month on different aircraft, but have never had a problem with the GPS LCD moving map screens.
There are some flight information displays that use WindowsNT, but apparently they are very reliable. They don't look like Windows though. I have never used one though.
Bill and his mates..Huh? There's no Bill in the article. If this is a reference to Bill Gates, it has to be the most contrived jab at Microsoft in the history of this site.
Except it is only a jab in the minds of those who are oversensitive to past "jabs" of a much more deserving sort: Microsoft's monopoly, the manner in which they held back computing technology for over a decade, etc. etc.
Saying Bill and his mates might want one of these is a reference to their wealth, nothing more. Unless you equate wealth with something negative, there is no "jab" in this at all. Indeed, even most of the anti-microsoft crowd (a growing group if there ever was one, and for numerous good reasons) aren't angry at Bill's wealth, merely the manner in which he got it and the cost that has meant to the rest of us, particularly those of us who care about the technology itself.
So in short, get over yourself. The author wasn't even poking fun at Microsoft or Bill Gates at all, just at the pricetag of these new supersonic biz-jets. Wait until tommorow's story about Microsoft's latest atrocity before overreacting, why don't you.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You must be a very strange person indeed to enjoy long distance train travel. Yes sir, I want to spend six days without a shower, with my body contorted in strange positions due to the poor sleeping accomodations and your mind all fuzzy due to the noise of the train tracks.
MSAirforce One 2002
The Big Dig in Boston is causing major problems and cost overruns, and that's just an unpressurized underground street system, for chrissakes! And you think we can manage to build a tunnel across the country? And keep it in a vacuum? Hah!
Questions: What happens if a large rock is placed on the track by a terrorist group?
I'm the stranger...posting to
I've seem custom built GPS units used on board non-commercial space launch attempts that will not acquire satellites at speeds > mach 1.
Chances are it a feature of 'retail' GPS chipsets rather than a limitation of the system.
I've seen the same thing at very much subsonic speeds looking out the window of an airliner on final approach on a humid day. All it takes is for the air pressure to drop low enough to cause instant condensation. This happens as the air flows around the wing and accelerates (lowering the pressure, according to Bernoulli's equation).
Condensation is what causes the cloud. Condensation is usually caused by a DROP in pressure, which causes cooling, which lowers the temperature below the dew point. But a sonic boom is a shock wave - which is physically defined as a sudden (step) increase in pressure - which also results in a sudden INCREASE in temperature. This cannot lead to a condensation. What you are seeing is the air thinning back out and cooling down well BEHIND the shock wave, if anything.
Also, please note that a true sonic boom begins at the nose of the airplane, not the middle. As the air first touches the nose a wave forms and propgates away and back at some angle (defined by the speed). It forms a cone around the airplane. That shock wave stays attached to the very nose of the airplane, PERIOD. Secondary shocks also form on different parts of the airplane, depending on speed. As they move away from the airplane, they tend to coalesce into a single shock. This is because the air AFTER the shock is denser, so the rear shock moves faster (sound moves faster thru denser air) and the rear shock catches up to the first one. So at some distance from the airplane there is basically one leading shock. You can also find a second "reverse" shock as the rear of the airplane passes, basically attached to the back of the airplane. You can find a great photo (using the "Schlieren" photography method) here.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I dunno, but whenever I take Amtrak (which is actually quite frequently -- I go between NY and MA a couple times each semester), there are always a ton of people making and recieving calls on the train. And it really pisses me off when the person sitting behind me starts talking really loudly into eir cellphone. And the conversations are all the same: "Hello... I'm on the train... We're currently in [wherever] and we should be [somewhere else] in about n minutes. Can you come pick me up?" The same damn phonecall (made by a different person) every few minutes. And now Amtrak is starting to advertise that the fact you can use your phone is an advantage of the train over the airplane. Grrr.
But, from Manhattan to where my parents live in southern MA, it's actually quicker to take the train than fly... no getting to/from all these airports and waiting around, and I don't have to make reservations weeks in advance. Now, if all these "service improvements" they've been instituting recently actually improved service, I'd be happy...
I've got no problem when it comes to paying my 30% income tax that's being used to pay for the excellent public health care, public transportation and public services. As a result there's no population living below the poverty line, the unemployment level is 5.7%, literacy out of total population is 100%
Where the heck do you live where the income tax rate is only 30%?
In the US, I (now) pay 35% federal income tax, 13% social security tax (a regressive and partially hidden income tax), and about 8% more in state and local income taxes, for a total of 56% income tax. Yet the US poverty rate is still 13%, and despite universal free education, there is 3% illiteracy.
Since Harrods closes at 7pm, it'd have to be an early dinner... not mention that it's a department store. (Although according to their website, they do have 19 eating/drinking establishments inside nowadays, rather than just the worlds most expensive cafe)
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Who goes to Harrods for dinner?
I'd fly supersonic everywhere. What are they gonna do? Arrest me? I just blew 80M US on a jet, I can afford the fines and reparrations for damage. Maybe I can drop leaflets behind me saying, "For $ to fix your roof, call 1 (123) 555-1234".
Take it as a joke.
No sig for you.
Commercial aircraft aren't designed for the kind of stresses seen in the transonic and supersonic region. The craft would have had control difficulties that would almost certainly resulted in a hole in the ground, probably several because it would have broken up in flight.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
Kinda reminds me of all those aircar articles from Popular Science in the '60s & '70s. Who is planning to build it, what are the major design parameters? Mach 1, Mach 1.5, Mach 2?, number of passengers, weight, range, planform etc.? When - 5 to 10 years - like the Mars Society, right?
If this article was in a newsgroup I'd call it a troll. As it is, I wonder about the reputation of the publication and market it serves - it looks like the paper is probably a tabloid ir an Aussie equivalent of the Weekly World (sic?). Like "Scientists Photograph Heaven with Space Telescope" headlines.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
May I direct you to here [no joke]
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
A few things to keep in mind:
But the most important thing is: inertial navigation works just fine - especially if there are <20 airplanes in the world flying at those speeds and altitudes!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
The cool thing though is: much more flexibility. Instead of a needle showing you deviations from your course, they can depict a "highway in the sky" on top of the artificial horizon. Instead of a horrendously expensive mechanical HSI (Horizontal Situation Indicator, a moving compass rose that has superimposed navigation needles) an electronic HSI can show you a compass rose with nav. moving map, and overlay weather radar, terrain, traffic and lightning strike data.
And those LCD glass cockpits are much more reliable than the good ol' steam gauges. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that my life is being placed in jeopardy because the airplanes I fly have steam gauges; but man alive, I drool over what those colour displays can do. (The FAA is a lot more conservative now, and these systems are much more reliable, accurate and readable than mechanical instruments.)
(For an example of glass cockpits for [almost] normal people, check out the UPS Aviation Technologies MX-20, part of the AGATE project.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
On one flight in an airliner, the sun was abeam the aircraft, and on the left side; I had a window seat on the right side over the wing. I saw a shadow on the wing that looked a lot like Schlieren images of shocks I've seen [I used to volunteer at a wind-tunnel lab as an undergraduate]. I think this was on a B727, during cruise flight so it was not unreasonable that there be a weak shock on the upper surface. The shadow also moved as I expected a shock to move when small control movements were made.
Could that really have been a shock, or was I seeing some sort of condensation artifact? (I have seen the normal condensation effects - in wingtip vortices, flap boundaries, and even a cloud over a large part of the upper surface.)
Unfortunately I couldn't keep track of the shadow all the way to the first power reduction since it got overcast.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
When Concorde comes in over Britain, the air traffic control clears it a huge corridor fare wider and longer than for any other civil jet - and that's when it's actually subsonic. Just like cars on a freeway, as you increase the speed of the jet, you need more space around it to be safe. It may be better over North America or Australia, but you couldn't go supersonic over Europe because of the traffic!
In "Vol 714 pour Sydney" (one of the
worst Tintin albums, by the way) the
most interesting part is about a
very accurately and realistically
described supersonic business jet,
designed by a parody of M.Dassault. The
jet is indeed quite long, 10-seater or
something, with straight and
acute wings with variable geometry (as opposed
to the delta shapes of Concorde, Tu144 and
various supersonic fighter jets,which, of
what I heard, seem to be the only other possibility to have maneuvrability at all
speeds and not too high takeoff/landing speeds).
Maybe it is the way to go if the acuteness of
the wings is necessary to prevent damage to the
buildings ?
By the way, when a squadron of four fighter
jets exercise 150 ft above my house,
making everything shake, frightening my pets,
(who damage the furniture when rushing for
shelter), with a large black trail of smoke,
this is not a problem, as when a Concorde
flies at 60 000 ft this is one ? Or is is just
protectionist excuses to damage
european airplane industry...
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/
PLAES LAUNCH YUORSELF INTO SPAEC!!!!
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
I am not American.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.