Japan and France to develop new Concorde

blackhawk · Post by **blackhawk** » 15 Jun 2005, 15:06

Japan and France are to work together to develop a successor to the retired supersonic jet aircraft Concorde. The new plane will have 300 seats and cut the flight time between New York and Tokyo to six hours, reports said.
The agreement to develop the new passenger plane was signed at the Paris Air Show, Japan added
The ministry added that Japan had successfully tested an engine that could theoretically reach speeds up to five times the speed of sound.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4094810.stm

regi · Post by **regi** » 15 Jun 2005, 15:26

I am flabbergasted.
How are they gonna do it? On the one side, France as a country is a strategic partner of Airbus. But this neo Cord would not be a Airbus product?
If this is true and it continues, it will be the most important news of the airline industry for the next 10 years. Any launch or mega sale of B787, A350, B777, or even extra A380's would look unimportant compared to a new supersonic passenger airplane. A real new Sonic Cruiser. So Boeing would be wrong at all, going completely for the dreamliner and leaving the sonic cruiser.

lastrow · Post by **lastrow** » 15 Jun 2005, 15:45

That's interesting news indeed, but I wondered if the issue still applies that these kind of airplanes are not as efficient as A380-style planes in terms of the cost per seat-mile. Didn't the Boeing company drop the Supersonic Cruiser plan in favour for building the dreamliner? What would be different for a Japanese/French aircraft with this issue?

The article says that the Japanese have proposals to improve the engine in terms of its fuel consumption. However, super sonic travel seems more difficult than sub-sunic travel to me (for example the heat on the fuselage due to the strong air friction). so I doubt that there might be a market for this one that pushes away all the current planes and plans of Airbus and Boeing.

btw: interesting are also the recent proposals for super sonic business jets (QSST and SBJ): http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/supplement/ssbjlinks.html

-lr.

earthman · Post by **earthman** » 15 Jun 2005, 15:56

I hope they manage to fix the sonic boom issue, so the thing can fly over land.

sab319 · Post by **sab319** » 15 Jun 2005, 16:00

Well this is certainly news, I've been wondering how long it would take before someone started thinking of a new supersonic plane again...

Buzz · Post by **Buzz** » 15 Jun 2005, 16:01

earthman wrote:I hope they manage to fix the sonic boom issue, so the thing can fly over land.

Well said! The techical issues are not that important, compared to the sonic boom-problem. No supersonic aircraft will be succesfull unless they (somhow) 'fix' that problem, so that it can fly overland.

Tokio-New York is over the entire USA, so they would have some solution I would assume.

lastrow · Post by **lastrow** » 15 Jun 2005, 16:24

I think the QSST proposal covers this issue - and claims to reduce it to 1/100th of the Concorde: http://flug-revue.rotor.com/FRTypen/FRQSST.htm
for the SBJ proposal from Lockheed Martin I have read about a similar strategy.

For me it looks more like the fuel efficiency and the more complex construction of the airplane are the most important issues.

-lr.

dimitrios82 · Post by **dimitrios82** » 15 Jun 2005, 16:42

That is really excellent news for the aviation world!!

Ozzie1969 · Post by **Ozzie1969** » 15 Jun 2005, 19:06

Another problem with supersonic aircraft is that they are really only fit for long distances, which limits the market. Besides the technical difficulties to be overcome, the main problem will probably be the same as for Concorde : cost efficiency. Concorde may have been a fantastic aircraft for spotters, it has never recouped the enormous investments put into its development.

hainsj · Post by **hainsj** » 15 Jun 2005, 19:52

£1m per year won't go very far for a project this complex!
Concorde was reckoned to have cost over £5bn
However, it's good to see that we aren't giving up on the supersonic dream

HorsePower · Post by **HorsePower** » 15 Jun 2005, 20:44

hainsj wrote:£1m per year won't go very far for a project this complex!

100% agree with you on that. I see this agreement more as a know-how transfert rather than a strong aircraft project. A long time ago, Aérospatiale (a french aerospace company, now part of EADS), had a project named "Alliance" with aprox. 250 seats to "replace" Concorde.

Regards

Seb.

Buzz · Post by **Buzz** » 15 Jun 2005, 21:02

The Concord was a failure because it couldn't land anywere, except JFK. Going anywere else would mean overland flying, wich would have ment subsonicc speed & that was the thing the Concord wasn't good (and effecient) at.
If you fix that problem, there isn't a business class passenger in the world who would like to spend 24 hours travelling from (for ex.) London to Sydney...
People are willing to pay, that's what concord showed. Prices of aircraft would have to be reasonable however, wich would require a lot of sales (lower the unit cost), wich in turn would require a lot of pottentional routes...

beaucaire · Post by **beaucaire** » 15 Jun 2005, 21:27

It's gonna be a flop ....
Sonic boom issues,petrol prices,excessive cost/mile budget,envirement pressure,USA lobbying behind scene to kill the projetc and on and on goes the list.
An engineers dream but you can't do away with physics !

earthman · Post by **earthman** » 15 Jun 2005, 23:54

Many people are working hard on the sonic boom problem; it's not unsolveable, but it might result in ugly aircraft (recall the uglification of the F-4 phantom to reduce it's sonic boom).

As to New York - Tokio, isn't that a trans-arctic route? Hope the sonic booms won't crack the ice cap...

Post by **sn26567** » 16 Jun 2005, 10:58

lastrow wrote:Didn't the Boeing company drop the Supersonic Cruiser plan in favour for building the dreamliner?

It was not a supersonic cruiser, but a sonic cruiser, flying at a speed just under the speed of sound. It was dropped because the advantages of flying just a little faster than current aeroplanes were not evident.

A380-800 · Post by **A380-800** » 18 Jun 2005, 23:26

I guess with the current fuel prices this might end up into a dream, unless
they are considering a type of engine which shows compareable fuel consumption
as current types do.

rgds,

A380-800

realplaneshaveprops · Post by **realplaneshaveprops** » 19 Jun 2005, 00:43

It could only fly efficient between W-Europe and Eastern-US & Japan (or that Asian region) to the West coast of the US, because of the sonic boom. In spite of the new available technology and designs to limit the sonic boom, I don't think it's possible to eliminate it completely.
About the whole project, probably they will spent a lot of money to it and in 2 or 3 years the project will be cancelled.

Greetz

Only Real Planes Have Props

HorsePower · Post by **HorsePower** » 19 Jun 2005, 01:06

I am completely

fftopic:

:

realplaneshaveprops wrote:Only Real Planes Have Props

Ouf! I was thinking it was "Only Real Plane Shave Props"

. So I'm fully with you in this case...

BTW welcome to the forum!

Seb.