According to Yahoo! news... TOKYO - Japan and France are jointly researching a new supersonic passenger plane to succeed the retired Concorde, but with up to three times as many seats and the potential to fly the Tokyo-to-New York route in six hours, officials and reports said Wednesday. Defense contractors and engineering companies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. are expected to split an annual research budget of about 200 million yen ($1.84 million) over the next three years to develop the faster-than-sound plane, Japan's Trade Ministry said in a statement. The agreement was signed at the Paris Air Show Tuesday. The cooperation opens up the possibility of reducing by half the flight time between New York and Tokyo to six hours on an aircraft with 300 seats three times the capacity of the Concorde, according to media reports and officials Wednesday.
About 10 years to be exact. Later on in the article they project an operating in-fleet craft in 2015.
That has to be a typo, $2M wouldn't even begin to touch defining the problems and performance specifications on a project like this. $2B would be a start. Even $200M sounds too low. I honestly doubt anything will ever come of it. The market is probably too small for the cost. High-rollers may pay to save a few hours, but I doubt most people would if it costs three or four times as much for a ticket. Plus it would of course be like a big ripe apple for the picking for terrorists as well (not a good reason not to do it of course).
I agree, when I read two million it seemed incredibly low to me. Also, if tickets are more expensive (which I imagine they will be), how do they plan on filling 300 seats on every plane? I do hope they build it though, as it would be very cool. How fast would New York to London be? 3 hours?
Wish this plane will fly out from DFW, too. Atlanta & Dallas are more likely the longest flight time to Narita, 12 to 14 hours, so we need them here, not in NY!
True, but the plane wouldn't be able to go supersonic over the States, so any advantage would be limited.
Don't be too quick to pull the trigger on this one. There is always the need for faster travel. In fact one of the reasons why tele conferencing and video conferencing has risen sharply is because travel times waste too many working hours. Any businessman will tell you that being face to face is completely differnt than cutting deals over a stupid camera and projector via the internet. The $2M (approx.) is just for research on the project. The operations costs and fixed asset costs have already been invested by the partnering Japanese companies. And for the sake of humanity... terorists!!!!! Good God... terrorists terrorists terrorists.... everything in America starts and stops with damm terrorists! We have got to move on and get over this paranoia. Let the securitty professionals get on with their jobs and we will get on with ours!
link or something? this will be when I begin my career as a pilot. Teh woot, hopfully all the planes will be like that in ten years.
When British Airways was flying one of the Concordes to Seattle from NY to put in a museum, they set a record for that flight route. They had to get permission from Canada to break the speed of sound over there, the US wouldn't allow it. I don't think Canda would allow a commercial airliner to break the speed of sound routinely.
Sonic booms scare the chupacabras. "I took the 6 hour flight from New York to Tokyo. My luggage arrived 8 hours later on the next flight."
They cannot even begin to define the problem for $2M. Assembling a team of aerospace engineers just to begin work on the specifications will take more money than that. I can assure you they do not come cheap, nor get things done particularly quickly. This is a pipe dream. Once the real market research is performed, coupled with projected plane, maintenance, and security costs, it will die quietly.
They should just buy the design of the TU-244. It's older sibling, the TU-144 is already larger than the Concorde by about 1.5x the number of seats. The TU-244 flies about the same speed, but I believe seats 300 people. The nose is fixed, unlike the moveable version of the Concorde and TU-144, but can do so because of using cameras for landing. Edit: http://www.geocities.com/spacetransport/aircraft-tu244.html
It's probably an outdated design. Everything would have to be rethought--avionics, materials, loading on new materials in airframe and therefore an entirely new airframe, engines, cabin materials and sound suppression, cabin configuration, landing gear, wiring and hydraulics, etc. At some point, instead of wasting time and money re-engineering items, it becomes cost-effective to start with a clean slate. But it doesn't seem like $2m would buy much engineering.
