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Japan Solicits NASA's Help on Supersonic Jet
An anonymous reader writes "Since the Concorde supersonic jet is now retired, Japan is looking for the next generation supersonic flight solution. Japan's space agency is planning talks with NASA next month. They are looking for a partner since they have experienced a 'string of glitches, including a nose cone problem during the latest test flight in March.'"
According to my selective memory, Concorde failed because the US, Boeing etc realised that Britain and France had stolen a march on the next generation of aerospace technology. Looking for an excuse to avoid being left behind, they proceeded to campaign bitterly that supersonic flights would be continuously breaking windows in peoples houses everytime they flew overhead and that the environmental damage would be disastrous. This limited the number of routes and carriers that would accept Concorde and in the end only British Airways and Air France ran a token fleet. See here for more neutral reporting.
Granted, Concorde was a noisy beast especially on take off and I believe there was a regulation preventing them from going supersonic over land but it was a superb feat of engineering (the only commercial aircraft to have an afterburner) especially considering that they were designed to fly for 15-20 years and ended up doing almost double that (with extensive maintenance).
At the end of the day, the Airbus A380 is going to carry around 800 people at far greater scales of economy and comfort than any future civilian supersonic aircraft. It would be nice to have one, but haven't airlines already committed to larger and more economic than smaller and faster ?
Also, Japan must partner, otherwise they'll hit the same problems the British and French had, back in the day.