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.
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
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?
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......?
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?
This plane is designed to be bigger, faster, and have far better fuel efficiency.
It's a very different design, and so of course has to go through a lot of testing. Even aircraft based on more conventional technology have to go through this (you don't think they'd put, say, a 747 on the runway without doing test flights to verify the design, right?).
The ony down side to this test is that they won't really learn much from it. The craft or booster failed while taking off, not when cruising under flight conditions.
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...
I guess the poster has never heard of Airbus Industrie.... click here to know more.
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
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.
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.
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.
On behalf of the Darwin Awards Selection Committee, I would like to thank you for your interest in participating in our selection process.
However, in order to be a candidate for the Darwin Awards, one must first be a self-replicating entity whose characteristics can be transferred from one generation to the next. As the aircraft in question was unmanned, and there is no known mechanism by which the craft itself could pass its traits on to its descendants, we must respectfully deny your nomination.
Again, thank you for your interest, and if you find any stories that fulfill the above criteria, do not hesitate to send them to us.
The Darwin Awards Committee
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I always heard they were in to really small 'devices'.... i guess small could equate to 'fast' regarding performance... ;-p
It all has to do with the the available real estate in Japan AFAIK, and the insane pricing of such.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
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
Miko O'Sullivan
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?
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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
Actually, arguably that was the predecessor, and it was actually faster.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Did you read the story? Actually can you read?
Not a single component of the jet model failed. What failed was the solid fuel booster rocket that was supposed to bring it into position for testing.
Which is a pity.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Picture 15. Wings clearly visible. The other interesting bit here is that loads of people have posted that the vehicle was larger then the booster. In this shot you can clearly see (assuming the slidware on the japanese site is correct) that the booster is larger then the vehicle.
Which leads me to think that if there was any problem it should have been with the booster.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
On a second thought. You are right. Wings are not visible in all precrash shots (you can see them only at launch). In all further shots you can clearly see a cilindrical object that looks like the booster flying solo. So I guess the booster lost the vehicle somewhere on the way up long before it crashed.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
And lemme tell you, having taken the TGV from Laussaune, Switzerland to Paris, France, it was one hell of a ride. It just keeps accelerating for the longest time.. and it's an even more comfortable ride the faster it goes.
I truly wish one would be built in the US.
The important technology isn't just in the trains it's also in the track and the monitoring and control systems on the network. Similarly with the Japanese Shinkanshen. Whilst these trains could run on regular track, indeed a Shinkanshen was run on a section of British track and the Eurostar regually does so, they can only do so at well below their regular speed.
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?
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.
That would be the TU-144, dubbed 'Concordski' due to its amazing resemblance to Concorde. Not coincidental, as they stole early Concorde plans! However the Russians could never get the wing right, so it had to have those ridiculous rabbit ears to avoid stalls at low speed. The Paris Air Show crash which basically did for this plane commercially is believed to have been due to the pilot taking evasive action to avoid a French military jet and overstressing the airframe. Neat site about it here. Good site about Concorde here too.
"Information wants to be paid"
Although The Tu-144 never carried a single fare-paying passenger. Guess if you want to get into stupid "who was first?" penis-measuring contests, you'd have to pick your criteria carefully depending on which aircraft you wanted to win.
The one, and only, thing I think is good about Microsoft is that they don't kill themselves to be the first on the market. They try to learn from others' mistakes.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
No. The "sonic" (also known as "trans-sonic") flight regime is the one in which there exist both subsonic and supersonic flows on different parts of the airframe. This is well-accepted terminology in aerodynamics. Interestingly, many current commercial jets fly at "sonic" speeds fairly regularly...they're just not awfully efficient at it.
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.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.