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.
-klerck
DTABN
If it crashed seconds after takeoff, it does sound like a worthy successor to Concorde.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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....
Over the past 24 hours you have probably noticed an increase of "junk" in comments posted under stories. This is due to a new limit on the amount of posting that a logged in user can perform and is proportional to the amount of karma that the user has.
As a consequence people with "Terrible" karma are only allowed to post twice a day. Now, I know you may be thinking "Well, this isn't too bad, I really didn't want to read what people with 'Terrible' karma had to say".
However, there was already a solution inplace to say clear of the Terribles antics. It was as simple as setting your threshold to zero. This way they got to enjoy Anonymous Coward posts which sometimes contain "industry secrets" or spice up conversations with alternative view points which don't agree with the slashdot political mainstream and still avoid the Terribles.
But for some reason odd reason the Slashdot Editors have decided to punish those with low karma even more and destroy the delicate equilibrium between chaos and order. We can only speculate about the motives that the Slashdot Crew have. It couldn't possibly be to quell the Terribles, since now they are even more prominent posting as Anonymous Cowards.
I have a feeling that they want to rid Slashdot of Anonymous posting. This new wave of "junk" postings has been manufactured by the Slashdot Crew to force their own hand into removing Anonymous Posting. Please, do not let the Slashdot Crew take away one of the most useful and unique parts of the Slashdot experience.
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
"I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt."
No, Microsoft didn't remove the CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM prompt from Windows XP. But Windows XP has reduced functionality, in many ways, not just in the command line. The command line is a big embarrassment because of its limited capabilities, but at least in Win 95 it worked. With every version since then it has worked less well. (There are two kinds of command prompt, and, according to Microsoft employees, the differences between them are not documented.)
The command line prompt sometimes begins to display short file names. Microsoft employees say that Microsoft has no fix, although someone not connected with Microsoft did make a work-around.
Cutting and pasting into a command line program often puts successive extra spaces before each line. Microsoft employees say that there is no plan to fix this.
The fast paste mode that is in Windows 98 is gone in Windows XP. Microsoft employees say there is no plan to fix this.
When using the command line interface, Windows XP doesn't always update the time. After several hours, the time reported to command line programs can be several hours in error.
There is a DOS program called START.EXE that can be used to start other programs. But it does operate the same way as in other versions of Windows. It starts a program, but cannot be made to return control to the command line program as previous versions did. There is no technical reason for this; it is just one of the shortcomings that are allowed to exist.
People often say that DOS has gone away. But Microsoft still calls the command line interface DOS, and in Windows XP Microsoft has added new programs for configuring the OS that work only under DOS.
Sometimes when you press a key while using Windows XP, it is seconds until there is any response. Apparently there is something wrong with the CPU scheduler in XP, because there are a lot of complaints about this in the forums and MS people have said that they are working on it. On one particular fresh installation of XP, on an Intel motherboard with either a Matrox G550 or an ATI Radeon video adapter, it requires 18 seconds to display a directory listing of 94 items. This is apparently related to a bug in the video software, not the adapter drivers.
Something is wrong with the Alt-Tab display of running programs under Windows XP. If there are a lot of programs, not all of them are displayed. The order jumps around in a seemingly random way.
Although articles often say negative things about Microsoft, I've never seen an article that fully documents how bad the situation really is. Microsoft's management is so bad that the company has become self-destructive. For example, Windows XP is spyware. Here is a list of ways Windows XP connects to Microsoft's servers:
- Application Layer Gateway Service (Requires server rights.)
- Fax Service
- File Signature Verification
- Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (Requires server rights.)
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server (Wants server rights.)
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Microsoft the music you like)
- Microsoft Network Availability Test
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Run DLL as an app
- Services and Controller app
- Time Service, sets the time on your computer from Microsoft's computer.
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. Microsoft has never said why.
- Microsoft mouse software has reduced functionality until you let it connect
to Microsoft computers.
These are just the ones I know. There may be others.So, if you use Windows XP, your computer is dependent on Microsoft computers. That's bad, not only because you lose control over your possession, but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs quickly. For example, as of July 7, 2002, there are 18 unpatched security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a terrible record for a company that has $40 billion in the bank. Obviously, with that kind of money, Microsoft could fix the bugs if it wanted to fix them. Since the bugs are very public and Microsoft has the money, it seems reasonable to suppose that top management at Microsoft has deliberately decided that the bugs should remain, at least for now.
It seems possible that there is a connection between all the bugs and the U.S. government's friendly treatment of Microsoft's law-breaking. The U.S. government's CIA and FBI and NSA departments spy on the entire world, and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft software help spies.
Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a file called the registry in which configuration information is written. If this one (large, often fragmented) file becomes corrupted, the only way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point of failure. Microsoft apparently designed it this way to provide copy protection. Since most entries in the registry are poorly documented or not documented, the registry effectively prevents control by the user.
Note that Microsoft does not support making functional complete backups under Windows XP. Look at Microsoft's policy about this: Q314828 Microsoft Policy on Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installation. Only those who work with Microsoft software will understand the true meaning of Microsoft's policy. Since almost all programs use the registry operating system file, if you cannot make a functional copy of the operating system you cannot make a functional copy of all your application installations and configurations. There are other software companies that try to fix this, but they don't work well, and Microsoft can, of course, break their implementations, as they have often done with other kinds of competitors.
Because the configuration information for the motherboard and the configuration information for the are mixed together in the registry file, the registry tends to prevent you from moving a hard drive to a computer with a different motherboard. That's another implication of the above Microsoft policy. So, if you have a motherboard failure, and a good complete backup, you may not be able to recover unless you have a spare computer with the same motherboard.
Note that Windows XP Professional can support only ten simultaneous incoming network connections. If you want more than that, you must use Windows 2000 server, and pay much, much more. (There is no Windows XP server yet.) Many businesses have very light network traffic; they just move files from staff member to staff member; they really don't need a dedicated server computer. The staff computers could easily handle the load except for this artificial limitation.
Apparently because the Windows XP GUI comes from Windows 98, Windows XP has the same problem with desktop icons that Windows 98 has. The icons sometimes flicker. Sometimes they move themselves around, particularly after the user switches monitor resolutions. Also, sometimes the taskbar settings un-configure themselves, as they do in Windows 98.
Only technically knowledgeable people know how to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Passport account during initial use of Windows XP. The name Passport gives an indication of Microsoft's thinking. A passport is a document issued by a sovereign nation. Without it, the nation's citizens cannot travel, and, if they leave, won't be allowed back in their own country. In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer. Most people are both honest and intimidated. Apparently about 95% do whatever they are asked on the screen. They give their personal information to Microsoft. They don't realize that, if they feel forced to get a Passport account, they should enter almost completely fictitious information, since the real question is not "What is your name and address", but "Can we invade your privacy". The honest answer to this is "No, you cannot invade my privacy", and the only effective way to communicate that is to give completely fictitious information. Since it is the educated people who have computers, Microsoft is building a database of the personal lives of educated people. Microsoft knows when they connect and from what IP address (which tends to show the area), what kind of help they ask, and information about what they are doing with their computers, including what music they like. It is not known, and there is no way to know, how much Microsoft or other organizations make use of this information, or their plans for future use.
Not only has Windows XP definitely gone further in the direction of allowing the user less control over his or her own machine, but with Palladium, Microsoft apparently intends to finish the job: Microsoft will have ultimate control over the user's computer and therefore all his or her data. Even now, under Windows XP, a recent security patch requires that the user agree to a contract that gives Microsoft administrator privileges over the user's computer. The contract says that if a user wants to patch his or her system against a bug which would allow an attack over the Internet, he or she must give Microsoft legal control over the computer. See this article also: Microsoft's Digital Rights Management-- A Little Deeper. You may need to be a lawyer to take apart the crucial sentence. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [my emphasis] use other software on your computer" legally includes this meaning: "These updates may disable your ability to use other software on your computer." Note that the term "security related updates" is meaningless to the user because the updates have no relation to user security. So, the sentence effectively means that Microsoft can control the user's computer without notice and whenever it wants. That kind of sentence is known in psychology as "testing the limits". If there is no strong public complaint about this, expect to see more and stronger language like this.
This Register article shows the direction Microsoft is going: MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Microsoft is well down that road. See this ZDNet article, also: MS: Why we can't trust your 'trustworthy' OS.
Microsoft's self-destructiveness does not mean that the user should be self-destructive. There is no need to apologize for using Microsoft software. The correct solution to abuse is persuading the abuser to stop being abusive. Once I posted to a Slashdot story a link to an article on a web site of mine. By far the majority of visitors from the Slashdot story used Microsoft operating systems. Rather than feel embarrassed because Microsoft is abusive, action needs to be taken to prevent the abuse. If you are against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.
These Microsoft policies mean that any government which wants to be independent of the United States government, and any government which represents itself as controlled by the people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems, or other Microsoft proprietary systems.
- poopbot: because we're all crapflooders at heart
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.
DTABN
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......?
Even though everyone is always saying how bad american made goods are, this is good proof why everyone in the world (sans Russia) flys american made planes.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
...if you haven't wasted all your points on AC trolls.
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DTABN
Both the real concord and the Japanese clone suffer the same fate...
He began to eat the sheep feces. In fact, HE FINISHED EVERY LAST BIT! My brother ate sheep shit!!!
But the funny thing is, I don't even have a brother! It was me! I ATE SHEEP SHIT!!!
DTABN
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!)
- Airbus industries?
- Embraer?
just to name the two non-US companies successfully producing passenger planes that came to my mind first...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.
Hanging: Two problems with this... First of all it's boring. I mean, God, there's no excitement in just hanging there! Second, it could be somewhat painful. Choking to death doesn't exactly turn me on. Of course, I could auto-erotically asphyxiate myself to death, I suppose.
Shooting: This seems to be the way I will likely go. It's quick, it's (hopefully) painless, and very messy which means very exciting! The only problem I have with this is that everybody seems to go out this way these days. Kurt Cobain, Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway... the list goes on. Do I really want to be known as just another guy who shot himself?
Jumping: Again, two problems... It's not certain unless I jump from something really high, and in my area, the tallest buildings are only two stories. Second, even though I am clearly highly suicidal, what if I suddenly change my mind right after I jump? At least with the other two, I don't have time to think about it!
Please, give me your suggestions, and I will take them to heart. Then, I will finally have a happy and successful suicide.
Regards,
klerck
DTABN
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?
DTABN
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.
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!
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 make sure to only post worthwile shit.
Like the well known fact that cmdrtaco is a goat fucker who occasionally broadens his horizon to sheep and emus.
Also, war is a waste of time. Don't support wars because wars suck.
Well, that's my insightful post for the day, and FUCK YOU ALL SLASHBOT DICKLICKERS!
Volkswagen Beatle.
... by HITLER (to his specifications anyway)
"Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer." Volkswagen. The People's Car.
when a car is still manufactured ~60 years (in latin america) after design.
than that is, in my biassed opinion, good engineering design == real beauty.
Yes, a shining example of Aryan superior engineering and beauty.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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The Yellow man will never surpass the white man in technological achievements. The White Man has lifted man to the stars. The Yellow man can make a transistor radio.
Whoop de fucking doo.
The Yellow man has stolen all of its technology from the White man. The Yellow man does not know how to come up with new ideas. THey skulk around in the shadows and wait for the White man. Then their slanty, gooky eyes steal what the White man has created.
May many more Yellow "inventions" blow up in their gooky, slanty eyed faces.
Such is the wish and command of the White man.
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
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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!
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!).
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.
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!
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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!