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.

Comments

Booster rocket failure?

[Troed]

A booster rocket was supposed to take the craft up - and then the craft would glide supersonically down.

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 .. )

Re: Volkswagen beatle

[guybarr]

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.

Re:I wasn't the jet that crashed!

[Christopher Thomas]

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.

It could have been either the jet or the rocket that caused the failure, as both would need to use their control surfaces to keep the flight stable. Set a fin or a flap the wrong way, and you go spiralling into the ground. Which looks a lot like what happened.

What About the Building?

[donnacha]

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.

Re:Ultimate Taboo

[alienmole]

I experienced a similar thing when taking a helicopter ride in Hawaii - the helicopter operators there had recently had a rash of accidents, some of them fatal, which had been in the news. My g/f and I called up some of the companies, and asked them about their accident record, before picking which company to fly with. Luckily we had some outside info, otherwise we'd never have been able to tell anything at all about their safety records. One company, which had had multiple fatal accidents, would only acknowledge that "yes, they had had some 'incidents'". Further questioning resulted in evasive answers about things like the safety improvements that had been made since then.

So I agree: flyer beware! Don't expect that a company which is about to launch you into the air in a highly unstable and potentially very dangerous vehicle is going to be honest with you about the risks...

Re:I wasn't the jet that crashed!

[Syre]

Before this test there was criticism that the Japanese don'thave enough aerospace experience to be building commercial jet airliners, let alone (b)leading edge supersonics.

The fact that they can't even get it together to launch the test seems significant to me, even if it is the rocket that failed.

Re:Isn't it interesting..

[Scrameustache]

hey seem to always want the fastest thing, maybe they're compensating for .. something ;)

Maybe...and the US is always after the biggest of everything...compensating maybe? ;-)

Re:Why publicize the first test?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much bothers us Aussies,

What about that episode of the Simpsons where Bart made a collect call to some kid in Austalia pretending to be a water commisioner? Are the Austalian people really animated like that? I'm confused.

Re:VW Beatle = Hitler car

[darkonc]

Just because the Nazi government was vicious, nasty, violent and engaged in the nastiest act of genocide since North America's Indian Wars, doesn't mean that everything that they did was without a decent purpose.

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.

Re:Latest news on the launch

[jake-in-a-box]

I wondered about that when I saw the shots of the rocket shortly before it hit the ground (no, not on the pad - 10 seconds later). In the photo of the assembly on the pad you can see the wings of the model, but in the final shots, even the ones in which the rocket is shown spiraling in the sky, the model isn't visible.

If the guidance system is programmed assuming the model is attached, and the model is not, it may not respond very well.