Slashdot Mirror
New Supersonic Jet Test Less Than Successful
saberwolf writes "The BBC is reporting in this story that the first test of Japan's supersonic jet didn't go quite as planned when it crashed into the ground seconds after takeoff on its test rig. It looks like a successor to the world's only supersonic passenger jet, Concorde (built jointly by the British and French in the 1960s) is still some way off." Reuters has more pictures.
Will Tickets on these planes cost $8K per like the concorde, if so, I'll keep buying longer lasting laptop batteries.
For any Chinese readers that can't view BBC web sites due to the "Grate Firewall of China", here is another source for the story. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/14/10261851 38340.html
- HeXa
With this kind of press before it even accepts any passengers, I can't say as there will be too many people who won't be a little leary and just hop right on... maybe if it was free... then again.. free death.. i don't know...
not sure i want to trust a computer to fly a jet when they wont even test it in windy conditions... and what about bad weather? hm...
That Japan has the fastest train (bullet train) and now they want the fastest plane. They seem to always want the fastest thing, maybe they're compensating for .. something ;)
At least it didn't hit any buildings....
From the article, it appears that the aircraft crashed on launch, *while attached to a booster rocket*
DTABN
Please!
Nobody seems to understand that it was the rocket booster that failed, not the test jet. The test jet wouldnt' be activated until something like 18 miles above the ground.
The test jet didn't fail. It was a completely unrelated accident.
-- Daniel
It crashed a few seconds after takeoff - so it can only be the booster rocket that failed - right? If so - this might not be that devastating since it says nothing about the actual craft itself .. (more about booster rockets .. )
it's in my head
Are they trying something really innovative, or did the technological knowledge from the 60's vanish??
Obviously they are not those who built the 60's version, but why do they encounter so much difficulties 40 years after a successful project?
What's the technological reason?
If people were around shooting photos the first time one of my programs were run, the carnage would make this look like child's play. Why would you want to publicize your first tests of anything?!?
What's your damage, Heather?
Why not move Europe and Japan to Northern Canada instead?
The rockets computer system was running Windows ME, apparently they got the BSOD moments before the rocket went nuts and crashed.
Insert obligatory Darwin award joke here.
As I understand it, this was a 10% scale model of the supersonic aircraft.
The plan was to use a rocket to get it to a certain height and speed, then release it, and see how it performs.
From looking at the footage (Im in the UK. so saw the report on BBC News 24, haven't read the web article), to me the _rocket_ went wrong, rather than the supersonic craft itself.
And lets face it, rockets go wrong from time to time, and they tend to be rather...spectacular when they do.
I just wish that the events were reported accurately...As the subject says, to me The Rocket went Bang, and not the craft.
Used to work at Heathrow in London.
Concorde still draws crowds of admirers, and it still looks the most futuristic passenger plane in "common" commercial use, even 30+ years after it came into service.
What else is there this old that still looks as good......?
...if you haven't wasted all your points on AC trolls.
Both the real concord and the Japanese clone suffer the same fate...
Hmm, ever heard of Airbus?
Fleur de Sel
What about Boeing's main competitor, Airbus?
Concorde is British/French - America has nothing to compare to it.
There is no place like ~!
I live in Bristol, and the sight and sound of a Concorde coming back to British Aerospace in Filton certainly draws the crowds here, too. If its a slow news-day, it'll certainly make a 5-10 second news clip on the local BBC & HTV.
Now wether this is because Concorde is so great, or because Bristol is so poor, I'll let you decide (Bristol : Bidding for City of Culture 2008. Its gert lush!)
France, Britan, Germany, Russia, etc. make their own planes. You just don't know about it cause you live in the States.
- Airbus industries?
- Embraer?
just to name the two non-US companies successfully producing passenger planes that came to my mind first...Airbus.
See also: Rolls Royce Engines.
I've often wondered about a "rescue" system for payloads, much like the escape rockets for the old Apollo rockets. Having this kind of a system in place could help save payloads from destruction during first and second stage failures.
Its too bad though. I hope that they continue testing. And I sure hope that model had lots of insurance.:(
Well, you know I'm 30+ years old.....booboom tish.
I wonder what it sounds like to hear 100 Japanese rocket scientists screaming "Doh!" at the same time...
imagine the same havoc whenever software undergoing testing crashed...
should we not be happy that they actually DO proper and real testing before commercially launching the aircraft?
It's very similar to what happened when NASA tried to test a scramjet in Australia last June. NASA, of course, managed a more successful test some months later.
I wonder if the Japanese engineers put all their efforts into the aerodynamic design of the plane and too little attention was paid to whether the combination of rocket and plane would be stable and controlable.
I guess the poster has never heard of Airbus Industrie.... click here to know more.
Ever heard of the Airbus, cowboy?
BBC also has a short RealVideo clip of the crash, replete with one very freaked-out kangaroo fleeing the crash site.
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
it took the European plane decades to achieve this level of carnage.
and the airlines who bought Airbus (approximately 53% of aircraft orders in 2001 were won by Airbus and they're near 50% with aircraft deliveries)
flys american made planes.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Talk about avoiding awkward subjects! The quite impressive Concorde website manages to not once mention the crash! Even the extensive sections on safety enhancements and the plane's history refer only vaguely to the "August 2000 suspension of service".
Flyer Beware!
ahem... isn't Boeing the company losing huge market share to the European Airbus group ?
just my $.02
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Looking at the pictures at the slideshow. I came to the fifth picture. That was a nice ad. O wait, whats this little picture? O THATs the picture. Same with picture 15. You click next and get the real picture and an explanation. I guess its anything for a buck. Just very annoying to have a huge ad when you watching the slideshow of pictures of a crash.
Can someone explain why, with the exception of one singe photograph, I can't see the plane's wings on the booster?
In one shot it's sitting on the launchpad. I know that the wings have a metallic finish and the rocket engines produce a lot of glare, but there are a lot of good clear shots of this thing as it is spiriling oiut of control and in none of the those shots are they visible, even poorly.
--Richard
What else is there this old that still looks as good......?
Volkswagen Beatle.
when a car is still manufactured ~60 years (in latin america) after design.
when a car that was manufactured before I was born is still operative sufficiently for my day-to-day needs, and not as a collector's item.
than that is, in my biassed opinion, good engineering design == real beauty.
Working for necessity's mother.
The jet its self never left the ground.
Did anyone else notice that, if you look closely at the right pictures, this thing took out some sort of building, compound?
You can't see it in the amusing but fairly cruddy BBC Real Video clip but it's fairly clear in this reuters shot, you can clearly see the security fencing.
I guess, in the current climate, they're keen not to emphasis this thing's ability to take out man-made structures.
...to the Anglo-French silly walk.
Anyhoow, there's a massive accident database with 6350 airliner "write-offs" from 1945! I'd be interested to know if whoever made this sight has a little, er, "problem" with flying. Anyway to see whose planes were better when it comes to safety (which was the original point), go here the statistics page. It's a bit complicated, so I couldn't be bothered going through American and European models. BTW: think twice before boarding a Boeing S.307 Stratoliner.
I understand that developing aircraft is not a cheap business - but the BBC news article says the test model, an unpowered but presumably remote-controlled glider, cost $80Million. I'm sure lots of slick technology went into the test article, but I gotta ask: how could a glider cost $80Million? (The rocket launch was valued at $7Million, BTW.)
The BBC article mentions that "Developers, who include Mitsubishi and Nissan, hope that the new supersonic plane will have noise levels similar to the Boeing 747. That would mean that it would be able to operate far more widely than Concorde, which is notoriously noisy." This was also mentioned in previous news stories about the planned aircraft.
Nothing I've seen, however, explains how they were planning to deal with the sonic boom.
Or are they just referring to the noise level when in subsonic operation? In which case, like the Concorde, it could only go supersonic over water... but then how could it "operate far more widely" than the Concorde?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
In related news, Pentagon officials at a hastily called press conference announced a successful test of the National Missile Defense system. The scheduling of this test was not publicized in advance due to concerns about terrorism. An anonymous DoD source stated that, "Ahhh, that was our test. We finally got it to work. No wait, in fact we have had many successful secret tests. Yeah, that's the ticket!"
You seem to be forgetting the Tupolev TU-144, dubbed Concordski in the west due to its uncanny resemblence to Concorde. Although faster than Corcorde, its crash at the Paris Air Show effectively put an end to its challenge to Concorde in the commercial marketplace. Nonetheless, it was used as a passenger carrying jet in the Soviet Union in 1977 and early 1978 until another crash put and end to its career. Concorde is, therefore, the only currently operating supersonic passenger jet.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
It was a cover story for the truth, Mothra is back and Mothra don't like supersonic jets.
Something that crashes ust a few short seconds after starting.... Microsoft would call that a success :)
-Cnik
This is slashdot, and things must really be slipping.. That was a really weak headline.
How about:
Supersonic jet test a failure: Blue screen of death assumed
Miko O'Sullivan
Who else snaps to attention, throws a Nazi salute, and yells 'Sieg Hiel' when a Beetle drives by?
It sure annoys the hippies driving it.
They probably used Windows XP for the computer controls.
HA HA
</Simpsons>
(:-L~
While the Slashdot crew is busy arguing whether it was the rocket or the jet that crashed, and who in the world would fly on such a beast, no one is taking into account that this was just a scale model!
The superjet, a 1:10 scale model of a plane that would be able to fly twice as fast as the Concorde, dived into the ground shortly after take-off (Reuters)
Were this a crash of a real jet, yes, it would news. The crash of a model, no.
Hey Asshole, alot of people where killed in that crash, including those on the ground.
It looks like a successor to the world's only supersonic passenger jet, Concorde (built jointly by the British and French in the 1960s) is still some way off.
Surely you are aware of Tu-144? It wasn't too successful, but it was supersonic and intended to carry passengers.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Airbus: Europe (on par with Boeing for commercial airliners)
Dassault Aviation: France (the Falcon line of high-end business jets: especially successful in the US market)
Embraer: Brazil (shares with Bombardier the world market for regional jets)
Bombardier: Canada (shares with Embraer the world market for business jets)
ATR: Europe (turboprop regional transportation planes)
Tupolev: Russia (still makes commercial aircraft)
These are just for the commercial airliners. The list of non-US manufacturers of general aviation planes if much longer.
From my limited observations of the Reuters photos and BBC video clip, it appears that the booster rocket left the pad without the test glider. Immediately after leaving the launch rails, the booster tipped over, indicating that there was an unintentional mass imbalance (hence, gimballed boosters counteracting a non-existent payload) that threw the flight path out of whack. Can anyone tell whether the rocket flopped away from where the payload should have been, or in another direction. If it fell away from the payload, the payload must have become unattached.
Concorde is very noisy at takeoff and landing. That stops it being used at nearly all airports. Basically it was only a political deal that allowed any flights at all between the UK, France and the USA.
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
Of course, that's why they do lots of unmanned testing before letting a test pilot with a degree in aeronautical engineering and a few thousand hours of flight time take up the first one.
I would remind people that supersonic aircraft have been built before, so this problem has been "solved" just like the sub-orbital booster problem has been "solved."
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
it seems to me that the concorde crashed shortly after take-off a few years ago. ladies and gentleman, we have a race on our hands!
go get it
Elizabeth Hurley...bunch of women look good after 30 years of use, and plus, they're fun in the sack.
Well, some of them, anyway.
When i lived in england, the Concorde would fly right over our house (pretty high up too), and I tell you, that plane is LOUD. The house rattled and it cut through EVERYTHING. And that's it going subsonic...
A 747 is loud, but theres a world of difference between a 747 and a subsonic Concorde.
The new quieter plane will be able to "operate far more widely" because you won't get people bitching about the noise every single time it flies over.
ìì!
Countach
Anyone else noticed this?
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
The inventor of the Flying Saucer propellantless
propulsion is asking people not to be afraid
if they happen to see his Flying Saucer going
across the skies in the next years.
He say his IFO " Identified Friendly Object"
should not be the target of the military or others.
Nothing more will be said about the technology
or any others matters relating according to
inventor of 3D Volume Holographic Storage.
http://colossalstorage.net
At least service between the U.S. East Coast and Tokyo would be cut from the current 11 hours on ANA down to a much more tolerable 6 hours.
Maybe I'm being picky, but wouldn't that mean that it would be a sub-sonic cruiser.
Oh, please. So the German government sponsored the development of this vehicle for less than shining, rosy reasons - it doesn't change the fact that, as the man says, it's the most successful car so far.
If we were to dismiss all innovations that were made were for less than noble reasons we'd all have to move back into caves.
No, the model was supposed to separate from the rocket, at high altitude. Until that point, the rocket was the craft and if it failed, it had nothing to do with the viability of the jet or the model.
Catastrophic crashes like the one we saw here are caused by thruster imbalances, not flaps or fins.
-- Daniel
The fact that they can't even get it together to launch the test seems significant to me,
It's not like it's their final prototype or anything, just a 1:10 scale model...Though why this wouldn't be uncovered in the computer sims, experience or no, I don't know...perhaps all computer sims are neglecting to model something? There was that failed American test, after all.
The French TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) is the fastest in the world. I beleive there was a slashdot story about the Japanese developing a prototype which could theoretically go faster, but it hasn't even been tested yet, let alone been put into service. The TGV has been transporting passengers since the early 80's.
There has also been some research into minimizing the sonic boom. I don't grok all the aerodynamics, but something about lengthening the fuselage. I'd assume their using some of these new ideas to make it quieter. Also there have been advances in engine design that make them much quieter than they were in 1970.
They are saying the launch was successful. They're only covering it on the air at the moment it appears. I can't find the story on their website...Don't know how many other outlets are misreporting this.
Only because Concorde is a white elephant... there's a good reason why there were only 14 Concorde's ever built as against about 2000 747s
If an aircraft smashing into the ground only seconds after takeoff is "less than successful" I'd sure hate to see a "total failure!"
All the Brits and Brit-loving Aussies now exclusively staffing Slashdot(.au) are in raptures over this failure, aren't they! We're so happy for you...
No, the model was supposed to separate from the rocket, at high altitude. Until that point, the rocket was the craft and if it failed, it had nothing to do with the viability of the jet or the model.
Catastrophic crashes like the one we saw here are caused by thruster imbalances, not flaps or fins.
While that could easily be the cause also, I respectfully disagree with your argument. If you build a model rocket and put the fins on at bizzare angles, it's going to crash. Similarly, if the control surfaces on the rocket or the plane were sufficiently far from where they were supposed to be, the rocket would crash. If they weren't able to adjust the craft's course that much, they wouldn't be very good control surfaces in proper operation, would they?
As another poster pointed out, it's unlikely that control surfaces were to blame (bad assumption on my part - I was assuming they'd use the plane's steering to help guide the launch, as opposed to being locked). I'm just taking issue with your (apparent) statement that it's impossible for you to steer a rocket-boosted plane into the ground.
If you accept that cars are a good thing (debatable), the purpose of the VW bug was to have a car that most people could afford. Kinda like the Model T but cheaper and better.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Rubbish. Concordr used to go over my house twice a day. If you weren't looking you missed it. It's not a noisy plane over land at sub-sonic speeds. In general I notice standard air liners (737, 777 etc.) more than Concorde. It doesn't go supersonic until over the sea, that presumably makes a noise.
the north coast of Cornwall (non-UK readers: the 'foot' that sticks out of the UK to the south-west.) You'd often hear the sonic boom from Concorde accelerating through (or decelerating back through) the sound barrier above the Bristol Channel. It sounded like a distant roll of thunder on a hot summer's day. (Of course it was always hot and sunny back then... </nostalgia >&
Nowadays, I live in South London, which happens to be on the flight path for Heathrow (along with most of the rest of south/west London...). The windows are double-glazed, which makes a nice Concorde test: when you can hear aircraft noise indoors, it's *always* either Concorde, or a low-flying police surveillance camera. (We live in a police state over hear, because guns are illegal. Gosh, how I wish I lived in the USA, so I could defend myself against the crushing power of the State! <
The reason the Concorde is so damn loud are the Rolls Royce Olympus engines. They're optimised for supersonic flight, which makes them horribly inefficient -- they have to burn a *lot* of fuel to provide reasonable thrust at low air speeds (and given the airframe's delta-wing profile, "low speed" is relative: I haven't the numbers, but she takes off and lands *very* fast. Most supersonic military aircraft for the last 20 years or so have had variable geometry flight surfaces (BAE Tornado, f'rinstance, or the US Tomcat. Or that fskcing GORGEOUS Russian aircraft with the twin air intakes below the fuselage... but I digress) - the wings are swept forward for low-speed operation, then back into a delta configuration for high speeds.
This is another reason the Concorde's so expensive to run, which was another factor in it's commerical (lack of) success. Now, what I'm wondering - and I'm slightly puzzled why there hasn't been a
Anyone able to enlighten me on this?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
You mean this ? I believe it's supposed to be a high subsonic jet -- not supersonic, just faster than everything else subsonic. And of course cooler looking.
According to the article, the test wasn't even supposed begin until the rocket dropped it from an altitude of 20 km. The fact that it never got to that point means the test was botched, not the aircraft's design.
I dont have a link handy, but in the 80s SU developed its onw supersonic jet which just like Buran made exactly obe successful flight before being grounded.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
21 more pictures
I completely missed this. If you look, the telltale wings of the glider are still on the launcher after the rocket leaves. Does this mean that the glider is okay and can be reused? Maybe this wasn't an $87 million failure.
Any plane flying at hypersonic has multiple sonic cones - plane, engines, etc. These can be placed so that they extinguish each other due to interference patterns. This means that from another viewpoint they will amplify each other. If the "another" point in question is above the plane it is a "who cares about the dead fish" case.
On a different note, Concorde is hellishly noisy when subsonic. It is the bigger problem (most of the flight is above water). Unfortunately this problem is quite hard to solve as all recent development into noise efficient engine shapes (new boeings, new airbus, new engines on russian jets) has gone into subsonic turbofans. The knowledge from these cannot be applied into hypersonic engines right away.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Or are they just referring to the noise level when in subsonic operation?
You obviously havn't heard concorde flying subsonic. It must be the loudest civil aircraft by a long way.
In which case, like the Concorde, it could only go supersonic over water... but then how could it "operate far more widely" than the Concorde?
The want to fly this between Japan and the US. LAX is more or less due west from Kansi. With nothing other than the Pacific in between. They also want to make a supersonic airliner with much greater range, since there is no way Concorde could cross the Pacific without finding places to land and refuel.
I've just seen an Australian news broadcast with interviews of the parties involved and they say that the model separated from the rocket at lift off.
The indication was that the model fell back onto the launch pad and the rocket then went out of control.
And the winner on the day was: Sir Isac Newton!
Oh, and as another poster has pointed out, Boeing's current toy isn't supersonic, it's just high subsonic (~Mach 0.95 rather than the standard ~0.8).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This test alone cost $7m. They presumably need to build another $80m model to proceed with the other tests, which are probably not penny candy either.
Besides, the video of it crashing is spectacular. That alone makes it newsworthy.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
daniel... or daniel san?
The variable geometry wing is a yesterday's tech. That gourgeous russian bird, your're talking about, is either Mig29 or SU27, which are not variable geometry ac. These are beatiful indeed, the wings and fuselage are being one air frame and that's how all the modern ac are designed now.
Mig23 and Mig27 are variable geometry ac, but these were discontinued form the service and no new ac were build for a number of years.
Boeing has two ideas for new airliners. The first announced is the sonic cruiser, which will cruise between mach 0.95 & 0.98 and carry 250 people max. The other is the blended wing body, originally developed by Douglas Aircraft to compete with Boeing planes. The BWB will cruise at mach 0.90, carry 480 people, and burn 32 percent less fuel than a competing Airbus.
And yes, that Concorde is damn loud. I was in London once at Kew Gardens (right under the "whirlpool" for Heathrow) and the Concorde at 10,000 feet was as loud as the 747s going over at 2500. And when it was the Concorde's turn at 2500, you had to shout to hear each other.
I'm highly cynical about both of Boeing's new designs. I think they're throwing Buck Rogers paper aeroplanes out in the market to muddy the waters for Airbus and to camouflage the fact that with the move to Chicago they're getting out of the high-end airliner business.
I remember books my uncle had as a boy which showed concepts for giant flying-wing airliners in the *1940s*! No-one's built one... And the only large flying wing (B2) costs US$2 billion apiece. (Oh that's right; the Boeing concept's a blended-wing body design, not a flying wing. In other words, a flying wing with a thick centre-section... BFD!)
I lived in the UK for a couple of years near London, and heard a couple of Concorde takeoffs. Loud, but gee, what a wonderful noise! And what a beautiful aircraft! And all done with 1960's technology. The V12 Daimler of airliners!
When I was studying mech and aero engineering at Sydney University in the 1970's, our fluid dynamics lecturer had worked for a while in the US on the Boeing 2707 SST project. He said that the longer fuselage would indeed have reduced the sonic boom; IIRC the components of the boom from different parts of the aircraft would not have merged into a single wave front by the time it reached the ground, unlike the case with Concorde.
:-)
The aircraft was going to be c. 300 feet long and a joke in the development team was that with these types of scale effects if got any longer it would be flying in ground effect
Depends if it's landing or taking off... I could imagine the landing approach would be little if any louder than a normal airliner, but I've heard Concorde after takeoff and believe me it is *far* louder than other airliners!
Sounds like a common Western attitude pre-Pearl Harbour.
At least they've tried to fly some hardware. How's the US SST coming on by the way?
I seem to recall that the Chinese invented printing, gunpowder and rockets... Then the White man "stole" them. For centuries China was the most technologically and socially advanced society on earth. "Let the Chinese dragon sleep, for when it awakes it will amaze the world" - Napolean.
I'm looking forward to arrogant idiots like you getting your butts kicked by Yellow men over the next few decades...
The problem with the TU-144 was that its engines had to run reheat for supersonic cruise, which of course made mincemeat of its range and made the operating economics worse even than Concorde.
The least-appreciated achievement of Concorde is not that it does Mach 2, but that it sustains Mach 2 for hours at a time, to an airline duty and maintenance cycle and *on dry thrust*.
Guess what! The much-hyped "supercruise" ability of new US jet fighters has been achieved on a daily basis by an *airliner* for nearly thirty years.
[And if you want to get more pedantic, the English Electric P1 prototype for the Lightning interceptor was capable of supercruise c. 1960!).
The purpose of the beatle (the real purpose, not Hitler's "KDF" propaganda) was to build the kubelwagen, the German version of the Jeep (later marketed as the VW Thing).
My farther is the range operator at Woomera and was present for the recent test's. It was the rocket delivering the payload that failed rather then the payload itself.
If the rocket had managed to deliver the payload it would have been a huge step forward in the design of air craft as the model had been computer generated skipping the whole process of wind tunnel testing etc . . .
The sonic boom does not occur as an aircraft passes through the "sound barrier." The boom is the passage of a shock wave from a supersonic aircraft, and the shock wave exists as long as the aircraft is supersonic. The shock wave can be thought of as the sound trapped in a thing cone because it cannot go faster than the aircraft, so it all "stacks up" in the shock wave.
For example, when the Space Shuttle landed at White Sands, New Mexico, we heard the double boom as it went by Phoenix, AZ. It was still supersonic at the time.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I've always wanted to have the balls to buy a VW Thing, paint it sand colored, and have that Nazi swastika-and-palm-tree logo on the side. But then again, I'm kind of an asshole, so maybe it's just me.
Heil Kupfelwagen!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Nothing, except for airliners that are actually profitable. Unlike Concorde. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Yes americans are the only ones who can build aeroplanes :-) Or maybe not;
. com
http://www.saabaerospace.com
http://www.airbus
Will work for bandwidth
In summer I usually go to the far end of Cornwall - the bit that sticks out in the sea in the SW of England. At 11 o'clock the Air France Concorde passes by and it *is* supersonic you hear a definite boom and if it is closer to the coast than it should be then it really rattles the windows!
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
Concorde cruises at 55,000 feet, +/- 5,000. It has to fly that high so that the air density is low enough to reduce friction heating to an acceptable level. Only once it's flying subsonic can it descend to lower levels.
Saturn VII is still the most powerful machine ever built by man, and it draws hundreds of tourist in admiration to Cape Kenedy. I think it is also the only machine currently available if you would like to take a ride to the moon.
My other OS is the MCP!
...the world's only supersonic passenger jet, Concorde
The Tupolev TU-144 was the another supersonic passenger jet. Build by the Ruissians to compete with the Concorde, it was pulled out of service after an embarrising crash at the Paris Air Show in 1973.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I don't want to trust a man driving anything faster than a bicycle. The human brain is so limited.
ha, this makes me lol (laugh out loud) jets are a horrible way of getting people into space... just horrible. I have a MUSCH BETTER plan... here's what we do, we dig a deep tunnel right under the north/south pole of the earth, doesn't matter which i don't think, then we put a big inversely polarized electromagnet in the tunnel... shoot some current through, and blammo! the magnet then pop's out the tunnel and into space using the earth's magnetic field as it's propulsion... doesn't that just sound sooo much simpler? no fuel to worry about.. so no firey deaths for the masses. orrrr... another possible method if you spin an extremely dense mass over the north pole counter-earth rotation really really fast it should go flying out into space too... soo... off to the pole! who's with me!!!???
-judging another only defines yourself
I remember reading an article about this aeroplane a few months ago, and I seem to remember it saying that the plane would not be expected to fly commercially for at least another ten years or so. I think that the designers of this plane expected such setbacks; And that is why they are saying it will be ten years before it will be ready. With such a complicated and (excluding the not-very-similar Concorde) unprecedented peice of technology, there is a little more to it than just building the damn thing and watching it fly.
Plus, the SR-71 would leave that anglo-french beer can suckin' it's con trails.
GO USA!