LONDON: Sydney may soon be just 2 hours 30 minutes away from New York compared to 21 hours it is now, for Nasa is planning to develop “hypersonic” passenger jets that would travel at five times the speed of sound.
These aircraft would fly through the Earth’s atmosphere and slash flight times around the world to a few hours at most.
The US space agency wants to manufacture an aircraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and bring in a new age of aircraft akin to a turbo-charged Concorde, reports the Daily Mail.
The project is thought to be aimed at making a reusable aircraft that could fly to Mars but, as with previous space technology, it could have a huge impact upon passenger transport too.
Under the Nasa Aeronautics 2010 proposal, the space agency will allocate $5 million per year for the next three years to make the new aircraft a reality.
According to the proposal, engineers will look into “entry, descent and landing of high-mass vehicles entering into planetary atmospheres’’ and “air breathing access to space’’.
The proposal says: “The hypersonic heating environment, coupled with the emphasis on reusability, creates additional severe technology challenges for materials, material coatings, and structures that not only carry the aerodynamic loads of the air but also repeatedly sustain high thermal loads requiring long-life and durability while minimizing weight.
“Space access launch vehicles must be lightweight, fully reusable and easily maintained if low-cost access to space is to be achieved.”
In June, an experimental aircraft traveled at a record-breaking speed Mach 6-6 times the speed of sound. The aircraft achieved a maximum speed of 7,200 kmph. Hypersonic means travelling at five times the speed of sound. The supersonic jet, the Concorde, flew at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound.
cool! i like to dream that in 25 years when i'm in the get-any-job-i-want stage of my career (those exist right?....right?) they're gonna need a ton of pilots for things like this. there were a pile of people in 1902 that never heard of a plane, much less imagined flying one and 12 years later commercial service began.
Tim wrote:cool! i like to dream that in 25 years when i'm in the get-any-job-i-want stage of my career (those exist right?....right?) they're gonna need a ton of pilots for things like this. there were a pile of people in 1902 that never heard of a plane, much less imagined flying one and 12 years later commercial service began.
Tim, you go ambitious, I am going to retire flying cargo on some old beat-up Gulfstream 650.
Forty years ago they designed an airliner that flew at more the Mach 2. At that time, computers were 4 bit macines. If the aircraft development had kept the same pace, as computing power, we would be flying at Mach...200?
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Under the Nasa Aeronautics 2010 proposal, the space agency will allocate $5 million per year for the next three years to make the new aircraft a reality.
That must be a joke...5 millions per year just maintains the website that talks about it...
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Success in life is when the cognac that you drink is older than the women you drink it with.
Under the Nasa Aeronautics 2010 proposal, the space agency will allocate $5 million per year for the next three years to make the new aircraft a reality.
That must be a joke...5 millions per year just maintains the website that talks about it...
Tim wrote:cool! i like to dream that in 25 years when i'm in the get-any-job-i-want stage of my career (those exist right?....right?) they're gonna need a ton of pilots for things like this. there were a pile of people in 1902 that never heard of a plane, much less imagined flying one and 12 years later commercial service began.
The more relevant technology becomes, the less relevant are pilots.
Expat wrote:Forty years ago they designed an airliner that flew at more the Mach 2. At that time, computers were 4 bit macines. If the aircraft development had kept the same pace, as computing power, we would be flying at Mach...200?
But the planes would only last for a couple days at most before they crashed.
Not too many years ago (~2007), they finally stopped producing 386 chips for use in autopilots. That is a better indication of the advancement of robust computer technology.
Expat wrote:Forty years ago they designed an airliner that flew at more the Mach 2. At that time, computers were 4 bit macines. If the aircraft development had kept the same pace, as computing power, we would be flying at Mach...200?
Hah! They'll probably still stick the pilots on top of the plane with nothing between them and all the solar radiation except for a piece of glass. Maybe we'll be able to buy a space suit by then…
$10 billion invested to develop a reasonably conventional airplane in the B777. A single company can't afford to develop this so what conglomerate of nations can?
