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The Future of Flight
Roland Piquepaille writes "With "High Times," the Economist delivers a very long and extremely well-documented article about the future of aviation during the next fifty years. It tells us about pilotless planes, with 32 countries currently developing more than 250 models of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), primarily for combat purposes. The article also looks at future civilian pilotless planes and at the future of personal aviation. But what captivated my attention in this article was the last part about future commercial supersonic and hypersonic (at least five times the speed of sound) planes. In particular, the Economist describes the HyperSoar. "The HyperSoar is a concept for a craft flying at ten times the speed of sound and able to reach any point on the globe within two hours." This overview contains more details and references about the HyperSoar which would fly from Los Angeles to New York in 35 minutes."
Eclipse Aviation of Albuquerque, New Mexico have produced a Air taxi capable of carring 5 people upto 1500 Km, but for this to be widely adopted 'free flight' must first exist. This allows piolts to plot there own jouneys, cutting distances and utlising more airspace. 'free flight' relies on each aircraft having it's own computer that allows aircraft to avoid each other. For more information see this weeks (13/12/03) New Scientist p28-33.
Airplanes are stable or unstable due to their roles.
Fighters are inherently unstable, to allow the radical combat sequences dictated by dogfighting. It's true some of the current fighters are unflyable without constant computer assisted tuning.
Large passenger jets ARE inherently stable. The use of computers to control the flight surfaces are dictated by demands for maximum fuel economy, which means constant re-adjustment of CG's, trim, and other parameters.
Nothing in their design prevents them from being flown on purely hydraulic controls in an emergency.