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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?
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.
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.
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.
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