General / Off-Topic A supersonic aircraft able to link Paris to San Francisco in just three hours

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
The aeronautical group Airbus, put down a patent in the middle of July to protect the invention of a "ultrafast" airplane

[video=youtube;0dyrbRGkVKI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=164&v=0dyrbRGkVKI[/video]
 
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Defacto

Defacto
FuzzySpider said:
The last supersonic passenger aircraft didn't have a good safety record. I'm not very keen to be honest.
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Higher velocities, larger differences in altitude, greater accelerations - I think it will be hard to make this aircraft safe enough for commercial standards. I'm not an expert though.

Finally, I nominate ''European Aeronautic Defence and Space company'' for most awesome aeronautics company name of the year. I wonder what the ''Defence'' and ''Space'' bits are about. I demand rods from the gods!
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
FuzzySpider said:
The last supersonic passenger aircraft didn't have a good safety record. I'm not very keen to be honest.
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The last supersonic passenger aircraft had one of the most impressive safety records of any airplane ever built.

One crash in its entire history.

It was continually attacked before it first flight, by American aircraft manufacturers who couldn't match it. Some of the more ridiculous claims were that, it would use up Oxygen so fast, the world would suffocate. That repeatedly flying at that speed would give you cancer or make you sterile.

The single crash was the end because regulations meant that after such a crash, a full safety eveluation would have to be done. That concluded that the fuel tanks were intrisically unsafe. Redesigning them was deemed unfesable.

One claim at the time was that supersonic air travel would never be successful because there wasn't demand.

The Americans now seem to have caught up and are ready to produce their own such aircraft. So suddently there is a demand.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...-business-jet-aims-cut-journey-time-HALF.html

http://www.travelpulse.com/opinions/column/why-we-need-supersonic-air-travel.html
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
I think technically this is a hypersonic aircraft. Also Airbus is a European company. I think I'll wait for the suborbital scramjet designs.
 

Hell Razor5543

H
Another reason that Concord crashed was that a tyre was punctured by a wayward piece of metal, of a material that was not used in commercial aeroplane construction when Concord was designed, built, and flown. When this tyre 'exploded', a piece of it entered a fuel tank at speed. After the crash, inserts were made to try and prevent such an incident happening again. I personally believe (although I have no proof of this) that Concord was banned by the US authorities after 9/11 (they had tried to ban her several times in the past). Could you imagine the damaged caused if she had been crashed into the Twin Towers at speed? Concord was on a test flight to the USA on 9/11.

http://www.concorde35mm.co.uk/page115a.html

Mind you, she was not a cost effective aeroplane. They needed 69 passengers on board to break even.
 
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Surfinjo

Surfinjo
Hell Razor5543 said:
Another reason that Concord crashed was that a tyre was punctured by a wayward piece of metal, of a material that was not used in commercial aeroplane construction when Concord was designed, built, and flown. When this tyre 'exploded', a piece of it entered a fuel tank at speed. After the crash, inserts were made to try and prevent such an incident happening again. I personally believe (although I have no proof of this) that Concord was banned by the US authorities after 9/11 (they had tried to ban her several times in the past). Could you imagine the damaged caused if she had been crashed into the Twin Towers at speed? Concord was on a test flight to the USA on 9/11.

http://www.concorde35mm.co.uk/page115a.html
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All good points. But the fact remains, one crash in its history. A pretty impressive safety record.

The claims about hitting a piece of metal have been raised from any number of perspectives. But the metal hit the tyres and the tyre burst.

Are chunks of metal regularly left on runways?

Are such carelessly disgarded pieces of junk regularly hit by airplanes?

If the tyre caused the crash, then it seems very strange that a more modern tyre couldn't have been fitted.


Hell Razor5543 said:
Mind you, she was not a cost effective aeroplane. They needed 69 passengers on board to break even.
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The more likely reason for ending it and for it not being replaced to date.

But, not as fun as specualting about other Concord related issues. :D
 

FuzzySpider

FuzzySpider
Surfinjo said:
The last supersonic passenger aircraft had one of the most impressive safety records of any airplane ever built.

One crash in its entire history.
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One crash out of a total of thirteen aircraft. By contrast there have been 8551 Boeing 737s built, with 77 crashes.

And let's not forget the non-fatal incidents the Concorde has had. The rudder breakups in flight, the hairline fracturing of the structure, and the tyre blowouts on landing.

The average Concorde flew considerably fewer hours than any other Airbus or Boeing jetliner, with far less takeoffs and landings.

Do some digging, you'll find it wasn't the safest of birds.
 

Hell Razor5543

H
According to the crash investigation, a large chunk of rubber (about 4.5KG) tore loose from the tyre as it failed, impacting the wing at 310MPH! This did not enter the fuel tanks, but the shock wave did cause a failure in one of them, so it started to leak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590

If you ever are at a major airport, you will see vehicles patrolling the runways. They are (amongst other things) 'FODing' the runway (looking for anything that could damage aircraft, causing Foreign Object Damage (FOD)). For some reason this did not happen at the time/date planned, so Concorde hit a piece of titanium alloy (not made or fitted to the correct specifications), which is so hard and stiff that it ruptured the tyre (an aluminium item probably would have bent, and caused far less damage).
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
FuzzySpider said:
One crash out of a total of thirteen aircraft. By contrast there have been 8551 Boeing 737s built, with 77 crashes.

And let's not forget the non-fatal incidents the Concorde has had. The rudder breakups in flight, the hairline fracturing of the structure, and the tyre blowouts on landing.

The average Concorde flew considerably fewer hours than any other Airbus or Boeing jetliner, with far less takeoffs and landings.

Do some digging, you'll find it wasn't the safest of birds.
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Think you'll find these are not uncommon on all airplane flights.

The hairline fractures in particular are a feature of all jet aircraft and were the cause of a number of serious crashes in the 50s. Eventually, the problems were solved when it was realsed that certain panels needed to be regularly changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks

As for usage, that is a matter of record. If you insist upon comparing it with Boeing 737, that has seen 50 years of service with 77 crashes.

Concorde, One crash. in 34 years. A pretty impressive record.

Economically? Not so good. But it is European, did you really expect any different?
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
Hell Razor5543 said:
According to the crash investigation, a large chunk of rubber (about 4.5KG) tore loose from the tyre as it failed, impacting the wing at 310MPH! This did not enter the fuel tanks, but the shock wave did cause a failure in one of them, so it started to leak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590

If you ever are at a major airport, you will see vehicles patrolling the runways. They are (amongst other things) 'FODing' the runway (looking for anything that could damage aircraft, causing Foreign Object Damage (FOD)). For some reason this did not happen at the time/date planned, so Concorde hit a piece of titanium alloy (not made or fitted to the correct specifications), which is so hard and stiff that it ruptured the tyre (an aluminium item probably would have bent, and caused far less damage).
Click to expand...

0.jpg


Tin-num, Even when they said it was the gaw-bage,
I noo it waz the Tin-num
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
FuzzySpider said:
It hardly put any hours in the air. There are over a thousand 737s in the air as I type this, with one taking off and another landing every few minutes.

Take a look at the stats...

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

In terms of hours in the air vs fatalities Concorde has the worst safety record of any civilian aircraft since the 1960s.
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If you want to take that argument then, with the number of individual planes and the total flying hours, they should have any problems at all.

As it happens, the 737 suffered 1.5 crashes per year. Concorde, 1/34.
 

FuzzySpider

FuzzySpider
Surfinjo said:
If you want to take that argument then, with the number of individual planes and the total flying hours, they should have any problems at all.

As it happens, the 737 suffered 1.5 crashes per year. Concorde, 1/34.
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Per year isn't a good metric to use because it doesn't take into account the number of planes flown.

A better argument against my argument is the simple truth that the tiny number of Concordes flown could make that sort of statistical analysis worthless - a single freak accident could (and perhaps did) render a perfect safety record vis-à-vis human fatalities and make it one of the worst. There isn't enough data from a single crash to draw any big conclusions, particularly not when the accident wasn't due to a fatal design flaw.

Even so, the fact these supersonic aircraft have such enormous takeoff and landing speeds as well as massive thrust to get off the ground (due to low resistance wing design) make me very leery of accepting them as safe enough for me to get on.

I am justifying my own prejudices to myself, sir, and you will leave me to my stupidity!
 
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Hell Razor5543

H
The design of the slender delta wing meant that it (according to the details I have found) generated powerful vortexes over the upper wing surface, which meant that she did not have as high a take off speed as people think (220 knots, compared to an average of 165 knots for other airliners). Yes, she was supersonic, but the conventional design for supersonic vehicles is short stubby wings, and this needs a very high speed to gain lift. Concorde (and the TU-144) did not have this issue. Mind you, they both needed a higher angle of attack (both in take off and landing) for this to work, hence the 'droop snoot' nose design.

This link explains quite a bit, including the wing design;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
 
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hems303

hems303
Surfinjo said:
The last supersonic passenger aircraft had one of the most impressive safety records of any airplane ever built.

One crash in its entire history.

It was continually attacked before it first flight, by American aircraft manufacturers who couldn't match it. Some of the more ridiculous claims were that, it would use up Oxygen so fast, the world would suffocate. That repeatedly flying at that speed would give you cancer or make you sterile.

The single crash was the end because regulations meant that after such a crash, a full safety eveluation would have to be done. That concluded that the fuel tanks were intrisically unsafe. Redesigning them was deemed unfesable.

One claim at the time was that supersonic air travel would never be successful because there wasn't demand.

The Americans now seem to have caught up and are ready to produce their own such aircraft. So suddently there is a demand.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...-business-jet-aims-cut-journey-time-HALF.html

http://www.travelpulse.com/opinions/column/why-we-need-supersonic-air-travel.html
Click to expand...
.
Every point you make is correct. The Concorde was ahead of the rest. The rest resented this, and made life as difficult as possible! I had the pleasure (and it really was!) of flying in G-BOAG one of the last to fly: A memory I'll treasure!:D
I believe that "my" particular Concorde is in a museum somewhere in America, so perhaps it is getting a little respect now it's grounded!:(
 
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