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Supersonic Jet Could Fly NYC To London In 3 Hours
An anonymous reader writes: A new supersonic luxury plane that could fly people from New York to London in just three hours is being developed by a team of engineers. Spike Aerospace's S-512 Supersonic Jet was introduced in 2013, but the company recently announced a few updates to the plane's design. Discovery reports: "Spike Aerospace's engineers claim the S-512 could reach a maximum speed of Mach 1.8 (1,370 mph, or 2,205 km/h), which is 1.8 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest Boeing 747 commercial "jumbo jet" can reach a maximum speed of Mach 0.92 (700 mph, or 1,126 km/h). If the S-512 really is built to reach these supersonic speeds, it would be as fast as an F-18 Hornet, a military fighter jet with a max speed of Mach 1.8. This would also make the supersonic jet about 450 mph (724 km/h) faster than the fastest civilian jet, according to Spike Aerospace."
A new Concorde for the modern age... destined to meet the same ultimate demise for the same reasons. Too expensive, too noisy.
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Supersonic Jet Could Fly NYC To London In 3 Hours
Not only could, but did.
2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds, to be precise.
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The question is not whether it could do it in three hours or not. The question is, could it do it at economically viable prices?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is literally the article with the most redundancy I've ever read. nearly every facts is repeated twice or thrice in various ways. :).
I also love the explanation of Mach, this is much needed on sites like this
Also, the amount of redundancy in this article is ridiculous!
No mention of Concorde in the summary, which could do this at over Mach 2?
How have the economics changed that this will be viable where Concorde wasn't? IIRC, British Airways only managed to fly it profitably because they got the aircraft for £1 each. Concorde's engines were thermodynamically very efficient when in supercruise, and the aircraft burned as much fuel as a B747 while hauling only about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the passengers. I don't think there's much that can be done to get the fuel burn down per passenger seat, and due to the nature of supersonic flight it's always going to be more of a maintenance nightmare than a subsonic airliner.
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I love how there is no mention of the Concorde, which did it faster and carried more passengers on 1970's technology.
It's like building a new space shuttle that is smaller than the shuttle was, and then comparing it to the Gemini capsules in the marketing. What, do they think the world has become globally amnesiac in the last ten years?
The longest part of a trans-Atlantic flight is now going through security and queuing up for the runway.
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Of course, the 747 and other airliners do not fly their maximum speed, ever. Most airlines in the 21st century are both morally and financially bankrupt. They've long since clustered together in a ragtag group of star alliance, world alliance, or one world team collusions designed in much the same way a homeless person trades in their shopping cart for a roller-bag to appear less disheveled.
Along with this transition came new rules. "international" airport in the 21st century means nothing, because airlines are constrained by financial obligation to route people like shit through a sewer. And as for maximum speed? its egregiously avoided at all costs because it burns much more fuel than a slow lope across the globe. It taxes engines and in turn drives up maintenance costs. So when we say a new player will emerge, those whom are financially beholden to this gilded superjet will likely dial back the engines to a more modest 1.1 mach...or in some cases never a mach at all and pocket your misplaced investment in the future of airline efficiency..
Good people go to bed earlier.
Boeing also don't make small business jets, so clearly there's not a market for them either. Better tell Gulfstream, Bombardier & Cessna to give up.
And no doubt in a few years we'll be hearing about a "revolutionary" new type of rocket that can not only take people and cargo to LEO, but can glide back down again and after an extreme amount of maintenance, be partially re-used.
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I think the come and go of Concorde represents the peak of hydrocarbon based jet flight technology. Supersonic passenger services are unlikely to return in a form that is economically viable.
I wish I'd had a chance to travel on one.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"...flying supersonic is clearly the future^H^H^H^H^H^H past of aviation"
There. Fixed that for you.
Seriously: having a plan on (metaphorical) paper for something that has already been accomplished (and abandoned) constitutes news?
Spike aerospace?
Sure the flight is 3 hours now but they will add and extra two hours of commercials when it goes public.
The average scheduled flight time for jets crossing from London to New York is 7 hours. Seven hours includes scheduled taxi time, which can be fairly long at both JFK and EWR. So add 30 mins in for taxi time for the new jet and we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours 30 mins. So you pick up roughly 3 1/2 hours on the crossing. That could be valuable, but the it comes at what cost? If its roughly the cost of a business class ticket $6000 - $8000 then that becomes a possibility. However, as we have seen with both the failures of MaxJet and Silver Jet - business-only across the Atlantic does not seem to work when not run by a major. Unless one of the major carriers purchases this aircraft AND its fairly inexpensive from an acquisition standpoint and is easy and inexpensive to maintain and run (this was also a real problem for the Concorde) then you might see it. Given all the above AND the market is being addressed pretty well at the moment I don't see this ever going beyond the design stage.
Did Henry Ford start by building a GT 350?
This whole venture sounds like something on the front page of Popular Mechanics. I'll be a monkey's uncle if they build the thing.
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I used to live in Rosedale Queens, which was the landing approach path for JFK airport. Concorde came in at regular hours I believe it landed at 8am and then a second one at 8:15 precisely (they were never in holding pattens due to fuel issues --i.e., the tanks were touching empty when they landed).
Loved looking at those things when they came in. And you got plenty of warning too, those engines sounded very different, and about 10 minutes prior you got a low rumble telling you they were coming.
So; have Millenials completely forgotten Concorde? Who wrote this crappy summary, that claims no civilian aircraft has gone Mach 1.8? (Concorde hit Mach 2 pretty regularly); And then explains that Mach 1.8 is 1.8 times the speed of sound? Really? I never knew this!!!
Next we'll be hearing about a revolutionary transportation system using rails and is powered by steam. And steam is made by boiling water! Imagine that!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
A discerning buyer could probably pick up a real F-18 Hornet for far less since they are in the process of being phased out. I expect they'd have much more fun too!
Hell, a brand new one costs the same as this plane.
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I bet we'll see people flying in Moller flying cars before we see this thing fly. Weeeeeeee!
Computers got better, therefore everything gets better at the same rate.
If you are being sarcastic, then I agree with you. We certainly haven't seen huge leaps in fuel efficiency of aircraft in the last 50 years. The 747, introduced way back then, is still produced. Other airframes have come and gone in the interim. We had rockets that went to the moon, but no longer have the technology. We had reusable shuttles 40 years ago, but no longer have them. We had Concorde, and only now someone is trying to recreate a smaller version of it, and who knows if it will even get to market. We had bombers that whose lifespan was, well, 60 years and still counting, while more modern bombers have come and gone. Let's face it, as far as transportation goes, we have de-innovated. Yes, computers have gotten faster, and the gadgets in cars, trucks and planes have improved, but the transportation systems themselves? Stagnant at best and losing ground in many ways.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Development of Concorde basically stopped...
There was a second generation Concorde under development (http://www.concordesst.com/concordeb.html) which would have improved fuel economy, increased range and decreased noise.
Had development continued then there would have been many other improvements by now too, especially if there had been competing supersonic airliners to spur development.
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Not sure how this summary was approved with no mention of the Concorde. Honest mistake or intentional obfuscation?
Because compared to the Concorde, this little upstart isn't even a flash in the pan. Who would bother to read the article and click on links if they knew in advance that there was nothing to this story?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I seem to remember something that did that back around 1970. What was it called - Harmony, Consensus or something like that?
Its been feasible for a long time, but not economical.
We certainly haven't seen huge leaps in fuel efficiency of aircraft in the last 50 years.
That is not true. Modern airlines are 20-30% more fuel efficient than the original 707. While not an orders-of-magnitude change, it's significant. Physics is a bitch.
The 747, introduced way back then, is still produced.
Because there is a business case for the plane. It has little to do with technologic improvements. Other planes have come and gone mostly because of economic issues.
We had rockets that went to the moon, but no longer have the technology.
We have the technology, just not the political will to spend the money on this particular endevour.
We had reusable shuttles 40 years ago, but no longer have them.
A combination of money and the fact that the Shuttle was a hare brained design, even if it was really cool.
We had Concorde, and only now someone is trying to recreate a smaller version of it, and who knows if it will even get to market.
And again, it's the money, honey. Not the technology.
We had bombers that whose lifespan was, well, 60 years and still counting, while more modern bombers have come and gone
.
Blame that one on the idiots in the Air Force and in Congress who couldn't get a hammer built in a cost efficient manner. The physics, and therefore the basic design, of planes has been well understood for some time. Materials, electronics and engines have all improved drastically. And guess what. The B52 has all sorts of new materials, computers, engines.
Let's face it, as far as transportation goes, we have de-innovated. Yes, computers have gotten faster, and the gadgets in cars, trucks and planes have improved, but the transportation systems themselves? Stagnant at best and losing ground in many ways.
Not really, it's all about the economics (and the greed and stupidity of the military-industrial complex). We aren't 'de innovating'. If anything, we're getting smarter (except the military). We aren't pretending that the world is a Jetson's TV show.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
one of they key reasons Concorde failed is American jealousy
Simply not true (and I say that as a Brit). Concorde was planned before the OPEC cartel massively raised the cost of oil. The huge increase in the cost of fuel made it uneconomic because it was very inefficient. In addition there was the issue of noise pollution due to the sonic boom. Modern technology has made supersonic flight far more fuel efficient. While I am not in a position to know whether it is efficient enough to be economically viable I would not just dismiss it out of hand.
So that's something like 1% ^ 3, minus some overlap -- what part of US or global society do you have to be to make use of this?
The only important reason it failed is because it was incredibly impractical and expensive to operate. Yes it was a marvel and all that, but you couldn't make money off it.
My understanding is that Concorde's unprofitability was mostly myth. There were problems in the beginning because fear-mongering in the States left only JFK as a destination, but once things settled and the ticket prices were reset to ultra-high class, things settled out just fine.
Had the Concorde really not been profitable, it would have been terminated long before the crash over Paris. That's just how business works. The problem was simply that the planes were aging, no replacement models were being made, and the operators were left to scavenging parts from other Concordes. With the Paris disaster, they had more expenses reinforcing the fuel tanks to try and prevent the disaster from occurring again. These things ultimately tipped the scales to grounding the program.
But is there a demand for crossing the Atlantic in 3 hours? Is there demand to cross the Pacific in 5 or less? Hell yes. If they build it, people will pay the ticket price (and enjoy the view of the curvature of the Earth through the window).
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"is being developed by a team of engineers" ==> "is being designed by a team of engineers"
It's just a paper design.
I learned a while back that the cost of an F-18 was more than 1/2 software. The plane had 1600 VME boards. (VME was a common instrumentation/computer bus, back in the 1970s and 1980s). All that fancy over-the-horizon radar, integrated electronics, head up displays, etc. takes a lot of computing power and software. I'm sure that is even more true for the newer planes.
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We have seen many proposals for supersonic business jets, and none of them was viable. Why should it be different this time?
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I've read that in practice, the weight of a bicycle in use doesn't vary - the lighter the frame & hardware, the heavier the lock required! :)
The price of carbon fiber has been a major factor, along with the difficulty of using it in manufacturing. Both of those have improved by orders of magnitude, and if one company I'm familiar with succeeds, they'll cut the cost of the fiber by another factor of 10 while greatly improving the quality. These incremental advances are truly changing the equations for many of the things you're pointing out.
As someone peripherally involved in "New Space", I'll say that the advances in technology really are making some of those fanciful ideas possible, even economically feasible. People right now are putting their money into those new ventures, and they're not doing it for entertainment but because the numbers pan out at least as well as many of the dotcom ventures. SpaceX has cut the cost of launch by 50% just by using well-tried industrial cost management methods - faced with exorbitant pricing for turbine pumps, the company built their own at 1/10 the cost. If the reusable first stage pans out, that will cut the cost by about another 1/2 (they think it will be better than that, but I think their long term costs will be higher as they transition their systems to support the more rigorous requirements of manned launches - that will affect all of their systems, even the unmanned launch ones.)
Another example, 3D printing has already proven itself with multiple different entities successfully printing components and even entire rocket engines, with costs and production times reduced by 90%.
Bottom line - much of the extremely high cost of space has been the government-run cost-plus market structure and extremely careful engineering practices. In fairness, I think this was necessary for the early days, but now we can move past that and into a more market-driven economic model with fixed prices on off-the-shelf products. Consider that development costs on a rocket engine are going to be on the order of a billion dollars, regardless of whether 10 or 10,000 of that engine are produced; but if 10,000 are built the amortized cost is $100,000 vs. $100,000,000 per engine.
If reusability pans out, the fuel cost of a launch is less than $500,000.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
No doubt this will also have a laser-ignited fusion engine in a U-238 cavity to capture fast neutrons for electricity generation to power the lasers.
That airplane could deliver a devastating punch with very little time to react. I sure hope air defenses are up to snuff.
That plane was fucking awesome.
I used to think so, still do as far as looks and capabilities go, but it was a bit disheartening to discover that the plane leaked fuel like a sieve. By design! You fill up the leaky tank to get the SR-71 off the ground, but so much leaks out during takeoff that you have to immediately do an in-flight refueling maneuver with a tanker. Only then can you really fly the plane as it's meant to be flown. In the extreme cold of the extremely high altitude the plane is capable of flying at, the engines will get so hot the titanium frame expands, putting a stop to all fuel leaks. Then you are finally good to go!
It is indeed an awesome plane, but you have to admit, that leak-then-refuel thing is pretty lame from an engineering standpoint.
You're so smart, you fix it. You'll find that the physical and economic limits are implacable.
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It is indeed an awesome plane, but you have to admit, that leak-then-refuel thing is pretty lame from an engineering standpoint.
Not awesome, agreed, but at least it was by-design. My understanding is that they fuelled the machine on the ground only sufficient for it to meet its in-flight refuelling tanker to minimise the issue you describe.
Still not ideal, but obviously the result of some significant engineering compromises likely due to the materials technology of the day.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I know for an absolute, indisputable fact that you are not a Russian shill chiming in for no reason other than to thump the nationalistic chest of antiquated Russian technology nobody wants nor cares about.
I know this because.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I want a sub-orbital
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.