DailyDirt: Flying Faster Than The Speed Of Sound

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, May 5th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Supersonic flights haven't been available to the public since the Concorde (and the lesser known Tupolev Tu-144) stopped flying. The economic reality of flying faster than the speed of sound doesn't look too profitable, but maybe someday an airline will figure out a way to do it (and do it safely AND quietly). Or maybe we should just look forward to riding trains inside evacuated tubes.

NASA is looking to design "low boom" (aka quieter) supersonic planes. The Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) project will be just the first part in a series of 'X-planes' for NASA's New Aviation Horizons initiative. [url]
A hypersonic cargo plane has been patented by Airbus -- with claims to reach Mach 4.5 (much faster than a Concorde at Mach 2). To reduce the sonic boom, the plane has a rocket engine to boost it nearly vertically so that the sonic boom would dissipate in the upper atmosphere -- and turbojets and ramjets would provide horizontal thrusts at appropriate altitudes. [url]
If you were thinking it'd be great to ride in a hypersonic plane with a broadband wireless connection, you might have to solve the communication blackout problem that comes with superfast vehicles traveling through the atmosphere. If an ionized plasma forms around your hypersonic plane (usually at around 5 times the speed of sound), you might be able to get around it with some special signal processing equipment. [url]

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Filed Under: concorde, hypersonic, planes, supersonic, transportation
Companies: airbus

9 Comments

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Reader Comments

The First Word

“

If I'm at Mach 5, I won't get cranky about not having in flight wifi.

—Marc John Randazza

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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2016 @ 5:02pm

The short URLS are all the same, and none refer to the articles. :
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William Jackson (profile), 5 May 2016 @ 5:35pm

URLS broke
All point a time DDT article
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- Michael Ho (profile), 5 May 2016 @ 6:01pm
  
  Re: URLS broke
  Oops. fixed now.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - nasch (profile), 6 May 2016 @ 1:07pm
    
    Re: Re: URLS broke
    Still broken in the RSS feed, don't know if you can fix that or not.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Michael Ho (profile), 6 May 2016 @ 4:57pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: URLS broke
      Well.. it's "fixed" in the current RSS feed, but I think if your RSS reader doesn't update, then... there's not a lot we can do about it now.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
JoeCool (profile), 5 May 2016 @ 6:37pm

Hmmm
Well, I hope that the Airbus patent is more than "put rockets on a jet" because that boat left the dock decades ago. :)

However, knowing patents like we all do, I doubt it's even that much.
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Marc John Randazza (profile), 5 May 2016 @ 6:41pm

If I'm at Mach 5, I won't get cranky about not having in flight wifi.
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- Ninja (profile), 6 May 2016 @ 6:40am
  
  Re:
  Really, at this speed you'd get to the destination before you even finish typing the password and authenticating the connection.
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nasch (profile), 6 May 2016 @ 1:09pm

Patents
A hypersonic cargo plane has been patented by Airbus

Patented - but not built. So Airbus can just write up some papers with nothing to back it up, and now nobody else can do this for 25 years. Great.
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