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France and Japan Planning New Supersonic Jet
jonerik writes "According to this article from the Associated Press, Japan and France are cooperating on research to produce a supersonic passenger plane that would be able to carry 300 passengers (three times as many as the Concorde) and fly from New York City to Tokyo in a mere six hours. Current plans are for the plane to be able to cruise at mach 2.4 while reducing the noise and high fuel consumption associated with the Concorde during its years of service. Although Japan had previously done extensive research towards building a 250-person mach 1.6 passenger jet, the agreement with France - announced at the annual Paris Air Show on Tuesday - represents a interesting shift in technological alliances given the Japanese aviation industry's longstanding ties to the United States. 'To research closely in this area with the Europeans does represent something new,' said Yoshio Watanabe, an official with The Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies, which is heading the new initiative on the Japanese side."
represents a interesting shift in technological alliances given the Japanese aviation industry's longstanding ties to the United States
Does it really or are they just trying to benefit from France's experiences with the concorde for this project?
Nowhere in the article does it say it'll change it's alliance for anything else.
Sig? What's this sig thing I hear people talking about?
Bing Bing Bing! We have a wrong answer!
Sonic boom is tottaly due to pressure waves created by going faster than the speed of sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom
Except that 3 is irrelevant, for the fact that the flight path looks like this: http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gcmap?PATH=jfk-tyo (thanks to an earlier poster).
Completely wrong. What event horizon?
Shockwaves are caused by an object moving through a fluid faster than the speed of sound (ie: the speed of pressure wave propagation in the fluid). At subsonic speeds, pressure waves bouncing back from an object affect the incoming flow, basically "warning" it of the existance of the object. That's how the fluid can flow smoothly around the object --- the pressure waves caused the fluid's path to change long before it hit the object. At supersonic velocities, the pressure waves don't move fast enough to affect the incoming flow. So the fluid cannot flow smoothly around the object, and a shock wave is created where the fluid has to instantaneously react to the presence of the object.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I hope the project is successful, however, if it doesn't get buy-in from the beginning it could suffer the same fate as Concorde. Although Concorde was a technical marvel, the U.S. did everything it could to scuttle the project, for example, its flight certificate was delayed by the FAA until it was sure the project was busted. The premise of Concorde was fast trans-atlantic flight, but its first scheduled route was Heathrow to Bahrain because countries followed the U.S. and refused flight certificates. By the time the U.S. did grant a heavily restricted certification the lack of orders had made continued manufacture untenable. It's quite ironic that the U.S. refused certification on environmental grounds.
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I'm sure there will be the usual Concorde counter-arguments posted here, some of them are true. It's true that it was a fuel hog and it's true that it was noisy. But if 500 were built instead of just 16 supersonic flight would have become much cheaper. With only 16 all parts were custom built and very expensive. Heck the Concorde has more in common with the SR-71 than a 737. It boggles the mind to think that it cruised faster than an F-18's top speed.
My father worked on the project from the beginning, for those interested here's a link to a couple of photos he took when Concorde 002 made its maiden flight-
http://latte.com/gallery/Concorde-002-First-Fligh