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Japan Plans Test of 'New Concorde'
Steve Nixon writes "Japan's space agency plans to launch an arrow-shaped airplane at twice the speed of sound high over the Australian outback as early as next month in a crucial test of the country's push to develop a supersonic successor to the retired Concorde."
Some sort of high altitude Concorde replacement is necessary.
:-)
My choice would be a spaceplane of sorts that takes parabolic trajectories. I've been hearing about plans of a craft of this type that would get you from NY to Tokyo in 45 minutes.
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Wow, when was the last time the US did an experiment for that little money?
Of course, their last one crashed into the desert in a fireball...so perhaps a little extra money could have been put to good use.
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1) Concorde was an engineering marvel that never got stepped up with the times. Japan and France are betting they can make a much more efficient engine that would save on fuel consumption.
2) Large bodies of water. You can't fly the concord at full speed over the continental united states (pretty much squashing SST in America). But you can do it over the vastness of the pacific. If you shorten that route, business men and women will beat a path to your door, check book in hand. So would international parcel carriers.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The United States definitely isn't ready for something like this. With so many airlines going bankrupt because of a super competitive market and absurd fuel costs, I don't see this taking off. (Pun fully intended) ;-)
I don't see too many people using this service, unless somehow they can keep the ticket prices reasonable. And even that isn't very likely, considering the plane is strapped to a rocket.
Calling Concorde a fiscal failure is a little deceptive. Sure, the British and French government's never got their investment back from British Airways and Air France, but they never wanted it back. European government often backs extremely expensive development of aviation projects without requiring the money is paid back. It annoys Boeing and Lockheed no end. But they do it to keep jobs and confidence going in the industry.
And besides, it's cool.
Sometimes you have to look beyond simply making a profit.
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Besides, did they really make you eat 2 movies? Does it hurt?
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You praise this "new" Concorde for basically being a new, slightly improved version of the old one and then bash Boieng for doing pretty much the same thing with its own models. Come on, the Concorde is 40 years old too y'know
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You would rather they tested it over a populated area? It's the closest land area to Japan where they could test. Tests over the ocean might result in a loss of the vehicle, so they go to the Outback where they have lots of land with few people. Makes perfect sense.
Some sort of high altitude Concorde replacement is necessary
The original concorde had a failed business model (granted, noise regulation around some American airports didn't help).
What has fundamentally changed since then, that is likely to make this more successful? I think on the contrary when new "regular" flights such as 787 (or the new Airbus) are somewhat faster and have much better communications (internet, etc), it will make the value proposition for a super-fast, super-expensive flight even more questionable.
Tor
Yeah, and the likes of Boeing and Lockheed get the equivalent of subsidies from the US government. There's no outside competition in their market (defense industry), which annoys Airbus no end ;)
So the XF-103 was a Mach-3 project in 1956-7, a dozen years after the invention of the jet engine. It's now 2005 and there's just one country even trying to make a supersonic passenger aircraft. Sad, sad, sad.
Speaking of "robot controlled", I find it amazing that jets like the 747 don't have a way to detect a loss of cabin pressure and go to a lower altitude.
The plane that crashed in Greece flew on autopilot until it ran out of gas.
Had the autopilot detected the loss of cabin pressure and immediately dropped to the lowest safe altitude (10,000 if there aren't any mountains to run into, for instance), the pilots would have regained consciousness and 150+ people wouldn't have died (not to mention the loss of a very expensive piece of equipment).
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According to Wikipedia:
However, in reality, NASA found itself with a rapidly plunging budget. Rather than trying to adapt their long-term future to their dire financial situation, they attempted to save as many of the individual projects as possible. The mission to Mars was rapidly dismissed, but the Space Station and Shuttle conserved. Eventually only one of them could be saved, so it stood to reason that a low-cost Shuttle system would be the better option, because without it a large station would never be affordable.
A number of designs were proposed, but many of them were complex and varied widely in their systems. An attempt to re-simplify was made in the form of the "DC-3" by one of the few people left in NASA with the political importance to accomplish it, Maxime Faget, who had designed the Mercury capsule, among other vehicles. The DC-3 was a small craft with a 20,000-pound (9 tonne) (or less) payload, a four-man capacity, and limited maneuverability. At a minimum, the DC-3 provided a baseline "workable" (but not significantly advanced) system by which other systems could be compared for price/performance compromises.
The defining moment for NASA was when they, in desperation to see their only remaining project saved, went to the Air Force for its blessing. NASA asked that the USAF place all of their future launches on the Shuttle instead of their current expendable launchers (like the Titan II), in return for which they would no longer have to continue spending money upgrading those designs -- the Shuttle would provide more than enough capability.
The Air Force reluctantly agreed, but only after demanding a large increase in capability to allow for launching their projected spy satellites (mirrors are heavy).
The original space shuttle was just that -- a shuttlecraft not designed to carry heavy cargo into orbit.
At the end of the Apollo era, the politicians had collectively decided to give in to the "spend the money on earth" socialist types and were cutting the budget of a program that had succeeded both politically and technically. NASA had plans to build space stations, go to Mars and also to develop new vehicles to ferry cargo and another for crew. The "DC-3" space shuttle was that.
Instead, to preserve any of it's plans, NASA had to fold in the triumvirate of new spacecraft into one, and that to accomodate the Air Force.
This, in turn, led to the "compromise" design that has plagued the Shuttle since it's inception. fourteen people have died as a result of these compromises, which are namely:
1. Solid rocket boosters. The SS is the only man-rated vehicle of any nation to use SRB's as a primary boost source.
2. Side-carried "payload" -- namely the Shuttle itself. The original DC-3 design was a top-payload vehicle much like every other manned spaceraft. However, the size of the compromiwe vehicle would have required a booster larger than the Saturn V in order to achieve LEO. This, obviously was not enable, so the side-payload "piggyback" design was created using engines on the payload itself as a source of thrust for the vehicle.
Thus, we have what we have, and it is a flying compromise built by the lwest bidder by a company no longer in business for itself (Boeing acquired North American Rockwell.)
Time for a new shuttle, and one that goes back to the original vision.
You yourself mention the reason why this doesnt happen - terrain. An autopilot cannot conduct avoidance measures for other aircraft or terrain, so theres little point in having an auto descend capability, because if it happens over, say, Heathrow then you have a huge possibility of collisions with other aircraft, especially if one of them is going to make sudden, unexpected movements like dive 25,000 feet.
What you need to be asking is why didnt the cockpit oxygen systems work? You have 15 - 30 seconds to put an oxygen mask on at 35,000ft so how was it that neither Pilot or Flight Officer managed to get their (independant) mask on and descend the aircraft?
... if they incorporated research into sonic boom supression/elimination like this, or this.
I think finding a way to supress the sonic boom so that it can fly over any country is critical to the success of any future supersonic plane.
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I'm an aviation buff and pilot, so naturally I agree with you that supersonic travel for the masses is a desirable goal.
The one constant about flight that you can depend on is that airspeed is inversely proportional to the amount of fuel you burn -- the faster you go, the more fuel you're burning for less increases in speed. This is why airliners almost *NEVER* fly at their maximum cruise speed...they fly at the airspeed that will get them to their destination using the least amount of expensive Jet-A.
Efficiency increases in the development of jet engines has mostly stalled and now the airline manufacturers are focusing on materials to improve efficiency (i.e. the Boeing 7E7 long-range aircraft).
The free market will decide the type of planes people will travel on. This is why Concorde is no longer flying. As beautiful as she was, she was a government project funded by European tax payers developed only for the purpose of showing European ingenuity and technological innovation. I would have loved to have flown in Concorde, but the airplane never recouped the billions spent developing/maintaining her. The project was a net loss -- big time.
Perhaps there is some future in Scramjet/Ramjet engines, but in today's market with high fuel prices it's all about fuel consumption per passenger per mile.