Slashdot Mirror
Son of Concorde
targo writes "BBC reports that EADS is considering a new generation hypersonic commercial aircraft. "Son of Concorde" would be twice as fast, carry twice as many passengers while being much quieter than its predecessor. It would get from Tokyo to Paris in just two hours, US destinations are not mentioned.
However, as Japan's failure last summer suggests, it might not happen too easily."
The biggest cost to space flight is fuel. Most fuel is spend just getting the rest of the fuel off the ground. Of the fuel, 1/8th of the mass is oxygen. It stands to reason, that if we had an air-breathing plane handle the first leg of the journey, we could dramatically reduce the fuel requirements for space flight. It would be great to see something like this used as a launching platform for spacecraft.
Until very recently every plane that flew above Mach 1 had to do it while on afterburners, but I believe the new F-22 Raptor can fly at "super cruise" which is some method of breaking the sound barrier without afterburners, which saves a huge amount of fuel. Last I checked the technology behind that was still secret.
I question whether this proposed airplane will actually fly in the hypersonic region, since to an engineer that means Mach 5 or above. If it can actually make the Tokyo-Paris flight in 2 hours, you could spend a day in Tokyo, fly to Paris, get a night's sleep and live the day all over again in the land of love!
Er, no. Concorde flew above 60,000 feet, where air resistance is much less than the customary 35,000 feet. Concorde was just as a fuel-efficient cruiser as subsonic planes; trouble is, it sucked 25% of it's fuel on take-off...
I think the aerospace industry should forget about hypersonic transports for now. Given the fierce heat dissipation problems that plagued the A-12/YF-12A/SR71 program, going beyond Mach 3.0 will require some pretty major breakthroughs in materials to fly even at over 200,000 feet altitude for near-space hypersonic flight.
Here is what I would prefer they do:
1. Forget about Mach 2.0 flight. Limiting the top cruise speed to around Mach 1.7 would drastically reduce materials cost, and would allow for extensive use of composite materials which will dramatically reduce the weight of the plane.
2. By limiting the top speed to around Mach 1.7, it also means there is less need for exotic jet engine designs, which also reduces development costs. We could, for example, develop an engine for this new SST as a derivative of the Rolls-Royce Trent engine now found on many of today's widebody airliners. That could also mean the engine will meet today's strict rules for exhaust emissions, especially oxides of nitrogen emissions.
3. Design the shape of the plane so it reduces the pressure wave buildup that causes the sonic boom and/or direct the energy of the sonic boom away from the ground.
4. Design the plane so it seats at least 200 passengers in two class seating (34" seating pitch for Economy and 43-45" seating for premium class).
I think with 2003 aerospace technology such a plane is well within technological reach. And unlike the Concorde, the new plane could probably fly at least the range of the Airbus A330-200 (about 6,600 nautical miles), and will likely meet the very strict ICAO Stage IV regulations for jet engine noise emissions. That will allow the plane to fly most of the world's major routes non-stop, won't be subject to noise restrictions at most of the world's airports, and (if they can eliminate the sonic boom problem) even allow for over-land flying that could mean cutting flight times as much as 40%.
The flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo flies over Russia, not over the North Pole. I'd guess the routes from other airports in Europe also do this.
This is a European adventure, and if they want to subsidize it, have fun. Boeing tried and failed. And I'm not talking about that fuel-sucking high-subsonic Chronic Snoozer (I mean, Sonic Cruiser), they failed to pull off a viable supersonic plane before that.
But it will have a tough time getting clearance for the USA.
More annoying than jet noise are sonic booms. They are not going to be acceptable (by law) over populated areas. Therefore, any service is limited to coastal American airports (like New York City) because there just are not many airports approachable over ocean routes. Atlanta, BWI, Seattle and Orlando -- forget it (unless you want to swing way south around the FL peninsula first). LAX, NY, San Fran, New York and Boston are pretty much it, and this new aircraft would be subject to new sound analyses and intense public stakeholder scrutiny. And not many people need to fly in these planes, so they derive no benefit in having a very loud plane near their homes. It better be quiet and drop subsonic long before it approaches the coast to have a hope of landing in the USA.
As for the Air Force, I've sat on a bucolic mountaintop, enjoying the winter view and serenity, only to have a B-1 come ripping by doing low-level supersonic training. Kind of felt like a pillowfight body shot. Funny thing was, I never saw the Lancer!
Sure, a supersonic airliner would be much higher, but the sonic booms would still be unacceptable.
The price of a ticket should be no more than a 747 if Jones' calculations are correct. Some preliminary calculations show that natural gas would be even better for this system than normal jet fuel but it wouldn't be absolutely necessary.
Seastead this.
Just building such an aircraft would be an engineering marvel. You're talking about building a commercial aircraft that flies faster than the SR-71, and potentially higher. And instead of moving 2 guys in pressurized flight suits and some cameras with the need for refueling every ~2 hours, you want it transport a few hundred people in relative comfort half way around the world? Just getting any airfram to 4 MACH without melting is quite an accomplishment of materials and aerospace engineering.
"There is a reason why the modern concorde died, and it wasn't only because of the accidents that occured -- it had to do with the fact that there isn't a market for super high speed travel."
Richard Branson disagrees and was willing to put money behind it. He wanted to add the old concordes to his Virgin Atlantic's fleet. His argument was that he had looked at the numbers and the Concorde was actually profitable on a per flight basis and that it was tremendously powerful for marketing purposes. So, if the concorde was full most every flight and they weren't losing money...
Branson's point was basically that the concorde's alleged unprofitability was just a persistent marketing campaign and that British Airways had just decided that it could just make more money shifting its customers over to it's regular fleet of bigger planes.
Now I don't know if Branson is right or wrong, but at least one person who was willing to put a lot of money on supersonic transport thought he could make money on it. I'm willing to believe that there is some combination of economics and engineering that make sense for faster air travel. Supersonic planes might not make sense for big airlines that have invested in large monolithic fleets, but what makes me think Branson might be right about the concorde's reputation being the result of negative marketing is the knee jerk reaction that you all have had to the prospect of renewed supersonic flight.
I'd like to see the real numbers on the concorde... operating costs versus revenue, development costs aside (which were paid for by European taxpayers). But just believing a large corporation when it says that nobody can successfully operate a supersonic aircraft just because they couldn't is just a bit too much blind faith in my book.
By going with a smaller aircraft, Learjet sized, you can reduce design and manufacturing costs. That and you can target the filthy-rich-let's-buy-a-trip-on-a-Soyuz-for-fun market instead of the save-bucks-at-all-costs airline market.
Once a few supersonic bizjets are on the market, it would be easier to scale the designs up to airliner sizes.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons