Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

THE CONCORDE STORY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6OCuJZ9bX4

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Father & Son Head On Concorde vs NightHawk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5DDRHU3uVE&noredirect=1

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What brought the Concorde undone? .. noise .. emissions .. safety ..

Analysis: The son of Concorde?

Author - David Churchill General - 16 Nov 2013

Plans are underway for a new generation of commercial supersonic aircraft a decade after
Concorde ceased flying. But will companies be prepared to pay the price? David Churchill reports
http://buyingbusinesstravel.com/feature/1621658-analysis-son-concorde

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NASA Funds Supersonic Jet of the Future

.. top comment now .. Taint Man 4 days ago

old video i know, but i find it interesting that earth is rotating with india below the
equator on this "google earth" animation. looks like greenland/canada is the new north pole??

i find it even more interesting that nobody else in the comment section has noticed this...
all these people that think they are smart because they read the nasa brochures, lololol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swvq1nBoCOU&noredirect=1

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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_with_equator.svg

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Thought Questions for Astronomy 101 (Spring 2013)

Instructor: Eric Sandquist
http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/faculty/erics/teach/questions1.html

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.. peek at the answers there if you want to .. LOL .. this one relates to the last YT above ..

‘Audacious’ Supersonic Jet Gets NASA Funding

By Bethany Whitfield / Published: Sep 05, 2012


Florida engineers believe this supersonic jet
could eliminate sonic boom.
Photo: University of Miami

One particularly eye-catching design for a fuel-efficient supersonic jet has captured the interest of NASA, which awarded the group behind the airplane a $100,000 grant to further explore its potential.

The design features a bi-directional flying wing with a shape that resembles a ninja star. The craft, thought up by engineers at the University of Miami and Florida State University, is symmetric about both longitudinal and span axes and would adjust to different speed modes in flight by rotating 90 degrees, according to the proposal.

Developers say the rotating design would allow it to overcome a key problem posed by supersonic passenger aircraft – the need to combine supersonic flight with the ability to land and takeoff at more manageable speeds without compromising performance.

Engineers behind the project say the aircraft would reduce supersonic wave drag and essentially eliminate sonic boom, thanks to a smooth ground over pressure signature.

University of Miami aerospace engineering professor Ge-Chen Zha, who is leading the project, referred to the design as “audacious thinking” in a recent university news piece, and says he hopes to create a new practical supersonic passenger-carrying airplane within the next 20 to 30 years.

The grant won by Zha and his team was awarded as part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which seeks to “be an incubator for a multitude of high risk-high payoff ideas that, if successful, will transition for further development.”

http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/jets/audacious-supersonic-jet-gets-nasa-funding

.. earlier i had two pesky flies liking my screen, been toweling (rolled) them away .. now only one .. i wonder if some flies learn faster than others? .. maybe the first one left out of boredom, after all there is an open window less than a meter to my right .. is windy though .. oh! the 2nd seems to have gotten the message now, too ..

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.. MUSIC BREAK .. SING-A-LONG!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQPiV_cauyI&noredirect=1

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'Son of Concorde': London to Sydney in four hours gets closer

Date June 25, 2012 Comments 273

Clive Dorman is one of Australia's most experienced travel journalists.

[ .. 2:44 VIDEO .. he says funding is the ONLY problem .. gulp ]

What next for supersonic airliners?
Further funding is required to produce a viable alternative to the supersonic passenger liner, the Concorde, experts say.

They’re playing with our minds again ... and they’re on a sure-fire winner. Aeronautical designers last week again unleashed their trusty headline-grabber about the imminence of a “Son of Concorde”.

London to Sydney in four hours, they were saying, in the run-up to next month’s Farnborough air show outside London in the UK, which is one of the aerospace industry’s main annual sales jamborees.

Importantly, the boffins were talking about the technical details of breakthroughs in computer-aided design that they reckon can finally overcome the biggest obstacle – Concorde’s inability to fly supersonically over land.



'Son of Concorde' ... our ability to fly at supersonic speeds over land in commercial aircraft
depends on the effort to reduce the sonic boom, says NASA. Photo: NASA/Lockheed Martin

I was sucked in despite a knowing warning yesterday from former Sydney Morning Herald aviation editor Ben Sandilands .. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/ . "Every single story about a Concorde successor ever written has been wrong," he told me bluntly.

But the highly technical report .. http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_06_04_2012_p50-461842.xml .. by veteran aviation writer Guy Norris and colleague Graham Warwick in Aviation Week and Space Technology was very specific about the progress that has been made.

“The biggest barriers to development of economically viable and environmentally acceptable supersonic transports — sonic boom and airport noise — may be about to be breached,” they wrote.

“Through development of design tools allowing aircraft to be shaped to produce quieter booms, and noise-reducing nozzle concepts, NASA and industry are growing confident that routine supersonic overland flight is within reach.”



One of Lockheed Martin's designs for a supersonic aircraft that could
travel over land with reduced sonic booms. Photo: NASA/Lockheed Martin

The London Sunday Times reported that Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Gulfstream were in a race to build a Concorde successor aimed initially at the business jet market.

Backed by the US space agency NASA, the three companies believe they are close to muffling the sonic boom to create a sound described by a Gulfstream engineer as “closer to a puff or plop”.

"The fact that the big boys are all close confirms industry rumours that a new generation of supersonic planes is now, finally, within reach," the engineer told the Sunday Times.


The fastest subsonic executive jet, Gulfstream's forthcoming G650, can fly 11,000 kms at 1041km/h and has a top speed of 1133 km/h.

Lighter composite materials, more advanced engines and smaller fuselages could enable new jets to travel about twice as fast as Concorde, which flew at up to 2187 km/h. That would enable speeds of more than 4000 km/h, allowing scheduled “block” times between Sydney and London, 17,000 kms away, of around five hours.

The fastest subsonic executive jet, Gulfstream's forthcoming G650, can fly 11,000 kms at a mere 1041 km/h and has a top speed of 1133 km/h. But the imagined successor, dubbed the X-54, would “prove that an aircraft can be shaped for low sonic boom”, according to Aviation Week’s report.

The new design would be “sketched out” at Farnborough along with other supersonic prototypes, air show executives told the Sunday Times.

The sonic boom was the major factor that prevented Concorde from ever being developed beyond an expensive experimental aircraft. By the time an Air France Concorde crashed in 2000 .. http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/airline-slams-absurd-concorde-crash-verdict-20101207-18n45.html .. in a disastrous encounter with runway debris after taking off from Paris Charles de Gaulle, the plane was already having to deal with daunting ageing-aircraft issues as most Concordes by then were approaching 30 years old.

In the end, without a commercial successor in sight, Air France and British Airways decided to ground them in 2003.

At that time and to this day, the airline industry is mesmerised by affordability, with the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner delivering previously unattainably low unit economics – the cost per seat per kilometre.

The X-54 business jet wouldn’t fly until after 2020, which means a full-sized jet seating around 300 people wouldn’t be available until around 2030 assuming the new technology was reliable and successful.

Even then, the airline industry struggles to answer the question: what would happen to the existing subsonic jet fleet if those flying business and first class suddenly left to become clients of the sexy new supersonic transport (SST)? Most of the world’s long-haul international fleet would be uneconomic without business travellers paying up to seven times the going rate down the back of the plane.

But there’s no doubt we’ll get there eventually. Australia is among the countries farthest from the world’s main human populations in the northern hemisphere and the people for whom the term “tyranny of distance” was coined.

What do you think? Are we likely to be flying at supersonic speeds again within 10 years? Or will these concepts remain in the realm of fantasy?

Note: Last week's blog .. http://www.smh.com.au/travel/blogs/travellers-check/seating-madness-airbuss-new-solution-for-overweight-20120618-20j56.html .. received an overwhelming response from readers. Unfortunately as a result of the huge volume of comments, some comments slipped through that should not have been published. These have since been removed and we apologise for any offence caused.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/blogs/travellers-check/son-of-concorde-london-to-sydney-in-four-hours-gets-closer-20120625-20xdm.html

.. i was sucked in, too, by this friggin YAHOO ..
http://news.yahoo.com/video/whoknew-supersonic-travel-sydney-australia-060000836.html

.. hmm .. i thought Yahoo would be in here, also ..
http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html .. anyway, a Yahoo is sorta like a Yobbo ..

.. if you remember the two fly story, one of them is back .. lolol ..