Slashdot Mirror
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."
The plane will carry 300 Japanese passengers or 150 American passengers.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
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