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."

Comments

This is the next step

[Crixus]

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.

  Burt Rutan WHERE ARE YOU?! :-)

  Sign me up.

Re:This is the next step

[dtmos]

You obviously do not fly across the Pacific very often. Realizing that you're flying at 550 mph when technology to fly at 1400 mph was introduced in the 1970s becomes really excruciating after about 10 hours into the flight.

To the point that you'd pay a significant surcharge to already be at your destination, asleep in your hotel room.

The high fuel consumption difficulty mentioned in TFA is what kept Concorde off of the Pacific routes; if that is resolved as the Japanese intend, I see a nice market for this plane.

Re:This is the next step

[Tyler Eaves]

Supersonic flight means that a miniscule problem can sometimes cause the whole damned thing to disintegrate in mid-air into scrap metal.

That's simply bullshit. There is NOTHING magical about being supersonic. In fact, drag (and thus stress on the airframe) actually dips DOWN quite a bit just through the sound barrier. This is why you see few if any planes that just barely break mach 1. If it has enough thrust to go supersonic at all, it'll get to at least mach 1.7 or so. Mach 2 is NOT rocket science. This is not the shuttle re-entering at Mach 30.

Only 10 million?

[TurdTapper]

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.

Two reasons:

[mekkab]

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.

Re:I don't get it.

[onion2k]

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.

Re:there's a need for it

[matt4077]

well, developing it in japan doesn't mean that they are planning to use it (only) there. There is certainly a market for this between all three major economic areas: North America, Europe, Asia. The Japanese will certainly be happy to sell it.

Besides, did they really make you eat 2 movies? Does it hurt?

Why?

[f97tosc]

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

Re:Looks like ...

[magarity]

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.

Re:Yeah, but is it robot controlled?

[DigitalRaptor]

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).

Re:Yeah, but is it robot controlled?

[Richard_at_work]

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?