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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."
"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."
The U.S. aviation industry has no desire to build these aircraft. The FAA prohibits supersoinc flight over US Soil @ any altitude without prior special approval.
I don't think US carries have ever been that interested in supersonic aircraft. One of the biggest hurdles is the prohibition against going supersonic over land which would drasictally limit the number of possible routes. I would make sense for Japan to do such research in that much of thier flying time would be over water anyway. I will be interesting to see if this actually catches on though. Boeing was working with the Russians for a while and nothing panned out there. Nor did anything pan out on the mach .98 plane they were designing.
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
Do you want to be sitting on an airliner that was designed from the ground up in a mere 18 month's? I sure don't. That's not a very long time to do thorough testing. Your thinking of software and computer, that move so fast. Software and computers that are always crashing, need reboots, and full of security holes. I would also think it would be awefully hard to get all those custom engineered parts designed and built that quickly, especially when you have to build, or retrofit a huge factory to make them.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Its because large scale technological advances aren't marketable. I mean, ultimately that's why the Concorde project was left to die out. The costs associated with maintaining the Concorde was prohibitive, so they just peacefully let it die.
The technological advances are still being attained at a good clip, but we don't see them because profit margins are maintained by being safe and marketable while calling yourself "innovative", not by actually being innovative. Its part of the reason people want to get rid of NASA, because it doesn't give the masses something easily consumable like a "War on Terror" or welfare or porn or the internet or whatever...
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
The $1.8 Million investment should indicate that this is just a study, and that it's probably a lot of hype for whatever reason at the most famous air show in the world.
Seeing Japan and France in the news together also makes me wonder if this is meant to assuage some of the bust up over the iter reactor.
At any rate, I'm a bit surprised that the article emphasizes that this is France and Japan, and not Airbus and Japan - as this implies that France is doing this outside of Airbus. Interesting none the less, and I'm sure time will tell.
How interesting. You Yanks didn't seem to mind during the Revolutionary War.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Another post mentions that there's no interest in the US in a supersonic jet, because of restrictions over land. This says nothing of Reagan's old Orient Express hypersonic proposal, or the basic desire to furnish jets for overseas flight.
Look at it from another perspective... What does the US bring to the table, any more. G.E.'s new jet engine research facility is in India. US software jobs are migrating to India, and the semiconducter industry has been migrating to the Far East for over a decade. We're even starting to oursource our weapon systems. "If present trends continue," (and I'm hopefully quoting Lester Thoreau of MIT on this) by the time the keel is laid on any supersonic jet, the only thing the US will have to offer is overpaid executives.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The internet/voip and other communication mediums have obsoleted the necessity for face to face contact and the costs associated with business travel. This is why (at least in the US) airlines are going bankrupt every single year. Only southwest manages to survive, but that's because they are like the walmart of the skies.
What does this have to do with the story? Did a frenchman bite you when you were young or something? The western world treats you like a troll and ignores you.
You know, the Americans eat more cheese than the French. And without France you might well still be a British colony. Damn uppity colonials ;)
Me (Blog)
France's bid to build ITER is the backed by the EU, so we're talking 450 "mega-people" and 10+ "giga-dollars" of GDP.
And it is in fact the EU that has promised to build the project on its own anyway if it doesn't go through internationally.
The whole world treats the US as damage and goes around it.
Erm, that was Europe, the largest economy in the world, not France. And what IS this sudden anti-French thing? They have a dubious colonial history like every other large developed nation. What IS the problem? Is it the Iraq invasion? Because, erm, only two countries in the EU participated in that, and one of them since withdrew, the other is under pressure from its people to do so.
Me (Blog)
A plane flies for 35 years and has one accident, what do you want them to learn exactly, not to try it again??
The Concorde project started in the 50's, you think it just might be a little bit possible that airplane design is different today than it was 50 years ago? Or you think maybe we haven't learned anything in the last 50 years?
Are you just assuming they are strapping rockets and fuel tanks onto a plane and sending it on its merry way? Isn't the risk of an accident 50 years down the road worth the benefits of technological improvement during that time?
Current jet aircraft, military & commercial, can now fly no faster than they did 35 years ago. The problem is that we, in the US, spend all of our time and political energy bitching about stupid shit like abortion, stem cell research, prayer in schools and "tax and spend Democrats" vs. "borrow and spend Republicans". The fact is that the EU and Japan (and soon China) are going to leave our uneducated, lazy, nit-picking, politically correct, sorry asses eating technological dust.
If you cannot measure it, it ain't real.
I agree with your general thrust, except for point 3.
The engineering goals (efficiency @ speed @ altitude) dictate certain design parameters -- wing shape & area, fuselage size, engine design, etc. The problem is, an airplane designed to fly for 10,000 miles at mach 1.6 at 50,000 feet is *not* going to fly efficiently at subsonic speeds. So, alas, no, the pilot won't be able to just "throttle down" for 3000 miles... it would make the plane vastly more expensive to operate.
multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
Concorde had the safest flight record of any commericial plane. The more ironic thing is that concorde crashed because a piece fell of a different plane, and the debris was lieing on the runway, punctured the tire which ripped into the underside of the wing causing a massive fuel leak which got ignited by the engines and therefore crashed and blew up.
Remember more people die per year on Britains roads alone than the total number of air crashes per year. It is by far the safest method of travel.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
These long jumps are the place for supersonic travel. With the hours of overhead of travel, reducing NYC/Paris from 6h to 2h makes very little of difference: you're still taking a whole day each way. At 600MPH, though, that overhead plus 15h travel winds up taking two days each way. For a trip that's usually a week, which means 4d travel / 7d total = 57%, down to 29%. Which means less time traveling than visiting, rather than the disproportionate reverse. With those proportions, a weekend trip anywhere in the world starts to be worth taking.
--
make install -not war
But those old planes are a long way from original spec. They'll typically run fairly recent avionics, so it's basically a new plane in an old airframe.
Anyway, cool things happened because back then, they had a plan, did their best, accepted the risks, and improved things as technology allowed. Now we're trying to get it 100% the first time. Why? Lawsuits, I imagine.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
It's just you.
Technological advancement has been increasing at an exponential rate from the beginning; it's just that most of it is occurring at the micro- and nano-scale where you take it for granted. biotech, cloning, the Internet, Google, nano-materials, 133MHz (in 1995) to 3+ GHz today, etc.
Most large-scale tech is also progressing, but you don't notice it at the human-scale, and you won't, until we can build amazing things using bottom-up nanotech instead of top-down bulk-tech.
Consider a better, safer, cheaper and much faster way to get from NYC to Tokoyo with near-future tech: A maglev train via an underground tunnel, in vacuum for frictionless acceleration to ludicrious-speed at the midway point before decel. Currently, tunnel excavation is labor intensive and very EXPENSIVE; precise control over matter and robotic automation will change that.
Power to the Peaceful
The whole world treats the US as damage and goes around it.
US treats the ROW(1) as damage and goes around it...
Sounds more true to me.
(1) ROW: Rest Of World
You're barking up the wrong tree here.
Good seats exists and can be installed, but that is not up to the airplane manufacturer. The interior design is defined by the BUYER, i.e. the AIRLINE.
If you want more legroom and proper trays, complain to your airline, not Boeing or Airbus.
You can have sleeping beds and massage chairs in every seat if you want, but are you willing to pay for it?
One of the reasons you're getting the lousy seating, is that you (the consumer) are not willing to pay the higher price that better seating brings.