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.'"

Comments

Cooporation is the way of the future.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

From the article:

The United States has already carried out a flight test with a scramjet engine, while the European Union, Japan, China, Russia and India are in different stages of testing their technologies.

*sighs*

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)

Re:Cooporation is the way of the future.

[colganc]

If everything is pooled and one giant project is undertaken there is a good chance many interesting and novel solutions to supersonice transportation might not be discovered. Many different projects almost guarentees a couple of good and different solutions. Each solution will have it pro's and con's. Be better for one thing and slightly worse for something else. Competition is good.

Re:Cooporation is the way of the future.

[Aglassis]

I agree completely. When you pool resources you get things like the ISS. At this point in that project can we really say we haved saved money by doing it the international way?

One of the big things that you lose when you pool resources is adaptability. Now that's fine if you are building a piece of technology that is completely understood, but it is death to people who want to compete in emerging technologies.

Would the US space program be better off if we were able to cut off funding to the ISS and focus on the CEV? I think so. But that is not possible because we have international agreements. We have to finish our share before we abandon it.

These international resource pools remind me of the old engineering maxim:

• How long will your project take?
  
  • Two weeks.
• What if we double the amount of people on it?
  
  • Four weeks.

Re:Cooporation is the way of the future.

[Richard_at_work]

I'd say that given that America is the only country with a working scramjet, maybe...we'd head the team? Or it'd be something like the international spacestation project.

Huh? Do I not recall a successful test of the British and Australian built Hyshot III in Australia earlier this year, that was definately a scramjet. Nasas X-47 is not the only successful scramjet.

Re:Cooporation is the way of the future.

[Lars T.]

When you pool resources you get things like the ISS.

And when you don't pool, you get the MIR - if you still have the USSR at hand. And Skylab.

Re:Cooporation is the way of the future.

[cyclone96]

When you pool resources you get things like the ISS. At this point in that project can we really say we haved saved money by doing it the international way? ?

As a NASA employee who has worked on ISS, no.

All the usual criticism of ISS aside, there are a few things that the cooperation with Russia enabled. Politically it made ISS much more viable as a program (frankly, it wouldn't be around without it) and an easier "sell" to congress. The alternate access with Soyuz has had obvious benefits with the orbiter problems. Personally, I enjoy working with my Russian counterparts very much and I love traveling there.

But cheaper? No way. It takes 10 times as long to solve even the most basic problems. With the Russians, the language barrier is significant (ever try to work out a complex technical problem through an interpreter?). The Europeans and Japanese communicate much faster since they have excellent English skills, but their overall lack of experience with manned spaceflight programs offset that advantage. Time zone differences are significant (all of our meetings must be extremely early in the morning for us and late in the afternoon for them). We spend a ton of money on international travel (there is no substitute for face to face meetings).

There is a lot of overhead associated with export control since anything associated with aerospace may be classified as a munition. Stuff that is classified can't be shared, period.

The Russians are so strapped for cash they generally won't give up documents/engineering support without a contract (and payment).

There is no "chief engineer". Whenever the crap hits the fan, there is no person at the top who can make a final decision (as would be the case in a program managed by, say, the Air Force). Many engineering problems become international negotiations with politics in the mix. When Dennis Tito paid for his Soyuz trip a number of years ago, the US laboratory had a massive systems failure several days before his launch. Some members of Russian management thought (due to the poor way NASA handled his flight) it was some sort of staged event and basically said they were going to launch him no matter what.

I'm sure many of you have international project success stories. For a large aerospace program, however, I think the only model that is really cost effective is having an international partner supply a subsytem as a "black box" and in a role subordinate to a overall integrator. That worked for the FGB module of ISS (which was procured from Krunichev under subcontract, on time, on budget). Partnership is definitely not cheaper.

Re:Cooporation is the way of the future.

[Philip K Dickhead]

Ah. Those clever Japanese involed NASA. They must need it late, and dangerous.

Re:Before re-inventing the wheel...

[Richard_at_work]

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.

Re:Before re-inventing the wheel...

[joecm]

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.

Unequal

[Mark_MF-WN]

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.

Why NASA?

[Cicero382]

Haven't the British and French teams who designed and built Concorde got the best experience?

It'll never fly

[Deathmatchbunny]

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.

Re:It'll never fly

[Vo0k]

> it takes roughly two to three times the fuel per km flown

First class is roughly two times more expensive than economy class. This one charging ten times the economy class will still produce enough demand to fill all seats.

> 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

Most of the route over ocean, no problem. The part over populated land can be either performed at altitudes where the residual boom (after active silencing, tech already present in fighter planes) reaching the ground will be unaudible - or travel at subsonic speeds over the land.

> 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

So there will be just a few such planes. With prices this high there won't be all that much demand anyway... and with enough lobbying environment impact will just get forgotten. Not that I want it, it's just a realistic look at what happens.

> Add to this the high costs of development,
Government-funded, NASA plus JSA, come on...

> relatively restricted range

Half the Earth. Do you need more?

>and limited routes

Only routes where it would make sense. Really no need to fly supersonic from New York to Washington DC. It's not meant to replace current planes, it's just to fill a small niche where there's small but constant demand and no supply.

> and you have a total non-starter.

You have some not all that hard obstacles, no showstoppers.

We've had this discussion before

[dtmos]

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.

Worth the Ticket Price

[rtobyr]

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.

Re:Before re-inventing the wheel...

[hcdejong]

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).

Re:Before re-inventing the wheel...

[clickclickdrone]

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.