HyperSoar
Posted on 05/28/2002 5:13:14 PM PDT by vannrox
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:09:14 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WOOMERA, South Australia -- Sandwiched between today's cattle-car jumbo jets and tomorrow's suborbital transport, Japan believes there's a niche for a revamped and updated supersonic jet -- say around 2012.
Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) now has a scale-model mockup of the plane, an 11-meter-long, two-ton beast sitting in the Australian desert, set to be test-flown in early July. Designed exclusively by supercomputer, the NAL has jumped directly from binary equations to flight tests of the new plane -- skipping wind tunnel tests entirely.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
Yes, it's the Japanese equivalent of the U.S. Shuttle program: A welfare program for aerospace bureaucrats.
Back around '73 or so, I was a student working in the wind-tunnels at NASA Ames Research Center when, one day, one of the scientists gloomily announced that NASA had passed a momentous milestone -- they now had more than one bureaucrat for each scientist.
They were tweaking the Space Shuttle design then. At the time it wasn't much more than a decade since the maned spaceflight program began. But now, almost 30 years later, what's there to show for transport? (Yes, their funding got cut -- but I'll bet the bureaucracy was last to go...)
remember "The 6 Million Dollar Man"...
well this is the actual ship that was flown and crashed by brave pilots in Test Flight...
on the upside the guy who was actually flying the M2-F2 when it crashed, and was used for the TV show, was nursed back to health and all he lost was an eye!!
Link to M2-F2!
It was apparent that the B-52 pilot had forgotten to reset his altimeter as he passed through 18,000 feet, and was 500' high at the release time. He was desperately trying to correct at T-0.
Someone was shouting "Abort! Abort!" on the net, and some other people were saying "huh?" as the Pegasus was released.
When it comes to launch teams, you get what you pay for.
They spitefully refer to these new designs as "lawn darts".
What the difference is between now and then I don't know. It could fall out of fancy just as quick.
I do know that during a big factory floor pow-wow / pep-rally at Boeing one of the big wigs (not Condit) seemed to imply that the problems with the noise from the oblique compression and expansion shock waves have been solved.
Something to do with projecting electromagnetic (microwave?) energy from the aero surfaces.
I do hope someone pushes the technology though. I haven't performed shock or isentropic flow relation calculations since my college days. It would be nice to pull out my NACA Mach tables again.
Nosir, won't do it.
However, I might at some date in the future jump, wave my arms, and shout..."remember the Zero!(Hughes racer, Sikorski 35, Curtis Hawk), Remember the Honda! (Corvair, Falcon), Remember the Kawasaki/Honda/Suzuki (Triumph, Norton, Ducatti, Moto-Guzzi, Bultaco, BSA, & etc.), and Remember Hiroshima! (senseless guilt and rampant post-event racial profiling).
DAST configurations:
1977 DAST flight tests; launch platform B-52:
The Japanese have been pursuing engine improvement for some time:
Inception of the Jet Engine Ground Test at the Refurbished Test Facility - Achievement of the Rated Thrust -
I guess they may have invented something new down there.
Will working in Washington DC area some years ago I was able to see the Concorde fly in and out of Dulles Airport.
It's about time for a new Supersonic Passenger Plane, cause that was a lot of years ago!
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