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

Seen it already

[Anonymous Coward]

This was seen in the skies over Tokyo in the 1960s. At least the beak is the same.

Yeah, but is it robot controlled?

[N8F8]

It ain't cool unless it got a robot.

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?

Re:Yeah, but is it robot controlled?

[David Horn]

To quote from an experienced airline pilot:

"If the depressurization is catastrophic, i.e., a structural failure, like a hatch or cargo door, the flight crew is totally surprised and a little bit shocky. The Captain and co-pilot experience strange physiological events and are thinking, "What the heck is going on?" At an altitude of 34,000 feet, the next thought had better be, "Oh s***t, I need to get on oxygen right now!" If they do not, then it is lights out.

2. Altitude chambers are realistic training devices, but the students are expecting the event and are anxious to see how long they can maintain useful consciousness. Most young pilots can maintain 20-30 seconds. In a real event, lung pressure is sharply reduced as the pilots gasp in surprise. While the brain is in denial, the clock is running, and unconsciousness is only a few seconds away.

3. Since the beginning of high altitude airline operations (60 years or so), crew oxygen bottle valves have been mistakenly turned off, or rather, failed to be turned on when that bottle is replaced for normal maintenance or refill. Part two of this scenario- the pilots fail to find the closed valve during preflight. Then, when the crew tries to use their quick donning masks... oops!"

Re:Yeah, but is it robot controlled?

[tyler_larson]

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 technology is there, but they decided that it's safer not to implement it that way. Sensors do alert the pilot if the cabin pressure exceeds safe levels, but the plane never takes control away from the pilot.

Consider the facts:

• The highest "safe" (i.e. allowed) altitude without pressurization or oxygen is 12,500 feet.
• Mountain peaks are often thousands of feet above that level.
• Pilots have ample time (i.e. useful consciousness) to put on their oxygen masks in the event of depresurization. (Ever been in an aircraft that depressurized at altitude? I have. There's time.)
• If the plane is flying so high that the pilot won't have plenty of time to assess the situation and put on his mask, one of the two must wear his oxygen mask at all times.
• In the event that some major system on the aircraft malfunctions (like the pressurization system), the chances of another system malfunctioning because of some related damage are higher. In that case, having the aircraft make course adjustments on its own without the pilot's input could cause even more disasters.

All things considered, the existing system was deemed the safest. We may never know the full details of the recent crash in Greece, but we can be sure that there was more to the story than just that.

That being said, I would also point out that there is some merit to your argument. There have been enough crashes like the one in Greece to warrant further investigation--yes, it has happened multiple times that jets have depressurized and flown on autopilot until they run out of fuel. And in some of these cases, fighter jets have intercepted these craft in the air and found things like frosted over windows and a fully unconscious crew. Spooky.

The technology exists (though, admittedly not in the older 737s). Modern civilian aircraft can navigate between any two points on their earth avoiding terrain and reporting their location and status to ATC, all without pilot intervention. If the airport and aircraft are properly equipped (most aren't), they can even land unassisted by the pilot. But while we tend to tolerate some degree of human error in almost everything, if some undamaged computer or mechanical component fails to perform adequately, inquiries and lawsuits always follow.

The equipment to do all this is frighteningly expensive, but available. It's reliable, but not foolproof. But then again, the same goes for a human pilot.

So is it worth it? I don't know.

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.

Re:This is the next step

[vought]

And realizing that planes occasionally will violently break up into little pieces at supersonic speeds, with no hope of survival, when some tiny thing goes just a tiny bit wrong... makes you realize that getting to Japan in four hours might not be so important after all.

Like when the Concorde lost part of it's rudder at Mach 2 over the Atlantic and no one knew until a few minutes before landing?

Drag (the force that pulls badly-fastened cargo doors off of 747s) is reduced at Supersonic speed. The Concorde wasn't lost during supersonic flight, and a supersonic passenger aircraft has never been lost in revenue service because of structural failure.

The Concorde went down shortly after takeoff because a piece of metal on the runway pierced a fuel tank and started a catastrophic fire. In other words, the accident happened when most aircraft accidents happen: during takeoff or landing, the two most dangerous parts of any flight, no matter the aircraft's type, purpose, or cruising speed.

None of the giants of supersonic flight (MiG-25, SR-71, A-12, Concorde) were ever lost due to structural failure during supersonic flight - so your post about "no hope of survival" when a supersonic plane breaks up makes little sense to me. There's little hope of survival in anything that happens to come apart at over 20,000 feet.

I must admit that after reading your post, it was tempting to advise you to have a rectocraniotomy, but I think Slashdot needs more info and less flaming. I hope my simple presentation of facts will enlighten you.

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.

This is Japan we're talking about

[BlackCobra43]

The entire PLANE is probably a robot. With superfluous robot crew and robot stewardesses with creepy hands.

Re:This is Japan we're talking about

[Drooling Iguana]

No, no, the plane turns into a robot.

I don't get it.

[bigtallmofo]

The Concorde first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of French and European industrial acumen. But the planes were retired from commercial service in October 2003, never having recouped the billions of tax dollars invested in them.

The article did a good job writing up all the past failures of this Japanese program, but one thing that was conspicuously absent was a rationale for why Japan is doing this at all. Considering the fiscal failure of the Concorde, I would expect any article on this topic to include what the "next generation" plans to do differently other than just niftier technology.

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.

there's a need for it

[PureCreditor]

i think there's a decent-size market of businessmen between North American and Japan/China that will appreciate the HUGE time savings when frequently traveling across the Pacific Ocean. Instead of having to eat 3 meals, 2 movies, and 1 hibernation, a businessman can depart San Francisco at 9am, have brunch on the plane, browse the internet and work on polishing his powerpoint presentation, take a quick 1.5 hr nap, and arrive at Shanghai at 7:30am, refreshed, and ready to meet with his business partners.

what we need is a Concorde-replacement, not more bureaucracy and political bickering.

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?

But how much fuel does it use?

[tepples]

How much energy does it take to break the sound barrier? I'm curious because I know that relatively cheap oil (< $200 per barrel) will end in a few decades, and there don't yet seem to be any renewable jet fuels. After it becomes too expensive to extract oil from the ground, how are airlines going to keep their birds in the air?

Re:But how much fuel does it use?

[msobkow]

Back in high school the military had brought over one of their choppers. The pilot told us one of the "cool" things about the jet turbine engine was that it could run on almost anything in a pinch, including alcohol, diesel, and gasoline.

That being the case, I don't see why you couldn't use biodiesel or methanol/ethanol to fuel a jet engine. There might be issues with the power curve for some models, but that likely just means changing the design parameters for future aircraft.

Our technical peak was the 60's?

[HairyCanary]

When was the last time we sent someone to the moon? The 60's. And the last time a supersonic plane was developed? The 60's. Is it just money? Why else did we begin to achieve notable success in aerospace in the 60's, and then backslide to where we are now? By 2020 we hope to be back where we were in the 60's. Great.

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.

Supersonic security lines?

[BucksCountyCycleGeek]

And I for one would like to welcome our Mach 2 Japanese overlords...

Hey. That one actually seemed plausible. Oh well...

OK, seriously. Yes it's all well and good to go Mach 2 but this sounds like another pork barrel (rice basket?) project on the part of the Chinese. Aircraft speed is increasingly becoming less relevant to total travel time. Traveling to Asia will always take the better part of a day. There will always be an hour's drive to the airport, a two hour security buffer time, then 1 hour of customs on the other side. It gets even worse when you consider that Japan might not be your final destination.

8 hours is optimistic because the developers don't seem to have a plan for getting rid of the sonic boom, which means the airliner will have to fly overwater instead of over Canada. That might make supersonic flight to Asia only possible from the West Coast, not the East Coast.

When enough processes have been revamped to make traveling to Japan like going to New York for a day then maybe a supersonic transport might be worthwhile.

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:Not really very impressive.

[pohl]

The Concorde carried 100 passengers at Mach 2, or 50 passengers per Mach...this new plane will do three times the number of passengers-per-Mach as the Concorde, which works out to a rate of advancement of 3.75 passengers-per-mach-per-year.

I just wrote that because I thought passengers-per-Mach was an amusing metric.

Mark Twain's view on it

[panurge]

Mark Twain (who was a lot more than the author of Tom Sawyer) was of the view that the perfect way to travel was slowly, on a boat, across the Pacific.

Perhaps our CEOs and salesmen would actually work better if they had slower travel and had to organise their lives and companies in a more structured way. Perhaps they'd have to delegate more? Find local representatives they could trust? Learn to use video conferencing properly? Even make better business decisions.

Yes, I do know this is heresy on slashdot. And you know what? I don't care. Not now I know that Linus uses potty words and my last illusion is broken.

Re:Mark Twain's view on it

[TheRaven64]

I agree. Almost anything really time-critical can be done remotely now. A cruise liner can travel at around 35 knots. At this speed it would take roughly 100 hours - just over four days - to get between the UK and the USA. If I could have a comfortable cabin and an Internet connection, I could be just as productive on the trip as I could be at home. Get the speed up to 70 knots (two days) and price it competitively with aircraft and I'd use it.

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:Arrow shaped, hmm

[twifosp]

Cool but is it tested for aerodynamics?

Nope, they are just going to wing it. According to the article, there aren't even any engineers on the project. Only anime artists who are concerned with making the shape "as arrow as possible".