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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."
Mr. Burns' Spruce Moose can fly from New York to the Belgian Congo in 17 minutes.
2 hours to cover half the world... It almost sounds like a low-earth-orbit travel arc.
If we couldn't get a supersonic jet to be profitable for less than $2K/ticket, how the hell is a hypersonic jet going to be profitable. I mean, sure, it carries twice the passengers, but if its going twice as fast, can we expect it to burn more fuel, too?
#define DRM chmod 000
They re-routed it, but it still affects the area pretty bad. I've seen strollers being swept around. I hope they fix it if they decide to make a successor.
MY SECRET DIARIES
There are reasons why supersonic travel don't work, and especially in this kind of modern day economy. Firstly, they're damn ineffecient. They suck up fuel like it's not worth anything. Secondly, they're not economically effecient -- even holding twice as mayn people, you're only looking at carrying a relatively small amount fo people. Lastly, the price of development of a plane like this, and the price of the plane itself, is not worth it.
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. People just want to get quickly from one place to another, they dont' want to go super fast. Moreover, people on the ground are already super angry about the sound of jet noise (especially near airforce bases -- I know first hand), and unless there is some sort of boom supression technology, these planes will not fly in the united states.
Our airline industry really needs to try and turn a profit ebfore they continue to waste time and money innovating. Sure the government will bail them out over and over -- like they do for the rail road companies, but I hate wasting my tax money on childlike business tactics by big airlines. Its about time some of these companies developed some responsiblity -- and a supersonic jet is not where it lies.
Let's make bigger planes, and try to keep them at relatively fast speeds. And there's my rant. Do with it as you must.
I think Europe to Japan is a North Pole route, so it's a lot shorter then it sounds.
Much as I love Really Fast things, the enviromental effects will be the big hurdel, not noise.
This sounds like aeronautical vaporware. Boeing's attempt at a higher-speed "Sonic Cruiser" was scrapped last year when the company felt that economical flight at current speeds was the way to go (via the 7E7 project), and the Cruiser wasn't even planning to pass the sound barrier.
It's one thing for EADS to think speed is the way to go, and it's quite another to propose something as ambitious as they have. Based on the article I strongly suspect they're making token research into engine tech but aren't actually trying to design a plane at all here (no mention of fuselage design at all). It's just Fun with Public Relations.
And because of that they dont have to server dinner. Pretty sneaky!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Quote from article about the original Concorde:
The companies decided to retire the famous aircraft after 27 years because it was no longer profitable.
What's the chances of a new Concorde (twice the passengers, twice the speed.. read twice the price) being able to succedd commercially in the near future, especially given the state of the post-9/11 airline industry?
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Nothing beats teleportation so I'm still not buying(not that I could afford a ticket on such an aircraft).
-Tim Louden
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.
Theres a measure of fuel savings at high altitude. Going faster and higher means going further for less fuel... if you can get it up there, of course.
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...
> ... US destinations are not mentioned ...
Because us Americans will complain about the noise so bitterly (why did you move next to the airport, Einstein, if you don't like engine noise? to save a few bucks? then live with the noise!) we'll still be using 1960s technology well into the 22nd century.
Must-not-watch TV!
Have you been enjoying subsonic travel lately? The latest generation of these craft utilize thousands of microprocessors and associated firmeware from FADEC's to laser ring gyro's to seat back entertainment systems. Even the lavatory flush is controlled by a microprocessor. Of course, your fear would be amplified if there was not some form of reliability in these systems and some redundancy. When you enjoy that flight on a 777, you are getting there thanks to all of those systems working nominally. When things go wrong, a microprocessor is most likely helping the crew diagnose whats going wrong. Perhaps the processor has already made a correction and has alerted the crew after the fact the problem has been controlled. Smaller crews, specialized processors to control crew workload. I am sure this aircraft will be evolutionary in that regard, an extension of where we are today wrt the glass cockpit.
Hedley
The BBC article states clearly that they're only doing the research on the technologies, with the aim of producing a flying hypersonic craft with noise reduction down to that of a 747. It also states that they realise full well that there is no commercial market for such a craft right now.
So why are these people researching some technology that has no current market? Obviously because they realise that the market will not always be in the slump that it now is. It's called visionary thinking. The Concorde may have not covered full costs (I don't know enough about that), but it made BA and Air France a fist full of money as tickets cost around $3000 a pop IIRC and there were definitely enough rich people willing to pay those prices for a quick pop to New York or Rio, and those same rich bastards will still be willing in the future when and if this thing ever becomes a real plane.
For the rest of us there's the double decker Airbus A380 that will be making it's maiden flight in 2005.
This article makes two claims about speed that are very different. First it says that new plane will be twice as fast as the old Concorde. Ok, seems like a suspiciously large performance leap, but the concorde at mach 2 to a new plane at mach 4 is possible.
Then it says Paris to Tokyo in 2 hours! Hell no. A quick google search shows the old Concorde flew the route in 7h 54m. Soooo, that means 4 hours for a plane twice as fast. Not two. Two hours is not even close. Nice math, BBC. It would be nice if reporters would bother to think before they write once in a while...
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%.
Strange, I seem to remember Concorde working for 27 years. The Yankees must not be very good at canning things.
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What truth?
There is no dupe
Though I myself am a Greyhound man (17 hrs a weekend to see my girlfriend), there's a large clump of us with deep pockets; and for the above motives, in a market with no competitors, an airline with one of these puppies in their fleet can name its price for tickets and people will buy them. Especially since the Concorde was thought to be the end of all passanger supersonic travel, there's an increased excitement and novelty to this particular prospect. People will want to fly on this thing, and some of those people can actually afford to do so in such a way that the airline and the people behind the plane's construction and production will remain in, or eventually climb to, the black.
Plus all that stuff about it being efficient, quiet, larger capacity and range, twice as fast, yada yada... My point is supersonic travel will always be at least a "going concern" and one day perhaps profitable.
At the very least, it'll make a country look good to have one of these babies -- the prime reason the UK subsidized the unprofitable Concorde.
As I read /. I am struck by the persistence of people saying:
* This can't be done!
* This can't be done economically!
* We shouldn't try because it can't be done.
I just hope the people working on making a plane that will cut down on my travel time have a different attitude. I hope they are asking how can it be done? rather than why can't it be done.
It's easy to be a nay sayer. Nothing exposes genius faster than naysayers proven wrong.
-- $G
Look at the name, Son of COncord. Coincidence?
It seems that banking the future on bigger planes is kind of mistake. It assumes that airlines can fill bigger planes with passengers. This assumption in the past has created inefficiencies in air travel by forcing customers to fly out their way on smaller planes to hubs and only then go to where they wanted to go in the first place. Bigger planes also can force airlines to sell more heavily discounted tickets to fill the planes.
OTOH faster planes can allow passengers to go to where they want to go without useless detours. Faster smaller planes can allow airlines to sell more standard priced tickets and not play the hub and spoke game with prices. And since planes fly at higher altitude we can put more space between planes. More terminals will need to be built to accommodate more flights, but that is happening anyway. And, with less time on a plane there is less chance of customer service issues.
Combined with some thought on other ways to launch planes, and super sonic speed might be practical.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Let me seee...
1 hour to get to airport,
1.5 hours check in before departure,
2 hours flight time,
30 minutes to get baggage
1 hour custums and immagration.
Yep, we need faster air travel.
Particularly this morning when my flight was delayed an hour because the pilot had not arrived and a replacement needed to be found.
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.
It appears the Beeb has confused peak speed with average speed.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, the Great Circle distance from Paris to Tokyo is 6033 miles. Let's round that to 6000 mi. The speed of sound varies with temperature, but using 750mph makes the math easy (at aircraft altitudes, the speed of sound is closer to 700mph).
If it could hold the fuel, the Concorde at Mach 2 (1500mph) could do 6000 miles in four hours. If the EADS jet achieves Mach 4 (3000mph), it could do 6000 miles in two hours. If the entire distance were covered at cruising speed.
My impression (purely from being a passenger) is that it takes half an hour or so for a typical commercial airliner on a 1000 mile flight to reach cruising speed and altitude; the plane will then be at cruising speed for about 60 minutes, and then another 30 minutes is spent in deceleration. Of the 2 hours spent in the air, only half of the time is actually spent at crusing speed.
How long would it take for the EADS-SS to reach Mach 4? And how long would it take it to slow down from that speed to the typical 150mph (+/-) landing speed that current runways are designed for? I doubt the typical passenger is prepared for Michael Schumacher / John Force g-forces on takeoff and landing.
Let's say the EADS-SS takes 45 minutes to reach Mach 4, and another 45 minutes to drop back to landing speeds. Assuming linear acceleration and deceleration, that's an hour and a half spent at an average speed of 1500mph. So 2250 miles of the trip takes 1.5 hours. Transiting the remaining 3750 miles at Mach 4 (3000mph) would take another 1.25 hours, for a total trip of 2.75 hours. [Ignoring any ground taxi times or other delays.]
I would think, fuel-wise (which is basically the only marginal cost of airplane flight), that going from Mach 2 to Mach 4 is more expensive than going from Mach 1 to Mach 2. On the other hand, Mach 1 -> 2 is done in denser air than Mach 2 -> 4, so maybe not.
This could be a great question for a final exam in Engineering Analysis and Synthesis.
Well, not quite, but Melbourne-Frankfurt (with stopover in Singapore), and also LA-Melbourne (a 15-hour nonstop flight, until recently the world's longest scheduled flight). I defy anyone to do those routes and then tell me there's not a latent market for supersonic travel.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I think the parent means planes that have an unstable airframe, like the F-22 Raptor for example, that wont stay in the air without computers keeping it stable. Take that 777, make all the computers in it malfunction and it will still fly, glide at least. Do that to an F22 and it will drop like a rock... I'm not aware of any civilian airliners that would be like this, but maybe they are coming. I would feel less safe flying in one of those than a "traditional" airliner.
You sir, have nothing on people living underneath a military air approach. When a C5 galaxy comes sailing 300 feet over your house at 3am, touches down, and kicks the thrust reversers to full-throttle just so it doesn't run out of runway, come complaining. Nevermind wave after wave of f-15 on practice runs. F15's sound like crashing gongs, and a C5 will take the books off the shelf.
;-)
Military aircraft have almost zero noise abatement requirements. Two years - Hanscom AFB resident. Thankfully, it's a low-traffic airfield.
Concorde didn't use its afterburners while cruising.
http://www.concordesst.com/powerplant.html
Perhaps you should think before you post?
Okay, time's up. The answer is NONE! Nada. Rien. Zilch.
Don't even try to claim that the Raptor would have been such a success if it weren't for those folks from McDonnell-Douglas. Boeing had been building nothing but transport a/c and ISR platforms. Talk about stodgy!
While the concorde did land in New York, it had to drop to subsonic speed over the Atlantic (in accordance with the FAA rule), so the plane is essentially useless for US domestic flights.
They consistently do a fine job of putting the Red Sox in their place... doh!
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.
And after American attempts at VTOL fixed wing aircraft failed, the U.S. acquired British Harriers, and then later assisted in advancing the aircraft's design. And there are British "Dauphin" helos used by the USCG, the Merlin engine in WW2, the Merlin helo used today, the British ejection seats, the British DASS and HUD used in the F/A-22, the list goes on...
Concorde was not just as efficient as other passenger planes, due to it's small size. For every gallon of fuel per passenger mile that a 747 takes, Concorde takes nearly 5.
Living in Minot, ND, home to half of the country's B-52 Stratofortress Bombers, I can tell you that there are very few things louder than those things. Before the latest war in Iraq, they would do quite a bit of their training runs at night, which oddly enough involved them using not only the Air Force Base runways, but the ones at our International Airport(small town, only 4 major flights a day). I live about half a mile from the airport and I can tell you there's nothing like waking up at 2am to the sound of B-52 slowly crawling over your house. It's really quite refreshing.
At subsonic speeds drag increases exponentially as function of velocity. As supersonic speeds the effects of compression, wave drag and viscous airflow have to be taken into account, making things much more complex...
Nope, Minot AFB, Minot, ND. It's the same base that has control over half of the country's nukes. Up here they do have special civilian days every few months where they'll have an air show and they'll have some local bands play on open stages. They give tours of the aircraft, how certain things work, general Air Force knowledge. It's actually kind of neat to check out. I'm sure other bases have a lot of the same kind of things. They usually aren't announced to loudly public but they always have an ad in the newspaper or a radio spot.
not quite. I work for an airline. A positively giddy amount of work goes into flight planning. Shortest path comes into it if you're trying to be quicker, but these days fuel burn and thus cost matters a lot. Trying to maximize your tailwind, reduce headwind, avoiding restricted airspace and following airways (like an interstate in the sky) for air traffic control reasons. This might answer the "hops" you talk about. Its navigational beacons which are often at airports.
Which brings us to tracking. If you're over the open ocean you follow tracks. Its a bit like hunt for red october going through the canyons. This speed, at this altitude through these points to maintain separation. Over land, you can be spotted within a couple hundred miles by your ground-air comms. And theres a lot of those. You are almost right on the airports, depending on where you're flying, type of aircraft and and how many engines you must be within a certain flying time of a suitable airport. Its called ETOPS.
So lots of things to worry about, including weather, but it typically starts with shortest distance.
Decelleration from normal aircraft speed to landing speed would be done whilst in the normal approach queue. However the aircraft would have to slow down to normal crusing speed M0.78 before joining the queue, this slowing could be done whilst decending from whatever flight level EADS-SS operated at e.g. 60,000 ft+ to normal approach queue height of 19,000ft.
On take off the aircraft would have to travel at normal subsonic speeds (to maintain normal seperatation) until it reached at least 35,000 ft at which point it could climb and accelerate away from all the slugs.
Concorde could when allowed go from wheels up (take off) to M1.0 in 5 minutes (100% power with afterburner) and M2.0 in 7 minutes. However this was only done once using a production plane from a lightly used airport with no (paying) passengers and no noise or seperation requirements.
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
Ben Rich, head of Lockheed's Skunk Works and propulsion designer on the SR-71, refused to bid on that idea. "We used titanium. You know anything stronger?" The SR-71 was speed-limited by the melting point of its skin. More power could have been added, but woudn't help. Just cooling the pilot was a major effort. Cooling a big passenger cabin would be really tough.
Ceramics? Maybe someday, but they're brittle, like the Space Shuttle tiles.
While the XB-70 Valkyrie was not quite as fast as the SR-71, it was nearly as fast (Ben Rich in "Skunk Works" tries to tell us it was only Mach 2.5, but that was only for the number 1 XB-70 because when they took it up to Mach 3, parts melted off (the brazing on the honeycomb steel panels came apart) and got ingested in the engines). They fixed that problem on the number 2 XB-70, but they crumped the number 2 XB-70 in a fatal rear-end collision doing a photo op with a bunch of "chase planes", and the XB-70 parked inside the Dayton, Ohio Air Force museum is the Mach 2.5-capable number 1 plane.
Anyway, the XB-70 also experienced the unstart problem. The XB-70 was used for aero research for the SST, and the honkin' sonic booms from the XB-70 were part of what helped discourage the SST. It was also noted that unstarts were pretty scary and would need to be remedied for the SST.
Concord/Concorde has movable inlet ramps for the shock waves -- I wonder if it ever experienced unstarts?
Also, the XB-70 was supposed to use "compression lift" -- they stuffed the six engines in this big, wide pod under the delta wing to get lift from the shock wave. This was supposed to make it much more aerodynamically efficient than the typical supersonic aircraft, allowing it to have intercontinental supersonic cruise range. I also heard that the compression lift didn't quite work up to the expectations of the wind tunnel model tests.
Is anyone considering whether compression lift (apparently there is better fluid modeling software) can result in a more fuel-efficient/longer-range SST?
Actually, the concorde cruised at Mach 2 without afterburners. The afterburners were used for take-off, the acceleration from subsonic to M1.70, and then they were not needed for speeds above M1.7. This is documented in quite a few books about Concorde.
They didn't call it supercruise though, as that is a marketing buzz word developed recently to help sell fighters. There is no maqic about supercruise - it is just a matter of having an efficient intake system that decelerates the air to subsonic speed going into the engine, and an efficient nozzle system to accelerte the exhaust to supersonic speed so you can get net positive thrust.
Kevin Horton
Okay, there are already a lot of +5 comments on this topic, so I suppose this one will probably never get read. But just in case you are reading this...
Regardless of whether it can be done or not, I want to register the opinion that easy, cheap world travel is actually a bad thing. When products and people can get anywhere in the world cheaply, then they do. This leads to single culture kinds of things, which makes you wonder why you were travelling at all! Similar to cultural diversity is the problem with bio-diversity (from which the whole arguement stems). The sheer number of biological invaders is astounding. Consider how many times you've been annoyed by those Japanese beetles (that look a lot like lady bugs). A few years ago, those didn't exist in North America. Now, they exist without bound. You can bet that there will be more and more of these problems in the future.
Yes, I enjoy travel quite a bit. And I don't like the idea of restricting travel. But we need more bio and cultural diversity. It keeps the world healthy.
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