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Space Plane to Offer 2 Hour Flight around the World
secretsather writes "Two hour flights to the other side of the world may seem like a scene from a science fiction movie; but the technology is in place, and a plane that can do just that is currently in development. While it looks like a scene from a flight simulator, the Astrox space plane is the real deal, and the Astrox Corporation says it could revolutionize the transportation industry. Traveling as fast as Mach 25 with at least 30 minutes of space shuttle-like views while in orbit is the highlight of this plane, and The Astrox Corporation, along with their partners, are claiming to have finally overcome their largest problem, mixing fuel."
Sure the fight may last only 2 hours, but after spending much of that time in heavy acceleration, I wonder how long it would take to recover. Also, wouldn't passengers need to be in really good health to endure such a journey, and would they need to wear flight suits like fighter pilots just to keep from blacking out? I suspect that regular passenger use may be out of the question if these problems aren't solved by altitude/weightlessness.
Wikipedia's entry for Scramjet mentions
Scram jets might be able to accelerate from approximately Mach 5-7 to around somewhere between half of orbital velocity and orbital velocity (X-30 research suggested that Mach 17 might be the limit compared to an orbital speed of Mach 25, and other studies put the upper speed limit for a pure scram jet engine between Mach 10 and 25, depending on the assumptions madeAs the company claims a top speed of Mach 25, could this be the 'cheap' way to get to low Earth orbit?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
That would bring me back to this stinking, shitty, damp, miserable, yob infested, backwards, cold, poor, tacky, cretin filled swamp. Can they drop me off half way please?
Beep beep.
Their new college intern probably solved this problem for them. Beer before liquor, never been sicker... now, OTOH, liquor before beer...
Two hour flights to the other side of the world may seem like a scene from a science fiction movie;
At this point in my life, mating seems like science fiction let alone flying around the world in a space plane.
wasn't the vaporware story posted earlier today ... if
this wasn't on the list it should be. Some preliminary
tests of scramjets have been done. Very preliminary. Not
by these guys.
Scramjets are the "fusion" of aircraft research. Always 10-20 years away. I'll believe it when I see something flying.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A Congressman reads and posts on Slashdot! Who'd have figured...?
1/2 hour - drive to space-port
2.0 hours - security/checkin
1/2 hours - sit on space-plane tarmac
2.0 hours - flight
1/2 hour - baggage claim
1/2 hour - drive from space-port
I actually thought about this a while ago, when I read on Wikipedia that in a trans-atlantic abort, the space-shuttle would take only twenty-minutes from SSME ignition to touchdown in Europe or Africa. I pointed out to a friend of mine that it would probably cost on the order of half a billion dollars (space shuttle launch is approximately 500 million dollars, plus a million or so to fly it back via 747 to Kennedy), and my friend pointed out that in quite a few cases, it might well be worth it- a milti-billion dollar merger, a head of state's emergency meeting, etc, etc.
If the space shuttle launched more frequently, of course, the launch costs would decrease significantly and make it even more economically viable.
This has been a long time in coming- suborbital flight hops are damned fast, and even if it does cost a million bucks a ride, I'm sure there'll be plenty of customers willing to use it.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Prior 9/11; two hours pre-flight, eight hours in flight, half hour at the other end : 10.5 hours.
Post 9/11; four hours pre-flight, eight hours in flight, one hour at the other end : 13 hours
Hyperdrive; four hours pre-flight, two hours in flight, one hour at the other end : 7 hours.
Pre-flight security bloatware, god-dammit. I upgrade my plane so it's four times faster and I'm still only 50% better off than I was originally!
The "blog post" doesn't have much more meat than the article summary, and all it does is point at the company's website. It certainly seems like they have a lot more testing to do before anything applicable to the real world will be achieved.
Right now I'm having to deal with the emotional trauma of bringing the world closer to the brink of weather instability every time I take a polluting 747 from Sydney to London.
Will this scramjet product less atmospheric carbon waste? Perhaps it will be too high to be of significant consequence?
That picture is awesome. Reminds me of Elite II. I just hope they didn't forget to buy atmospheric shielding.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
The article didn't appear to mention acceleration. I'm sure it would be impractical for any mass transport system to accelerate too quickly. However it is entirely possible to have a very fast flight without unreasonable acceleration forces placed on the human body (smacking into another object excepted).
As for the jetlag issue, is it any worse than getting up 6am during the work days, and partying until 6am on weekends? That to me is the more serious jetlag issue! Transcontinental flight has never been that much different for me.
and I will not be able to finish my chicken with a glass of champagne?
Well, let's see. x=(a t^2) / 2. Let's say a = 3.2 ft/sec^2 (1/10 g), so we're not talking real heavy acceleration here. t = 1 hour = 3600 seconds. (We'll use the other hour to decelerate.) Then...
x = 20,736,000 feet = 3927 miles. The whole, two hour flight would be 7854 miles. Not quite halfway around the world (12000 miles).
To do halfway around the world in 2 hours, we need to get 6000 miles = 31,680,000 feet, accelerating from zero, in 1 hour = 3600 seconds. For that, we need a = 2x / t^2 = 4.89 ft / sec^2 = 0.15 g.
Whether that's too much to be comfortable or healthy, I don't know.
The real problems with scramjets and ramjets have been that the engine (and the vehicle) need to be brought to a speed where the ramjets can operate.
I'm sure many of you have seen videos of those German V-1 buzzbombs launched by the Germans during World War II. The reason for those launchers was to get those ramjets to operational speed -- For a ramjet to work, it must have airflow. Without it, the engine just won't light.
Scramjets are just an extension of the ramjet where the airflow within the engine is at supersonic speeds. A scramjet cannot fire unless the vehicle is brought to supersonic speeds. The NASA tests of the X-43 were conducted by first carrying the X-43 mated with a rocket up to 43,000 ft by the B-52 bomber, then dropping the rocket which carries the X-43 up to 100,000 ft and accelerates it to over Mach 6, and finally the X-43 lights its scramjets and accelerates to Mach 10.
The real problem is bringing the scramjet up to the required speeds for operation. The real revolution to space travel or suborbital travel is to achieve a single-stage-to-orbit(SSTO) system, where one doesn't need multiple stages (B-52 mothership, Pegasus rocket, etc.) in order to complete the trip.
Yeah, right.
And I'll be travelling to the spaceport in my helicar.
I'm glad they've figured out how to mix the fuel, though. I've heard that glitches can occur when rocket fuel isn't mixed well.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Whether that (0.15 g acceleration) is too much to be comfortable or healthy, I don't know.
I have seen a figure of 4 feet per second per second for the acceleration of a mass transit subway car. That works out as about 1.2 metres per second per second, or 0.125g.
If you build the seats the correct way you can get away with a fair amount G's of acceleration up to 3 to 4 times earth gravity without discomfort. You can get to the other side of world without the acceleration of the space shuttle so you don't need to have the special training of the space shuttle astronauts. However the acceleration will be much like a roller coaster on the downhill side and if you are faint of heart for that then you will definitely not like the ride of this plane.
Concord?
Britain it is!
Jetlag isn't about acceleration per se - it's about desynchronization of your circadian clock with that of your surroundings.
I can get you jet lagged by putting you in an isolation suite and resetting the clock you pay attention to, no acceleration involved.
That being said, the human body takes about a day to resynchronize from a shift of an hour.
I suppose you need to accelerate to get that far that fast if you do it by travel, but you can put away the equations that figure the precise acceleration of this plane to discuss jet lag.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The Concord was also supposed to ignite a revolution in air travel.
How many people need to be anywhere in two hours?
---if it means paying a very hefty Concord-like surcharge over first-class air?
How many airports can handle this beast?
---if the number is small, you will be spending hours in transit before you board.
Post 9/11, how many airlines remain financially strong enough to invest in radically new technology, particularly technology of immediate interest only in the most volatile high-end markets.
When the board looks at executive perks, does your flight to Beijing on the hyper-plane make the cut?
Will enough people really want to spend $100K or so to travel halfway around the world in 2 hours vs. 20? After the novelty of going into space wears off for the rich, I see this as being about as exciting (and economically feasible) as the Concorde.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
I'm actually interested to see if the rough-and-tumble in the boardroom starts to spill out into the streets, a proxy war fought by mercenaries, hurting corporations where they're most vulnerable -- the bank account and their reputations.
To me, it's absolutely uncanny how dead-on he was about the changes to society the future would bring. The only thing I'd disagree about with his insight is how long it would take for things to fall apart -- IMHO he was an optimist.
Marco...that was Portugese.
I assume you're talking about the UK, based on terminology and your URL.
A big difference between the UK and the USA is that in the latter, most people think it's the greatest place on earth (usually those who've never lived anywhere else), and it isn't; in the UK most think it's a shithole (usually those who've never lived anywhere else), and it isn't. At a certain point your miserable attitude becomes self-fulfilling. You should actually try hopping to the other side of the world and see how much they enjoy the company of whinging poms.
I used to love this old ride called The Gravitron. There's a similar one out there called SpacShip 2000. It's a big flying-saucer looking thing with foam pads all around the insides nd no restraints or anything. Passangers stand with their backs against the pads and the ride spins them up to slightly above 1g for roughly three minutes. I'm here to tell ya, even that isn't uncomfortable. It didn't require especially fit people to go on this ride. It didn't even have a height or age requirement. Sure it was short, but it always felt to me (twice a year until I was 12) that it could've gone on quite forever. It would've gotten rather boring, though. I don't see how 0.15g could be a big deal when 1.1g is literally child's play.
Nasa X-43A Scramjet (With videos) - First flew in 2004
First successful scramjet (2001) (With video)
More out there. Of course, none of these have launched under their own power, yet. But the scramjet concept certainly works.
The Astrox Corporation does not seem to have updated their web site recently, but the latest bit on their news page (Nov.05) is a contract from ATK/GASL (NASA's co-developers of the X-43A) "to study turbine/scramjet combined cycle cruise vehicles (X43C)"
This may be the real deal. Hard to say.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
Don't worry. In a few more years you'll be able to travel in economy class and you won't *want* to finish your chicken!
I like the idea of an evacuated maglev tunnel. It's still unrealistic (a tunnel from NY to LA would cost $1 trillion), although, the cost is all in the construction.
The V-1 actually used a pulsejet, not a ramjet. Pulsejets have been built that work when stationary (some R/C aircraft use them as a substitute for a turbojet or ducted fan), and their maximum speed (Wikipedia says the V-1 reached 390mph) is about that at which many ramjet designs start working.
The F4 Phantom II and other aircraft from decades ago were able to approach Mach 3, without using a scramjet. (Admittedly, the afterburners were ramjets, but that still isn't scramjet tech.) NASA-Dryden (at Edwards AFB) has recently conducted successful tests with scramjets, and those tests were in the Mach 5-10 range. From this I gather that Mach 5 to 10 is different tech than Mach 2 to 3. If these guys are only at Mach 2, they have a long way to go.
... two hours to the OTHER side of the world. So how do you guys get AROUND the world in 2 hours? Are you using metric conversions or something?
yep, pretty close, he's been my fav for nailing the future. Look at major cities, areas akin to the AAs, abandoned areas, offset by guarded gated compounds or "communities". Look at the war in iraq, there are now almost as many "private security contractors"-mercenaries- as there are official US government military people.
c le/2006/12/04/AR2006120401311_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
And we saw what happend in NOLA after katrina, it got infested with rifle totin Blackwater goons immediately, while non-corporate regular plain vanilla citizens got their self protection tools confiscated, just when they needed them the most.
Yep, I'd say corporate fascism is taking over quite rapidly. Our so called vote is now all privately run where it really counts. They may stick their voting boxes in a public building, but after that point it's for-profit corporate closed source voting. And the rest of government is run as an extension of various multinational corporations via their sock puppets-who got there from the previous closed source corporate voting and propoganda build up from the controlled corporate press.
...and come back to where you started. It'll be a whole cheaper.
I used to love this old ride called The Gravitron
You mean the Vomitron.
Whoever owns techblorge is now a happy camper as his google adsense revenue is going through the roof. I suppose he is laughing at the gullible techies that have been hit once again. Bad enough after the algae dupe, whats next the solar stirling cycle refrigerator again ? The vortex tube cooling system. For a site thats meant to have high nerd appeal you thing there would be a little more sophistication about these things.
Here's a schematic.
Can get i get front page of slashdot now? :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I wonder when Branson will announce point-to-point travel via Virgin Galactic? Probably after he gets all the rich, early adopters to pay for Spaceship 2 and White Knight Two. Like Branson's going to waste time with the world's biggest roller coaster ride.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
If this plane is so real, why is the only evidence a 3d rendering that looks like it was done with an Apple IIGS?
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Doesn't suborbital flight still take you out of a significant percentange of earths natural cosmic radiation sheild? Isn't that a problem for people who may want to have kids, or whatever? Maybe 2 hours exposure isn't enough to matter, but if you fly often enough, I'd think you'd still be affected.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
NASA X-43A could do mach 9.6 in 2004 using scramjets. Here's a link...m l
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.ht
The thing I'm wondering is how scramjets do in the upper atmosphere where there is less oxygen? Though there's also less drag up there so might do the acceleration lower in the atmosphere.
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This sounds like a plea for investors. I wonder if they'll split with a suitcase full of cash for Costa Rica or Brazil?
Also, wouldn't passengers need to be in really good health to endure such a journey, and would they need to wear flight suits like fighter pilots just to keep from blacking out?
Not really. The space shuttle is in orbit at 5 miles/second about 8 1/2 minutes after liftoff, and it's maximum G forces are limited to 3 G's, something akin to a terrestrial roller coaster. If you listen during a launch, you can hear the commentator mention towards the end of ascent that the main engines are throttling back. They do that to avoid exceeding the 3 G limit when the external tank is almost empty. The Russian Soyuz has an even gentler ride, IIRC.
The suits the astronauts are wearing are pressure suits, not G suits. They don't do anything to counter G forces, they are only there for if the cabin has a depressurization. In fact, pre Challenger they stopped wearing the suits for a time and just went up in cloth flight suits.
The days of spaceflight being limited to fighter pilot types who can take 9 G's was over in the 70s. Most modern manned launchers are fairly easy rides to orbit.
Worst...sig...ever!
Go from NY to CA. +3 hours. Wake up at 4am, sit around, do nothing until breakfast (6am/9am). Work until 11pm (2am). Repeat.
Then fly to Germany (-6 hours). Perform the same tasks, but now you're getting up at 1am (which was really 11pm).
Yeah, so I was messed up for about 2 months afterwards...
Mach 24 will result in orbit at sea level (v = sqrt(g.r) ). I gather one of the aims of hypersonic flight is to reach Mach 24 so the craft takes off without needing wings or other lifting devices. It would have to be a pretty long runway at 7.5km/s, though I guess one way would be to take off normally and get to orbital speed by flying though the air.
Oh man, you are so lucky I wasn't drinking coke when I saw that.
I would have had to bill you for a replacement keyboard!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Two hours from Heathrow to Gatwick seems like a bit much.
What?
The discussion might have been a lot better if the article (or rather the blog entry) weren't so sorely lacking in details. Kind of makes me miss Roland Piquepaille. You can get a lot more information by Googling "suborbital airliner."
The blogger suggests that this vehicle is basically a very fast airliner, but this is far from the case. It's a sub-orbital craft that would fly on a parabolic course, thrusting up out of the atmosphere and then coasting the rest of the way. What makes it economically feasible is that a brief, steep climb uses less energy than horizontally plowing through the atmosphere for hours. Most proposed designs use a two-stage launching system. One calls for the airliner to climb to about 50,000 feet and do a midair refueling from a tanker. In another the airliner is carried up by a larger plane and released. In either case the airliner then goes into a steep climb for about 20 minutes and then shuts off its engines, coasting until it nears its destination. It would carry only enough fuel to maintain a holding pattern in case of airport traffic.
Passengers would be strapped into their seats for the entire flight. No food or beverage service, no restrooms. People most likely will take some sort of medication to avert motion sickness, as they would be weightless for much of the flight. There is a lot of research going into the human factors such as the several Gs acceleration and dealing with weightlessness. The bit about space-shuttle views of Earth kind of mystified me, because in all the designs I've read about there would be no windows. Maybe they were talking about view-screens.
It's a pretty interesting subject, and almost certainly will be the way we will fly long distances in 20 or 30 years.
Would you like to stop as well?
Doing so you would go up against air resistance. You won't be going 7.5km/s for very long.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
First off, G-Forces only affect you if there is gravity. The flight only lasts 2 hours with 30 minutes of 'space shuttle like views' or whatever so lets say that's the time where you are weightless, you won't experience any of the G-Forces while you could be moving at Mach25. The only time you would ever 'feel' the force is while in the atmosphere and while accelerating/decelerating. As the acceleration increases (so G-Forces increase) you are getting further away from the Earth and thus the effects are 'felt' less. I'm not going to get too much into the math side of this since I'm sure if I do the people who already understand the math behind it will agree just by reading what I've written and those who don't, will flame me regardless.
Now, I'm not saying that the forces you do feel wouldn't require some sort of training like Fighter Pilots or Astronauts go through, but that brings me to the second part of my comment. As many people have already mentioned this really wouldn't be the type of thing that your average_joe_sixpack could afford, but the importance of developing this technology furthers what we can do when we try to say, send a manned mission to Mars, or that Moon Base the U.S. wants to build. Trying to develop a craft to fly to Mars in a feasable amount of time to get the Astronauts back if someone goes awry, would be a very costly mistake if we tried to jump straight to that. Now if they try to get flying around our own little planet as quick/efficient as possible it's much more likely we would be able to successfully build something that could go to Mars in a day.
Second, the time in orbit does not necessarily depend solely on distance between the two points. One can adjust altitude, flight path, and in the process speed, to create an optimal profile. Perhaps an orbit will be completed, like the shuttle, in 90 minutes, so half way around the world in 45. Perhaps for shorter distances, like from New York to Paris, one might choose a higher orbit and slower orbital velocity.
So, I am not going through the calculations, but the idea is that you have to accelerate to perhaps 15,000 miles per hour over a distance of a few, or perhaps, several hundred miles. This might be done over a very long time, likE half an hour, in which case the force might be kept down to around a g. But frankly, if I understand the implication correctly, they plane to fly for a while to get to mach 5 or so (which can happen slowly), then use the scram jet to get to LEO and mach 20+(which will happen more quickly, and likely incur more g;s.
So, the gist is that there will be an acceleration profile that will have at least 5 distinct segments, and though the average acceleration might be very low, certain sections will necessarily have significant acceleration. The fastest commercial aircraft, the corcorde, only went aroung mach 2. We are talking about mach 5 using conventional propulsion.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
wake me when it's flying.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The supersponic space has been in development for about 20 years. It seems like all these guys have is a new combuster design which has only been tested at Mach 2, and haven't even mentioned the other huge design challenges. Need to be able to construct an ariframe that can tolerate the extreme temperatures and stress of hypersonic flight. There still has been no long duration or full scale od a SCRAM jet, much less an actual vehicle flight. The hypersonic flight problem is quite daunting, and there little is little margin for error. It would be great if it happened, but until I see an actual vehicle test flight, I'll consider it vapor ware. M
I can do that in less than a minute, though I can't top Prot: "Adios aloha. I'm already back."
I really doubt that this thing is going to take off (ha ha, pun) in the near future for two reasons.
First, scramjets have been talked about forever. No one has yet to do anything more interesting then blow up a few scramjet drones and waste millions. Certainly we are going to get it 'right' at some point, but I am deeply skeptical that it is going to be in the near future. Even if it was in the near future, I am even more skeptical that it would be cost effective enough to operate as a commercial airliner for such a small nitch market.
Second, who the fuck would be willing to fly these things other then an astronaut? When an astronaut goes up in the space shuttle, they realize that they basically have a significant chance of dying. When your average business man takes a flight, he doesn't expect to be risking his life on an airplane that suffers massive extremes of hot, cold, acceleration, and air pressure. You don't go out of control at mach 25... you just disintegrate.
I am deeply skeptical that this company is going to make a scramjet, make it economical, and then make it safe enough for commercial use. I am not holding my breath on this one. I give Duke Nukem Forever a better chance of seeing the light of day in this decade then I give to this thing.
At the compression ratio achieved by a scramjet, I don't believe the thin atmosphere is a problem. Effectively, the shock wave compresses the air for you.
However, the X-43 was a very, very far cry from a commercially viable transport. It was 12 feet long and had something like a 100 pound usable payload, dedicated entirely to instrumentation. It was a single use, throw away, test plane. The engine only ran for just over 10 seconds (the goal was not to accelerate the plane to Mach 10, but to prove it is possible to operate the engine at Mach 10...imagine a candle in a hurricane). It required a $30 million Pegasus rocket to accelerate it to stated speed. When NASA first started toying with scramjets, they created the X-30 concept, which would've been basically what the article is describing but more realistic. Then they got to look at actually making a scramjet work and haven't really talked about the X-30 since. The X-43 is far less ambitious, but is still a tough project.
Aside from the very substantial technical hurdles, what do you think the commercial market is for a 2 hour flight to anywhere in a cramped capsule moving so fast that if there were an accident, there might not even be teeth left to identify you with? Even the Concorde couldn't pay for itself, and it cut the trip time for a very busy route in half. For comparison, Virgin Galactic is planning on offering suborbital joyrides that peak out at 3000 mph and don't actually get you anywhere for $200,000 each. Supposing that $200,000 per ticket were achievable, I doubt anyone can justify saving 10 hours at that price, even really important business executives. Even if they're time were that valuable, it's not like they couldn't get work done in the air on a suitably equipped business jet.
You wouldn't use this plane for a NYC-Boston flight, but it is quite good for that Sydney-London route.....
-jl
(or as some would say, they're permanently lagged - making 25 hours of work a day)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
The Astrox Corporation is NOT I repeat NOT building a supersonic liner. They are a small aerospace design/consultance firm, what they produce is just the software to design space/air craft, and they have been awarded a contract to RESEARCH the feasibility of a certain type of scramjet. That's all there is to it. Just read the news section of their website.
I used to love that ride. The version of it I used to go on obsessively was called "The Rotor." It was basically a centrifuge-like cylinder where you stood, and then spun up to somewhere in excess of 1g. It was definitely more than 1g, because I recall it being quite difficult to raise your hands away from the wall once it got going. I suspect it might have been more like 3g. Once you were quite stuck to the wall, they would drop the floor out from under you, leaving you pinned there, held up by friction until they slowed the rotation down and you slid down (and got a rather terrible wedgie).
I'm not sure I would have wanted to stay in the Rotor at full speed for more than a few minutes, but it certainly wasn't harmful as far as I could tell. I suspect any reasonably healthy person ought to be able to withstand 2g, applied perpendicular to their chest (so, lying down, and 'feeling' as though they're twice as heavy as normal), for a short-haul flight. The biggest problem would probably be obese people.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The shortest path is not on ground but straight up and straight down so might be feasible wi8th the 2 hours the mention. lasse
For the full defencetalk.com article that this GoogleAds blog entry seems to be summarizing, go here . Lots more information. Found the link on Fark don'tcha know.
Actually, the orange suits the astronauts wear do contain a G suit. Its not used for ascent, but descent. After spending a week or 2 in microgravity, the suits are used to help the astronauts during reentry. The shuttle only reaches ~2G during reentry, but the suits are there as an insurance that no one gets dizzy or passes out as the blood in their head rushes back down to their legs/feet.
I seriously doubt you would need one of these suits for a 2 hour ride. You wouldn't be in zero g for more than 30 minutes if the trajectory is ballistic.
As someone who suffers really badly from jet lag, I can't make up my mind if it would be better or worse to get to my destination faster. One one hand, I suppose I would be better equipped to deal with the time difference if I hadn't spent the previous 12 hours crammed into a pressurized aluminum tube. On the other hand, the time change would come much more suddenly, and I think I would be far more tempted to "nap" (and go into very deep sleep because it feels like the middle of the night) at inappropriate times.
Personally, I would like to see more development in the opposite direction: slower, but more comfortable travel. I would be thrilled to see a revival of trans-atlantic passenger airship service. I'd definitely be willing to pay more and accept the longer travel time if I could do it more comfortably.
The reason for the launchrail was that a plane that is designed to fly at 600+ km/h does not fly very well at 60km/h. Normal planes can do that, but these have flaps, slats and a pilot that knows how to regulate the Angle of attack. A mass produced simple plane piloted by a gyro does not have these things. That is why the plane had to brought up to a speed that was within the flight envelope. A chemical driven piston catapult does that job nicely.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
With all this new technology they are creating, they are still creating seats that for the most part, aren't increasing in size like the average population.
comfy sized seat + leg room would be a dream, specially if you are a person of size (not just overweight, but large build etc)
they are making planes larger, more economic, but still cramming everyone in like sardines
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
Great! That'll solve the global warming problem!
Am I the only one who thinks that their website looks like something a script kiddie made on his spare time during his 10th grade summer vacation?
Call me a skeptic, but I have a hard time believing a company that cannot keep a miminally decent looking website can build the first commercialy viable scramjet.
(or in other words, I'll believe it when I see it as a CNN headline).
I'm not saying it's NOT a pipe dream, but it kind of reminds me of the early days of aviation when people were actually trying to find a business model. Lots of new technologies were tried out to lure rich travellers in search of novelty. Eventually, the more practical ideas trickled down to the 'flying buses' most travellers endure.
Can someone lure enough big-budget thrill seekers to get such an unlikely endeavor off the ground (for lack of a better term)? I'd like to believe people haven't stopped thinking big. Eventually, one of these bold (crazy?) ideas could actually work.
There are two throttle backs during orbiter ascent, neither of which have to do with G forces. The first occurs at approximately 1:31 when the shuttle hits Max-Q, maximum aerodynamic pressure. Once through Max-Q the shuttle is throttled back up until after the 8 minute mark, when the final throttle back commences. This is to turn the engines off before all fuel in the external tank is exhausted, because an emergency shutdown, the one caused by the sensors in the ET is rather painful on the turbopumps, and while better than the explosively catastrophic failure that would occur should the turbopumps run dry, is still not a very happy option. The shuttle doesn't achieve excessive G's by design.
In terms of general principle, I thought this was what Virgin Space's overall goal was anyway (parabolic LEO flights across the world in ~2 hours time, after the 200,000$ touring flights)? Also, I'm a little skeptical that Astrox will be able to create a Mach 25 scramjet successfully.
Dealing with jetlag would not have to be a concern if you plan it right. What I mean is, plan your trip so as to keep your same wake/sleep schedule as your point of origin. This works best, of course, if you have a short stay. The payoff is you won't suffer any jetlag when you return either.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
There might be less air but it's coming at you really fast, which tends to compensate.
You can't go that fast lower in the atmosphere where the air is denser because your plane tends to melt.
Better watch out for those big green fireballs, though...
(You youngsters can go Google for the reference)
Passangers stand with their backs against the pads and the ride spins them up to slightly above 1g for roughly three minutes.
Reminds of a similar ride called the Turkish Twist; giant spinning drum, the rider is pinned to the wall, the floor drops out and there you are.
I would ride it, throw up, then complain to my companions that it made me sick.
The next time I would go on the ride, they would say: "But you don't like that ride, it makes you sick."
I would reply: "Of course I like that ride, getting sick is the best part!"
-ffj
The Aerocar started commercial production in 1956 but was canceled due to lack of interest. You say you want a flying car but I bet you don't even have a pilots license.
Err. I'm pretty sure that throttle reduction has nothing to do with SSME shutdown. Orbiter payloads are designed for a maximum 3g. You see the same thing with other rockets.
The SSME controllers can shut down an engine no matter what speed its running at. The ET fuel level sensors ( there are I believe 3 for each tank, at different levels), let the controller know how much fuel is left. When the last sensor reads empty, then the engines are shut down. There is still LOX and LH in the tank at this point, since you don't want to run them dry.
.. And I suppose Superman will be there to save the Space Plane when something goes wrong with it?
buff3r
This news, while being interesting from a scientific and technical standpoint (despite probably being way overblown and premature), will hardly impact the life of your average traveler. I can't speak for everyone here but the Concorde would never have been an option for me if I was ever flying to Europe due to the exorbitant ticket prices. I doubt this plane would be any different.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
I'll bet I could rack up Frequent Flyer Miles like it's nobody's business.
I have one request: Any babies that scream like they are being skinned alive MUST be ejected into the vaccuum of space. The resulting cheap form of morbid entertainment will serve as compensation to the remaining inconvenienced travelers.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Your math would be correct assuming that the plane was in freefall the entire time (i.e. no gravitational acceleration toward the centre of the Earth). However, given that a minimum of 100 miles of this trip is in direct opposition to Earth's gravity, the amount of acceleration required is in addition to the amount of acceleration required to overcome Earth's gravity. Space Shuttle astronauts experience 3.2g of force when launching until they reach orbit. To know what this feels like, get on a roller coaster with a loop in it; the force at the bottom of the loop on a decent ride should be between 3 and 5g. Imagine experiencing that for an hour straight. I'd think you'll need not only a flight suit, but you'd have to be in pretty good shape as well.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6017342022 780502321 or if you prefer The YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBuIidllusc , URIs courtesy the photo gallery link in /.'s "The Beauty of Fluid Mechanics In Video and Photos".
Boom! Boom!!
yay.. useless imperial units used for meaningful physical calculations. I hope this is a posting from the past.
What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
0.15 G is pretty insignificant. 0.15 G is equivalent to accelerating in a car that goes from zero to 60 in 18 1/3 seconds: 60mph / 0.15G = 60mph / 0.15 * 21.82 mph/s = 60mph / 3.27 mph/s = 18.33s
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
To do halfway around the world in 2 hours, we need to get 6000 miles = 31,680,000 feet, accelerating from zero, in 1 hour = 3600 seconds. For that, we need a = 2x / t^2 = 4.89 ft / sec^2 = 0.15 g.
.15G acceleration, assuming you are accelerating along the orthogonal plane to gravity, the total vector acceleration felt by you would be 1.01G.
Whether that's too much to be comfortable or healthy, I don't know.
Well consider that the total vector acceleration felt by you in gravity is 1G at rest
So at
Let's say you weigh 200 lbs - then the extra weight your body would have to handle is 2 lbs.
Let's say you're accelerating straight up - then the total vector acceleration felt by you would be 1.15G - equivalent to weighing an extra 30 lbs. Even then I don't think you're in much danger...
oh BTW - G = unit of measure, 9.8 m/s^2, equal to the acceleration experience by a mass at sea level on earth. g = symbol for gravitational force in physics equations
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
You go thru all those annoying things flying north south, but you don't get jet lag N-S.
You may be very tired, sore, stressed and annoyed, but you're not jet lagged.
I can simply put you in a very comfortable room, with all the amentities you could wish for short of an external clock or true windows, change the time schedule on you, so slowly that you'd not notice, and when you come out and try to resync, you'll wish it weas just bad food, shaky, cramped seating and crying babies.
As for the recipe you quote, it's far more specific than what you propose, specific food and drink is important, as is light. Your solution would only work in one direction, and would make it quite worse in the other.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."