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Successful Supersonic Jet Launch
Cave_Monster writes "Japan has hailed the test of a supersonic jet in South Australia's outback as a success. Unlike the attempt in 2002, this test saw the jet launch successfully from Woomera, South Australia." From the article: "Data gained through the test will be used in joint research by Japan and France towards a next-generation supersonic jet. No budget projections have yet been made for the entire project, which Japanese hope will produce a supersonic passenger jet capable of flying from Tokyo to New York in just under six hours - less than half the current time of a Concorde." We reported on the plan to do this, earlier.
I think it would be cool to travel Mach 2 on a commercial airliner. But chances are some new type of propultion will come along before this project finishes.
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This is the ultimate dupe...the "Tokyo Express" was conceived in the late 60s, IIRC. The US Gov't offered plane builders a million dollars per mach number in hopes of having a supersonic, near orbital plane get from New York to Tokyo in a few hours. It never got done.
Or as Ben Rich, former head of the Skunk Works, said it wouldn't matter if it was a billion dollars per mach number.
Other than that, hopefully this will continue complementing the work of Airbus.
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I wonder how long it would take a hypersonic vehicle then, like an hour and a half?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
"No budget projections have yet been made for the entire project, which Japanese hope will produce a supersonic passenger jet capable of flying from Tokyo to New York in just under six hours - less than half the current time of a Concorde."
OK. So what's the rush? New York leaving?
... since they grounded the fleet.
I wonder how they're going to make that time with the current FAA restrictions that do not permit supersonic travel by passenger jets within the continental United States?
Reminder: Apple owns 1/255th of the internet.
Sub orbital hops would be quicker & cooler
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The linked article states the jet is designed to fly at mach 2 which is the same as Concorde (albeit with three times as many passengers) so how is it supposed to fly Tokyo > New York in half the time Concorde could do it if it goes the same speed?
I for one welcome our new super-sonic overlords.
... but what about the financial feasibility? The concorde went belly up because it was unprofitable, not because a concorde crashed.
And the concorde only flew supersonic over water. There would be too many complaints if it flew supersonic over land. This plane wouldn't be any different.
Uhhh, the current journey time of the Concorde is approaching infinity. It won't be hard to beat that.
Oh well, what the hell...
If my aging memory serves correct, one of the key issues that killed off America's SST project was potential damage to the Ozone layer. Has this problem been solved, or simply ignored?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
...flying from Tokyo to New York in just under six hours - less than half the current time of a Concorde.
Something's wrong here. Flying from Tokyo to NY on a 747 takes about 12-13 hours. I expect a Concorde would do it in about 6 hours too.
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If my aging memory serves correct, one of the key issues that killed off America's SST project was potential damage to the Ozone layer. Has this problem been solved, or simply ignored?
... perhaps one of the more aggressive ideas like the National Aerospace Plane concept of the 1980's.
I'm not certain which SST program you mean (SST just means supersonic transport, and includes the Concorde)
People were worried about ozone damage, but unless it was really catastrophic an environmental concern like that would never stop a major project if there was money to be made, short of a major international treaty.
No, economic and engineering factors killed the NASP and similar projects. It was cold-war thinking that wasn't even doable on a military budget at the time, and is questionable if it's doable now. It certainly had no chance of producing a profitable civilian commercial venture. Sure, NY to Tokyo in 2 hours is great, but not if you have to play 1.5 million for a ticket.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Right now, I could walk the distance in less than half the current time Concorde would take, unfuelled and in museums.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
With peak oil looming, shouldn't they be researching alternative ways of powering air travel?
That means the flight time will equal the sum of the taxi/security/queing times at either end. Quite an improvement.
Actually, "over the top" flights are the standard procedure for the suggested New York to Tokyo and similar flights. Happens every day.
That Woomera was named after an Aboriginal device to assist spear-throwing?
Wikipedia link
I've always thought it's a very fitting name for the town since it's where most of Australia's missle and rocket launches are done from. Whether it is just co-incidence or not I don't know, but it's quite appropriate.
..im on A SUPERSOOOOOONIC PLANE right now....
...yyooouuu caaAAAANNN TEEELLLLLL Byyyyy theee.....
... dddooopppppleeRRR EFFECT ON mmmmyyy teeexxxxxttttt....
"Derp de derp."
First sushi, now this [knock on wood]! Keep it up Japan!
At Mach 10, you're talking a shade over 1 hour, 10 minutes. This assumes that the Australians (the only ones with a working Scramjet) can build a commercial version. If you're having to rely on a conventional ramjet, efficiency drops dramatically above mach 6.
The Americans abandoned the advanced passanger airliner project (which was blended-wing) in the late 90s, and there is no obvious indication that NASA has done much work on waveriders - some, mostly by being beaten to it by a bunch of Scots (and they were amateur rocket enthusiasts at that!) - but really not much. The US military seems to be much more interested in slow-moving ROVs and fully-automated robots, so don't look to them for producing anything worthwhile any time soon.
The Australians have the Scramjet, but nothing to speak of to put it on. The joint efforts by the Russians and the ESA to produce an orbiter seem to be stymied by the religious belief in rockets for everything. What we need is either someone who can get these two groups together (a particle accelerator might overcome the repelling forces) OR a non-aligned group with sufficient financial and intellectual backing to reverse-engineer from existing work a combined solution.
Last one to hypersonic mass transit is a chicken!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They didn't mention the earlier test, when halfway there they ran out of gas, and had to turn around and go back.
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Well, after years of educating the world, giving away our technology to the Orient and producing lawyers (50% of the world's lawyers!) instead of scientists and engineers, we are no longer capable of leading the world in tech innovations. Get used to it: Japan and China will own the major technological innovations and discoveries 25 years from now. All you guys who slept through Physics and ended up with a Liberal Arts degree instead contributed to this situation. Whine if you want, but we are at war with Japan and China (economically) and most USA Citizens can't even understand the issues. It took us 10 years to get to the moon in the 60's, we are estimating 12-14 years to do it today, and I bet it takes longer than that. Japan will be mining the moon for essential minerals before we ever get there again. We don't have anyone in the US capable of develping an SST.
Here's the other thing: If we did develop an SST before Japan, they would not let us land it in Japan. They would hold us up through safety inspections and paperwork, and finally, the only SST allowed to make trips to Tokyo would be the Japanese-sponsered version. If you think the US Patent process is obstructive to innovation and economic progress, you should compare it to Japan's patent system, which is ruinous to all but Japanese businesses.
I would suggest reading, "The Asian Mind Game" by Chin-Ning Chu, but it would be more productive for folks to read a few science and engineering texts and get to work!
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Supersonic long range air travel SHOULD be the way we are heading, but everyone's so freaking scared of them now because of the concorde crash, which was only fault of that airplane in a miniscule way. Seriously, I don't get what people are so scared of. The thing flew for over 30 years with only one crash that wasn't really its fault (re: debris on the runway flattened a tire which ruptured a fuel tank). Hell, in that time, how many passenger jets have gone down? dozens. And people still fly on those.
Engine tech is what made it so expensive. Above mach 1, turbojets get horridly inefficient and hard to maintain. What we need to do is progress to ramjet technology for the cruise, and turbojets for take off and landing. Rams will get you up to mach 5 if you want to push that far. And the whole thing could be hydrogen powered (required for higher machs and decent efficiency doing it). Mach 3 or 4 would be pretty ideal.
I'm sure it would be easier to build than it sounds, no pun intended.
You people of earth make me laugh at the imbecilic devices you create. Mach 2? Passengers?
Destroying the Lunar Lander and watching your spacemen fly as we threw them gave us the intimate knowledge into your stupidity. Cast your imbecilic behavior aside and bow down to me, then I will teach you to fly yourselves. If you cannot after my much teaching, my cohorts Ursa and Non shall assist you.
Kneel and vote: http://zod2008.com/
ETOPS, Extended Twin-engine Operation Performance Standard, is what you are trying to remember the name for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
It might be a unimportant factor if the "space plane" will be flying a boost-glide profile, in which after obtaining its initial trajectory, it glides at high Mach for most of the rest of the way.
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We don't need no stinkin' sig!
People, if you're going to troll, do it right. That points to a pumpkin. A freakin Jack-o-lantern. Go to google, find a freaking mirror, and post an actual offensive link.
Honestly, nobody takes pride in what they do nowadays.
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Actually I would prefer to see a "really" cheaper way to travel, for instance I find it regretable that Dirigible are not more investigated.
The Hindenburg crash killed them originally, but people do forget that the Dirigible was actually quite safe, and could probably be safer now (even hydrogen based dirigible) and they need much less infrastructure than planes.
I believe that the state sponsored duopole (Boeing/Airbus) nature of aeroplane manufacturing is a strong factor stiffling innovation there.
Boeing's left themselves vulnerable to no longer being the top dog by resting on the 747.
I dunno about that. Boeing was poised to build their "Sonic Cruiser," which would significantly increase the cruising speed of a commercial jet, bump it right up against the speed of sound. But they dropped that idea, and instead have bet their future on the 787/Dreamliner, which is a subsonic aircraft configured for short to mid-range flights, with only about 200-300 passengers.
Thing is, the 787 is supposed to be much cheaper and more reliable to maintain, because it's got all these fancy microsensors in it, and most importantly it's supposed to be able to fly the same distance for 20% less fuel than any other airplane in its class.
Now, given the way the price of fuel is going, and given that fuel is a dominant fraction of the cost of flying a commercial jet, it's beginning to look like Boeing made a very smart move. They're seeming as prescient as Toyota was with the hybrid Prius. I'd buy Boeing stock right now. It's probably going to be worth three times as much in 5 years, when the 787 debuts.
There have been many dues paid. I think this site can tell us about many of them: http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html
As I explain here: http://ideasinprogress.blogspot.com/2005/06/japane sefrench-son-of-concorde-vs.html
the next SST is likely to be a small biz jet from the U.S., Russia, and/or Canada. The Japanese are just putting out cool press releases for their basic research.
Going to Autralia, New Zealand, and East Asia (from US) may finally become acceptably comfortable.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Afterall, nobody's gonna want to fly in one if it doesn't!
in JAXA's home page you can find a video of the launch and some more technical info.
The first supersonic rocket plane was launched almost 60 years ago. It's taken this long for jets to do the same?
Or maybe you should just mention commercial aviation in the title or first half of the abstract.
saw the jet launch successfully from Woomera, South Australia. No doubt manned by illegal immigrants..
X-43 scramjet has also flown, so no, the aussies are not the only ones.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The people who would take a flight like this, at least initially, would be the kinds of people who could be given a special pass to speed through security and baggage check: business executives, financiers, wealthy celebs, politicians (excepting senior senators from Massachusetts), and the like. In a world population of six and a half billion, there's only a few thousand of these people, maybe a couple tens of thousands at most, who would be using this flight as a speedier replacement for private or company jets.
Who the hell modded parent insightful? Did you even read the article? Parent claims only "a couple tens of thousands at most" would use this, yet the article reports a 300 seat aircraft is aimed for. Figure minimum of ten aircraft built (ridiculously low number), that's 3000 seats. Tokyo to New York in six hours; figure one return flight of this distance per aircraft, per day (totally underutilising the aircraft). That's 6000 potential seats per day. Now figure these aircraft are flying 50% empty on every flight (yet again, totally underutilising the aircraft). That's 3000 passengers transported per day.
Every one of these figures has been stacked ridiculously in the parents' favor, and yet still the net result is that with a total market of only "a couple of tens of thousands at most", you'd be relying on every one of your passengers to make just over one flight per week, every week of the year.
With more realistic load figures (say 70%) and more realistic production numbers (figure 32 aircraft minimum, that being exactly twice as many as there were production Concordes built), you'd be carrying 13,440 pax per day - requiring each passenger to take one flight every 36 hours, year-round.
Parent simply doesn't know what they're talking about. There are a LOT more than 20,000 people who would pay the money to fly this, particularly with Asian business expanding, and Asian businessmen wanting to travel to Europe and the US.
We have stalled in speed since the late 60's. This is actually needed. What would have been good, is had Boeing actually decided to build the BWB rather than the 787. An aircraft larger than the 380 (airbus's largest) would have used less fuel than a boeing 737 (a small boeing). It would also make for a good military bomber, transport (ability to hold 2-3 M1As depending on the model), and re-fueler (very wide wing span).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
ETOPS doesn't apply to 3 or 4 engine planes (yet). The T in ETOPS stands for "twin".
If this plane is a 4-engine plane like Concorde was, then it doesn't have to worry about ETOPS.
There is a movement to apply ETOPS-like rules to 4-engine planes. Right now, a 4-engine plane can continue flight on 3-engines indefinitely and 2-engines as long as it can remain airborne. These rules would change that, presumably to increase safety. Although well-meaning, there is no evidence these rules, or even rules requiring more safety equipment are needed at this time. This may change as low cost carriers enter the trans-Atlantic (and presumably some day trans-Pacific) routes and increase competition and the temptation to cut corners there.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Remember, Tokyo and New York time zones are 14 hours apart.
If you leave New York at noon, the trip would take six hours so the traveller would feel that it was 6pm, but local time would be 8am. You'd be ready to stop working for the day just when your counterparts are ready to get started. The same basic problem happens in the other direction.
You either need some downtime upon arrival in order to adjust (in which case, why hurry up to wait?) or whoever travels will be at a disadvantage.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I have, on one occasion, been near a militar jet going supersonic. The thing was so high I couldn't see it, but I could sure as hell hear it. Now perhaps it was still low, comparatively speaking, but I have to say, I'd get real pissed if that kind of thing happened all the time. I live near a military airport and it's bad enough when any turbojet plane is flying around (the turbo fan ones are pretty quiet). I am glad they don't go super sonic anywhere near here.
So perhaps, but I'd have to see something from a credible avionics source first, and maybe hear it myself.
Just make another security line devoted to them. They are going to be willing to pay more, probably a lot more, it's no problem to roll dedicated security in to the package. You don't get any harder or easier screening than anyone else, but it's a special section just for passengers on that flight and thus goes much faster.
Or perhaps just better hardware. They have devices now that are essentially CT scanners for screening. They can you and your luggage rather quickly for all sorts of things, including non-metalic items. They can also see through your clothes, hence lots of privacy concerns. Between that and the price they are not really being adopted but again, price isn't a big deal and you could be told that's part of the package. The screener can see a ghosty white hazy image of your naughty bits if they want, but in turn you are screened in about 5 seconds with no need to take anything off, or even put your bag on a scanner.
RFC 1149: IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
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I could walk the distance
Hi there, Jesus.
I would rather pay to go slower and not do so much damage to the planet, But hay saving the planet is not what the rich want is it? They just want to be there now.
http://luckyredfish.com
"Unlike every explosion to ever go off on a plane in flight the space plane does not fall out of the sky."
Funny thing is, actually it would.
You probably know this already, but just for the benefit of whoever doesn't: space isn't just this place where gravity ceases to exist, and objects just stay there. It's not like there's some "gravity ends here" border and if you've pushed past that, you're ok.
Staying in orbit is actually a matter of going fast enough around the Earth, so that centrifugal force equals your weight. (Or in more scientific terms, so that your weight is exactly the needed centripetal force to keep you going in a circle.) Geostationary satellites for example, well, that's why they stay up: because they're at a point and a speed where going around the Earth in 24 hours requires exactly as much centripetal acceleration as they get gravity from the Earth. Again, not because gravity doesn't exist, but precisely because it does.
But here we probably wouldn't be talking about a geostationary orbit, since that's roughly 35,000 km upwards above sea level. It's more distance upwards than you'd travel horizontally between Tokyo and NY. Or in other words, a fucking ludicrious waste of fuel.
Ok, so let's say their airplane got a _lot_ lower than that, e.g., only to LEO. That's "only" anywhere between 300 and 1500 km upwards. To stay up there you'd need a _lot_ more speed, though. In fact, enough speed to do a complete rotation around the world in between 1.5 and 2 hours. Again, we're talking a _lot_ of fuel to accelerate something airplane sized to _that_ kinda speed.
What I'm getting is that we're talking sub-orbital planes here, because going all the way into orbit is a purely SF idea anyway. The sub-orbital idea is to basically never really be in orbit anyway. Think more like a ballistic shot that goes really high up, but never has enough speed to actually stay up there. So if the engines die, it _will_ fall back.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
No, the book was about orbital spaceplanes. i.e., they actually fly into orbit, turn off the engine until they get to the other side of the planet and then re-enter the atmosphere. Not what the original poster was talking about, but personally I don't think he knows how infeasible it is to fly from one side of the planet to another in a sub-orbital plane.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well, I haven't read the book, but I saw a movie with the exact same plot, so that's not what I was arguing there. I suppose it does make for a good movie or book plot, too.
What I'm saying is that as a RL solution it's just not economically practical to lift an airplane into orbit. One kind of orbit involves ludicrious speeds, the other kind is 35,000 km up there, and other kinds are at various places in between the two inconvenient extremes.
And speed/distance aren't just a matter of fuel usage there. Are you willing to submit untrained civilians to 10g accelerations to put an airplane in LEO, for example?
A RL solution would be at most sub-orbital, if at all, and it would fall back.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I fail to see what available seats have to do with whether anyone actually uses the service, though, hopefully, the more seats the cheaper the price. But still, even this doesn't guarantee anything. This is, after all, the age of web conferencing. What is the point anymore of someone traveling halfway around the world just to press the flesh? I hope these folks have done more extensive analyses of potential sales than the poster has. Personally, I see this as more of a boon to tourism than a business service, and that is almost totally dependent on price and service. I do wish them luck, though.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
'ere is the wattle
the emblem of our land
you can stick it in a bottle
or 'old it in your 'and
wait, your not a poofter are you?
The bottom line is that the Concord failed because it was too expensive to operate. People were not willing to pay such a high price for the luxury of quick air travel. Once the novelty of flying from NY to Paris eating lunch and being home before dinner wore off it was the operating cost that impacted the Concord. In order to fly Concord you needed to be able to pay the price of a first class ticket. There were no discounts and the price was higher then traditional aircraft first class. The Internet, VoIP, and Teleconferencing killed the Concord as well. It was no longer as necessary to make face to face business meetings.
The Concord was old technology. Perhaps the Japanese and the Australians can pull this off. But they are going to have to make it cheaper somehow. The fuel cost is astronomical.
I can hit mach 5 for 4 nanometers with a flyswatter!
Pffft!. Hypersonic...
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Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
Successful supersonic jet launch? Isn't this a duplicate story - from like the 1950s?
Woomera, Australia? After testing the super-sonic plane, maybe they should now rename it to "Zoomera" :-)
Uh, it was the Orient express, started in 82 by Ronald Regan, designed to go Mach 10 from NY to Tokyo in 10 hours.
r craft/nasp.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ai
-everphilski-
The technology that won the X-Prize is several orders of magnitude too inefficient for orbital flight, but if it could manage a suborbital ballistic trajectory from San Francisco to Tokyo it could beat the SST *and* do it more efficiently because it wouldn't need to fight drag all the way.
OK, all you rocket scientists... start your slide rules. How far away is the SS1 from this application (ignore the passenger and cargo capacity issues for now, just let us know if something like it can credibly be scaled up to supply the delta-v)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet
US involvement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-X
"The second X43-A flew in at about Mach 7 on March 27, 2004. This test made the X-43A the fastest free flying air-breathing aircraft in the world."
I would have to go to KFC's supplier, then?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I bet it still has to slow down and circle for 5 hrs or so around the US, because otherwise it would be unfair to Boeing etc
I seem to recall a similar incident ( perhaps the same one ) where a 747 ran out of fuel and was gliding for a long time, i think after the incident it was named the "Gimly Glider" or something similar.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3440360a10,00. html
"Although the boom may rattle some windows, it has little or no effect on humans, wildlife or property. At peak intensity, the boom is about as loud as the clap of thunder from a lightning strike about a half mile away. ... The boom should be barely audible as the orbiter crosses the western part of the state. It will get louder as the space plane drops in altitude, although for much of Central Florida it may be at a level which goes unnoticed by persons indoors."
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