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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.'"
Think how much money, time & effort could be saved if resources were pooled. (maybe this thing would be ready before 2025).
I guess we'll all have to learn to get along first (oh & hopefully, the cooporation will be more equal then it was on the Joint strike fighter project between Britain & the US)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
When last I heard about this issue, it was considered completely feasible to develop a sub-orbital passenger service for those super-premium customers who would otherwise spend some $3000 US on a concorde ticket.
Further, considering the resources required to maintain the concorde, which is reportedly the norm for such high performance aircraft, I see no reason why it wouldn't be more cost effective to move forward with the concept.
Granted the maintainance would need to be even more intensive and exacting, but rather than 2 hour transcontinental flights it would be on the order of 30 minutes, allowing for more time in maintainance between trips and creating a more compelling reason for those who consider time more important than money.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
solly...
Number of reasons, fuel costs being high and rising, low passenger numbers after 9/11 and the fact that Airbus refused to renew the maintenance and parts contract that was due to expire. Normally, aircraft maintenance would be picked up by a third party in that case, but with only 12 aircraft in an airworthy state, and not all of them flying, it wasnt cost effective for the normal maintenance companies to step in.
Nova had a great show on the history of the Concorde recently and talked in detail about why it went under. Though there were many reasons, I was a bit suprised that one of the main reasons was that 40 of their most regular customers died in the World Trade Center. Though the number does not seem that high, these same people also allowed other execs in their company to fly which really hurt the concorde.
Here is an article about the concorde retiring
EXCERT
"The airline said that its decision had been made for commercial reasons with passenger revenue falling steadily against a backdrop of rising maintenance costs for the aircraft.
Detailed discussions over an extended period with Airbus, the aircraft's manufacturer, confirmed the need for an enhanced maintenance programme in the coming years, the carrier added.
British Airways has decided that such an investment cannot be justified in the face of falling revenue caused by a global downturn in demand for all forms of premium travel in the airline industry.
The downturn has had a negative impact on Concorde bookings and is set to continue for the foreseeable future, according to the airline."
Consumers need a super sonic jet just about as much as they need a 300kph Ferrari. It wasn't practical with the Concorde and it won't be pratical now. Planes cost too much already, an Airbus A380 goes for $300,000,000 USD. I don't see how Japan expects some plane that won't fly until 2025 at the earliest, to transform their aerospace industry. People aren't going to pay the premium ticket price if the plane is ever finished just like few paid the steep ticket cost of the concorde. It seems this money could be better spent on current planes that are actually economically feasible for airlines to fly.
" We don't need to find the weapons of mass destruction we just need to want to find them, that's the way it works!
Even an unequal cooperation can have enormous benefits. Look at Canada and the US with regards to nuclear research. Canada didn't get any bombs out of it (not that we particularly need any when our allies are armed to the nuts with them), but our scientists saw enough of the action to later on make us a leader in nuclear power. Having some of the world's biggest uranium deposits helps, of course, but still. An unequal partnership, if leveraged properly, can be just awesome. It's definitely better than no partnership at all, especially for wee little nations like the aforementioned Canada.
Haven't the British and French teams who designed and built Concorde got the best experience?
Because its too small - it was only designed to seat 140 passengers, and under todays economics that simply is not enough. Oil today is touching $100 a barrel for aviation requirements and that produces a CASM (cost per average seat mile) thats pretty much unsustainable even for the wealthy. The aircraft needs to me bigger and carry more people and cargo (which produces a substantial income for airlines on most routes).
Aviation has moved on considerably since Concorde was designed in the 1960s, and much more efficient and wider fuselages can be designed today to accomodate a lot more passengers with lower drag.
Rolls Royce are also on record saying that there would be little improvement efficiency wise in newer turbojet and turbofan engines over the engines Concorde used, those engines were as efficient as they can be made even with current technology. The efficiencies seen elsewhere in engine design do not scale all the way up to engines capable of sustained mach 2.
has a web page offering an artist's rendition of the supersonic jet plane
:-)
Just an artist's rendition? How about a video of the prototype taking off instead?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Commercial supersonic flight is dead. -There is just no way that you can get around the fact that it takes roughly two to three times the fuel per km flown to travel at supersonic speed. There are fairly fundamental reasons why there will be no significant advances in this area. A future supersonic jet transport might have a glide angle of 12:1 (concorde was ~8:1) while a modern commercial jet is over 20:1 and a future BWB is over 30:1 (some gliders hit 60:1). -The sonic boom prevents any overflight of populated areas and even if significant noise reduction could be achieved the very small constituency for such a service would still see any residual boom noise used as an excuse by the general (and envious) public to restrict or outright ban such overflight. - Exhaust emissions at 20km altitude (roughly double 10km of commercial jets) are of far greater environmental concern due to lower mixing rates with lower atmosphere, impact of water vapour as the number one greenhouse gas and proximity to the politically and environmentally sensitive ozone layer. -Technology really hasn't improved much in relevant materials or engines. Add to this the high costs of development, relatively restricted range and limited routes and you have a total non-starter.
In August 2005.
To sum up, the rationale for the Japanese to work on a supersonic transport is based on three assumptions:
1. The scramjet engine will reduce operating (read: fuel) costs per average passenger mile significantly below that of the Concorde (by supporting a larger plane and being more fuel-efficient at cruise),
2. The plane will be capable of nonstop trans-Pacific flight (an ability also largely due to the fuel-efficiency of the scramjet), and
3. The much longer trans-Pacific flights in which the Japanese are interested will more dramatically show the time-of-arrival advantage of the supersonic plane than the shorter trans-Atlantic flights of the Concorde, and make it more appealing to seat-weary passengers.
I suppose there is also a fourth assumption, that cheap, fast, trans-Pacific travel would greatly improve the national economy of Japan in general and the Japanese aircraft industry in particular. This is the reason the Japanese government is expressing interest.
Whether these assumptions turn out to be factual or not requires research, which the Japanese are now doing.
I now return you to your previously-scheduled discussion, already in progress.
I know this may be an unpopular point of view, but I recently flew to the Philippines with a layover in Taiwan. From San Francisco to Taiwan, it was a 14 hour flight. That sucked. It sucked big time. I don't know how much extra I'd have had to pay for a supersonic flight, but it may have been worth it. It would be interesting to know whether all the people posting comments about what a waste of money this is have ever flown nonstop to Asia.
Concorde only used afterburner at take-off and acceleration to supersonic. Once it reached cruising speed (mach 2) they could turn the afterburner off.
That's because it used an afterburner to fly through the atmosphere like a fighter jet.
Actually, it didn't. The afterburners were only used on takeoff, and during the accelleration from Mach 1 to about 1.7. For the second part, afterburning wasn't strictly necessary, but turned out to be more efficient than accelleration on dry thrust.
Can't find good data on required runway length, but Concorde typically took off at 400 km/h, which is rather high. Accelleration from dry thrust may not have been enough to achieve 400 km/h on a typical runway.
IOW, people who refer to the F-22's supercruise ability as something new or unique, are wrong. Concorde could do this. (So could the English Electric P.1, prototype for the EE Lightning, by the way).
Why was the Conconrde retired
British Airways made over GBP1bn from Concorde, Air France made a loss. AF wanted out but the agreement with BA said neither side could unilaterally stop flying concordes and BA were making money so...
Concorde's airworthiness certificates were owned by Airbus via aquisitions over the years and Airbus under pressure from AF withdrew the airworthiness certificate thus grounding the lot. To guarantee it stayed that way and couldn't be reversed, all the spare parts were sold off/auctioned on Ebay.
BA were particularly annoyed because Airbus had told them it was OK to go ahead and spend some GBP70m (ish) refitting their fleet and bringing them up to date, just before they were finally grounded.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
... there are a **lot** of people who would like to talk to you.
LEO time to orbit is about 90 minutes, so that is 45 minutes to make it halfway around the world (or to just about anywhere from anywhere if you think about it). In order to make a suborbital hop "on the order of 30 minutes" you'd have to do orbital velocity...
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).
The regulations regarding supersonic flight over populated areas weren't concorde specific. Breaking the speed of sound over land will get you greeted by several members of the the No Fun League (otherwise known as the FAA) who will politely (ha!) remind you about how difficult they can make your life as a pilot. The rules regarding supersonic flight started taking shape around the time the Air Force started getting aircraft that could break the speed of sound into their regular inventory. (Apparently the novelty of man's most recent achievement in flight wore off quickly)
Boeing was behind, but it became very apparent that the SST or Concorde were only going to make the Trans-atlantic run, period. There simply weren't any other places where it could be flown without bothering the general public. Think about it; people who choose to buy houses that are near the airport do nothing but complain about the noise and raise hell when there's any talk of expansion. Think of what kind of NIMBY-ism would have erupted from people 250 miles from the nearest airport who, by a stroke of luck, happened to live near the area where all of the SST's would be going supersonic. I know 50 random sonic booms a day, every day would make me into a *really* happy camper. (ok, so the airplane buff in me would) So Boeing opted to stick with the "whole lot of people, just not quite as fast" track that aviation has been on since the early 50's. It also didn't help when the government teet that they'd been suckling to R & D money dried up.
Maybe the technology has reached a point in terms of fuel efficiency where it might be more cost effective to build an SST, but you're still not going to be able to put enough meat in the seat to keep the bean counters happy.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.