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Japan Plans Test of 'New Concorde'

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yes-please-go-faster-please dept.

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."

5 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. Seen it already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. This is the next step by Crixus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:This is the next step by dtmos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  3. This is Japan we're talking about by BlackCobra43 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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  4. Supersonic security lines? by BucksCountyCycleGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.