NASA Wants To Get Supersonic With New Passenger Jet (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: NASA wants to put a supersonic passenger jet back in the sky that promises to a soft thump or supersonic heartbeat as the agency called it - rather than the disruptive boom currently associated with such high-speed flight. The 'low-boom' aircraft known as Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) will be built by a team led by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. It will cost $20 million to develop baseline aircraft requirements and a preliminary aircraft design.

Comments

What's the market?

[msauve]

...and what sort of fuel economy will it get?

Boeing failed with the SST, due to anticipated fuel costs not meeting market needs. Similarly with the Concorde, which couldn't operate profitably.

Sure, there are some rich folk who would pay for short flight times, but the mass market is price conscious. The problem with supersonic flight is not sonic booms, but efficiency.

Finally, why is NASA wasting taxpayer money designing passenger aircraft for the civilian market?

Re: What's the market?

[Richard_at_work]

I would love for you to back that up - after privatisation, British Airways increased the ticket price, still filled the aircraft (until post 9/11) and made a profit doing so.

From a WSJ article in 2003:

"It was a tough decision to make emotionally but the right decision from a business perspective," said Rod Eddington, chief executive of British Airways.

British Airways has never given figures on Concorde's profitability, but Mr. Eddington said it had been profitable until last year. During the past year, corporate travel on Concorde has declined "massively" as investment banks and other once-heavy users "have been writing Concorde out of their travel plans," he said.

I have never seen any evidence of subsidisation of Concorde post-privatisation.

Re:This will only help the wealthy...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a Republican and I flew on the Concorde.

I remember most of the passengers being Hollywood types, and Rod Stewart flying to New York for his weekly haircut (no shit).

Micro SST is better answer

[Anonymous Coward]

1-3 person pilotless, lying in 'coffin' wearing VR headset to eliminate claustrophobia. Use just 25-50g/s fuel (1-2MW heat) vs 7kg/s of concorde (300MW). Small power use=tiny boom noise.
-Small ramjets just as efficient as big ramjets (unlike gas turbines), Small turboramjets have good efficiency as most of compression not done by turbomachinery. Use small gas turbine or more efficient IC engine to fly to altitude and dive to accelerate through sound barrier and ignite turbo-ramjet.
-Enables supersonic flight overland without annoying people (low power/small boom).
-Enables use of efficient designs that don't compromise efficiency to minimise boom.
-Enables use of more efficient unconventional Oblique Flying wing design that is not possible within space constraints of airport due to large wingspans for 100-200 person design.
-No volume/weight wasted on galleys, toilets, aisles, overhead lockers, emergency doors, cockpits. Passengers/cargo can be higher proportion of takeoff weight.
-2-3x as many passenger miles per day per 'seat' as subsonic aircraft.
-Development costs at least an order of magnitude lower (possibly $1 billion), manufacturing costs per seat relatively low (possibly up to an order of magnitude) due to high manufacturing volumes, and over time is likely to result in very thoroughly debugged and safe aircraft.
-Small enough to incorporate a ballistic parachute for safety.
-Cost saving on flight crew.
-No long check-in delays or security required - could be flying within minutes of airport arrival.
-Could fly from smaller local airports. No inefficient hub/spoke design required.
-Maybe possible to use vertical supersonic catapult in mineshaft at airports (boom only propegates forwards) to increase speed further
-8000km range with kerosene, 10000km range with LNG, 20000km range with LH2

Likely 2-4x faster than subsonic flight (less wasted time at airports), at similar or lower cost.

Won't happen

[LostMyBeaver]

The instant that the name Lockheed showed up, we knew for a fact that this is simply a means of siphoning $20 million of US taxpayer money into the wallets of Lockheed Execs. Before they're through, they'll invest the $20 million into getting $100 million to finished the project "they underestimated the complexity of" and by that, it means that they couldn't figure out how to split $20 million between more than 2 crooks.

Lockheed can't do anything for under a billion dollars. The breakdown is $50 million to do the job and deliver and $950 million into the pockets of people employed entirely by lockheed to suck more money out of the federal budget.

Lockheed is probably the #1 reason we were never able to advance further in the space program before SpaceX and others came around. Lockheed and Boeing have absolutely no interest in building the future. They only ever cared about building bank accounts. When was the last time Lockheed actually managed to do anything related to space without going 20 times over budget and more often than not simply cancelling the project? With how many times Lockheed has screwed NASA, when will the tax payer demand that NASA finds a more reliable source?

Yes I know Lockheed is probably one of the only companies big enough to handle these projects... but make a new X-Prize. Put $20 million in the account for the winner. It certainly worked for space... even now, NASA has been able to move most of their launches away from Russia and rockets are launching more and more reliably every day by a company which is agile and doesn't bitch after every step "We need more money". Bezos will be there before long as well. Bigelow will build space stations. Who the hell needs Lockheed or Boeing in space anymore... they don't even remember which way to point to find it.

So put together another X-Prize... grab the attention of the next Musk wannabe and build a new aircraft industry that is agile and brilliant. Using Lockheed or Boeing is just asking to kill it.

Re: This will only help the wealthy...

[Loether]

It seems slashdotter's aren't the only ones who disagreed about the "E"

Quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Naming:
Reflecting the treaty between the British and French governments that led to Concorde's construction, the name Concorde is from the French word concorde (IPA: [kkd]), which has an English equivalent, concord. Both words mean agreement, harmony or union. The name was officially changed to Concord by Harold Macmillan in response to a perceived slight by Charles de Gaulle. At the French roll-out in Toulouse in late 1967,[26] the British Government Minister for Technology, Tony Benn, announced that he would change the spelling back to Concorde.[27] This created a nationalist uproar that died down when Benn stated that the suffixed 'e' represented "Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale)." In his memoirs, he recounts a tale of a letter from an irate Scotsman claiming: "[Y]ou talk about 'E' for England, but part of it is made in Scotland." Given Scotland's contribution of providing the nose cone for the aircraft, Benn replied, "[I]t was also 'E' for 'Écosse' (the French name for Scotland) — and I might have added 'e' for extravagance and 'e' for escalation as well!"[28]

Concorde also acquired an unusual nomenclature for an aircraft. In common usage in the United Kingdom, the type is known as Concorde without an article, rather than the Concorde or a Concorde.[29][30]