NASA says it will build quiet supersonic passenger jet

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March 1st, 2016 at 7:01:37 AM permalink
Pacomartin
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
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Quote: (CNN)
The age of supersonic jet travel may be a tiny bit closer to making a comeback. NASA announced Monday it has awarded a $20 million contract to Lockheed Martin to develop a preliminary design for a quiet demonstration passenger aircraft designed to fly faster than the speed of sound. The piloted test aircraft would use so-called Quiet Supersonic Technology, or QueSST, to create a supersonic "heartbeat," a kind of soft thump instead of the annoying sonic booms usually associated with supersonic planes. The project is the first in a series of NASA "X-planes" as part of its New Aviation Horizons initiative. The planes are aimed at making "flight greener, safer and quieter


I wouldn't have thought that flying quietly over land was a high priority. I thought it was range!

March 1st, 2016 at 7:10:19 AM permalink
Nareed
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
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Quote: Pacomartin
I wouldn't have thought that flying quietly over land was a high priority. I thought it was range!


That, too. But imagine how much air travel would change if you could do JFK-LAX in under two hours.

According to the snippet, though, it's an X-plane project. X-planes are test beds. The "X" is for eXperimental, after all. what gets tested may be a particular technology, or the effects of one, or something unrelated to a technology at all, or all of the above.

The point is an X-plane is not a demonstrator or a prototype. In this case the point will be probably to see how quiet this new technology is, then how efficient, convenient, practical, and so on. This is or can be very useful. Pretty much some X-planes proved a lifting body is not as good an idea as wings, and that vertical take-off is just too expensive.

In other words, don't expect an actual passenger plane to come off this.
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March 1st, 2016 at 8:02:58 AM permalink
Pacomartin
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Quote: Nareed
That, too. But imagine how much air travel would change if you could do JFK-LAX in under two hours.


It is 2470 miles from LAX to JFK. Concorde had maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph) at cruise altitude. But you would have to get to altitude, and fly at maybe 2/3 distance at high speed.

See, I don't think air travel would change very much. The flight is likely to be so expensive compared to subsonic travel and it will save you so little actual time that it will be a novelty at best.

I think a transparent plane to make the trip less clausterphobic will have a far greater impact.

March 1st, 2016 at 8:36:11 AM permalink
Nareed
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Quote: Pacomartin
See, I don't think air travel would change very much. The flight is likely to be so expensive compared to subsonic travel and it will save you so little actual time that it will be a novelty at best.


I can hear the same argument brandished in the 50s comparing the newfangled 707 to the well-established DC-7.

Just saying.

I'm certain that if Concorde had succeeded commercially, we'd have much more efficient SSTs by no, costing about as much as the plodding jets we have now.

Quote:
I think a transparent plane to make the trip less clausterphobic will have a far greater impact.


Don't you think that 1) airlines would then reduce pitch to virtually nil and 2) Diana Prince would sue for trademark infringement? ;)
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March 1st, 2016 at 9:17:58 AM permalink
Pacomartin
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Quote: Nareed
Diana Prince would sue for trademark infringement? ;)




There is a story that she has a more spectacular role in the Batman V. Superman film than most people were initially led to believe.
March 1st, 2016 at 11:42:16 AM permalink
Dalex64
Member since: Mar 8, 2014
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I was looking to see the reasons the Concorde failed, and couldn't find what I was looking for, so I'll operate from memory:
wasn't allowed to fly supersonic over significant populations due to sonic booms
extremely fuel inefficient when not travelling at supersonic speeds

that isn't to say that it was particularly fuel efficient at supersonic speeds, just that it was a lot worse subsonic.

I think it also wasn't going to be able to operate coach-density seating at typical coach fares, so it was all about first class fares and reduced seating, leading to even higher than normal first class fares.

I also found this on the wikipedia concorde page:

Quote:

Return to service plan

In September 2015, it was publicly revealed [217] that the Concorde Club had secured over £160 million to return an aircraft to service.[218]

Concorde Club president Paul James said: "The main obstacle to any Concorde project to date has been 'Where’s the money?' – a question we heard ad nauseam, until we found an investor. Now that money is no longer the problem it's over to those who can help us make it happen."[219] The organisation aims to buy the Concorde currently on display at Le Bourget airport. A tentative date of 2019 has been put forward for the first flight – 50 years after its maiden journey.[215]
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March 1st, 2016 at 11:47:48 AM permalink
Nareed
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Quote: Dalex64
I was looking to see the reasons the Concorde failed, and couldn't find what I was looking for, so I'll operate from memory:


All that, plus:

Couldn't handle the longer long-haul routes which wide body jets did. In particular it was well-nigh impossible to use in transpacific routes.

Fuel was even more an issue once it entered service and the "oil shocks" began to take place. Oil began to get too expensive then, raising fuel costs dramatically.

What I would like to find out is what happened to all the orders from airlines other than BA and AF. I've read that at least Pan Am and Brannif placed orders, the latter even leased one and operated it for a short time. I do know there's no way the plane would have been developed with only two airlines placing orders for less than 20 planes all told.
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March 1st, 2016 at 1:30:06 PM permalink
Face
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Quote: Dalex64

wasn't allowed to fly supersonic over significant populations due to sonic booms


I think I've asked this before, but I still don't understand... why is this an issue?

My best friend lives damn near inside Camp Lejeune. F-16's are ever present doing their exercises off the coast, and booms are going on seemingly round the clock. It's about as disturbing as a mild to moderate thunderstorm, and these are from fighters within visual range and only a few thousand feet off the deck.

Commercial planes would, I would imagine, be at tens of thousands of feet before they got cooking. It's not like they're coming in hot right over downtown at 500' doing 800mph.

What's the big deal?
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March 1st, 2016 at 1:47:42 PM permalink
odiousgambit
Member since: Oct 28, 2012
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Quote: Face
What's the big deal?


If you lived in the South during the Cuban Missile Crisis you got to hear a lot of sonic booms. In Arkansas Blytheville AFB was beefed up and these guys trained at full-tilt, let me tell you. I remember hearing several sonic booms a day but was hundreds of miles from an AFB.

When such was finally banned people cited broken windows and things like that. Sure seems to me it would be easy to just ban it at low altitudes.
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March 1st, 2016 at 5:08:53 PM permalink
AZDuffman
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
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Quote: Face
I think I've asked this before, but I still don't understand... why is this an issue?


It is all about noise. When I was a kid planes could be so loud you had to stop talking because it drowned you out. Fighter planes today are still not this loud. Booms are still noise.
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