London to Tokyo in two hours: Blueprints for 3,000mph hypersonic plane are unveiled...

[AsahinaKimi]

London to Tokyo in two hours: Blueprints for 3,000mph hypersonic plane are unveiled... but it will take 40 years to build?

It will take only two hours to fly from London to Tokyo, be virtually pollution free, and promises to be no louder than today’s modern planes.

There’s only one catch for prospective commuters – it will be another 40 years before commercial flights take place.

Plans were yesterday unveiled for the first hypersonic passenger jet, which would use three sets of engines to reach 3,125mph, more than four times the speed of sound, known as Mach 4.

more..http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2005513/London-Tokyo-2-hours-Blueprints-3-000mph-hypersonic-plane-unveiled.html


wow!

[damntexdem]

1. Wow, get to the heavy radiation faster.

Don't wait for it to come to you. ;-)

[RaleighNCDUer]

14. LOL

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. Thaw me out when it's built and fares are $99 RT. nt

[MadHound]

3. Sporting conventional and rocket engines,

In addition to ramjets that only kick in at high speeds, somehow I doubt that this will be "virtually pollution free".

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Actually Madhound. . .

. . .i've been reading for years that the high speed engines actually do combust the fuel more efficiently if there is no afterburner.

Now, if you consider CO2 to be a pollutant (and quite fairly, it is), then nothing that burns fuel can be low in pollution.
GAC

[MadHound]

6. High speed engines are fine,

But what about the pollution you're going to create as you get up to those speeds.

Rocket engines are hugely polluting, as are conventional engines. And if this is used for short hops, then it simply won't get up to speed.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Depends On The Fuel

We're not disagreeing here. Jet engines can be made VERY, VERY efficient compared to what is used in conventional aircraft. Even those are far better than they were 30 years ago. That's why we have older airframes just refitted with better engines and the planes are more fuel efficient than when they were built.

Not all rocket fuels are polluting, because in many cases, the off-gasses are primarily nitrogen and water. But again, there is still CO2 as an output for most rocket engines.

What i'm suggesting is that these planes won't be any more polluting (maybe less) per unit mass fuel consumed. But, since the aerodynamic forces against the airframe would increase with higher speeds, they require MORE fuel just to hit those speeds. Maybe they can fly high enough to redcue that drag and still generate lift from pure speed. But, now it takes a lot of fuel to get to those hyper-altitudes.

I agree that the faster you go, the more fuel you burn. I'm guessing (strictly guessing) that they would employ existing, though expensive, technologies that would make the plane emit about the same exhaust products per mile as now.

Until we figure out some MUCH better way to propel the vehivle (H2 and O2?) we in the same boat no matter what kind of engine we use. Carbon based fuels are carbon based fuels.
GAC

[Johonny]

9. water can be a pollutant

particularly the higher you fly. For rocket that travels through the very dry upper atmosphere water output can have a significant effect on cloud formation.

http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/chu/pubs/documents/2005GRL_Stevens_AntarcticShuttlePMCFe.pdf

[ProfessorGAC]

18. No Argument

But, it doesn't really offset the atmospheric balance because the air can only hold so much moisture. So, eventually it comes back down as liquid water which can then be reused.

Adding carbon dioxide to the air that hasn't been there since 300 million years ago is changing the modern equilibrium.

I'd take my chances with a nearly closed loop of water to H and O, back to water.

That would ultimately fall back into equilibrium. After all, diffusion works!
GAC

[Johonny]

20. Remember

the upper atmosphere is dry. The water placed there is not like water placed in the troposphere. It's lifetime can be much greater. Increasing mesospheric clouds and stratospheric water vapor concentration can change the atmospheric balance.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Just A Slight Disagreement

One reason the upper atmosphere is so dry is that it's so cold up there. The colder the air the less vaporous water it can contain.

So it condenses. When it condenses, it's density rises by order of magnitude. That keeps the thin air from keeping it aloft and it falls to lower climes.

I'm not arguing water can be a pollutant of a sort, but i think you're overstating the actual effect. The VLE of water is extremely well understood and has been for a couple centuries.
GAC

[AndyTiedye]

15. We Should Use Trains for Short Hops

[originalpckelly]

11. Really, I was thinking the the shuttle's main engines were pretty environmentally friendlly...

seeing as how they just produce water as the exhaust.

[ProfessorGAC]

19. They Essentially Are

Short term effects. See my later reply about that. Another poster suggested that water at high altitudes is a pollutant. In the short term, he/she is correct. But, in the long term things fall back to equilibrium. The use of water is closed loop.

The problem right now is that we generally pull hydrogen and oxygen from the air, not by electrolyzing water. So, we actually are increasing the water balance. That's fixable, but it isn't cheap.
GAC

[Baclava]

4. And only the hyper-rich will be able to afford it.

They already had the Concorde.

[IndyPragmatist]

8. There once was a time that only the "hyper-rich" could afford cars

That's how innovation works. New technologies are almost always expensive and only available to the rich. Innovation and competition push the costs and prices down until things are available to everyone.

Cell phones in the 80s were only owned by the wealthy, now nearly every American owns one.
Computers are the same way.
Televisions.
Indoor plumbing.
Electricity.
Heck, if you want to go back far enough, even books were only available to the rich in the beginning.

I guess we should have given up on all of those things because they were only available to the rich at the beginning, right?

[originalpckelly]

12. Then again your car did not travel at hypersonic speeds...

and you can bet it will probably require less common and more expensive materials.

By the way, why don't we go zooming around at the speed of sound on the surface of the land? Or even just 200 mph? Oh yeah, that's because it's just not safe to do it in that kind of vehicle. We have planes already, they just don't go as fast.

[Baclava]

13. Why do you think the Concorde went out of business?

It wasn't just the crash. It was losing money for years. Catered to the rich.

Concorde was supposed to be the supersonic jet of the future, but turns out people would rather pay less to fly at sub sonic speeds.

[n2doc]

16. Yep. But the bigger problem is the hyper rich don't like to travel with others

Or on someone else's schedule. They like their private jets and private airports. Unless Gulfstream or another private jet maker produces a small version of this, it won't go.

[Scuba]

10. Just so David and Charles can make the cocktail party in Washington and still be ....

... in time for the opera in Sidney.

[brooklynite]

17. We couldn't get flight clearances for Mach 1 without pulling teeth...

...and then only for flights over open ocean. Hard to get to Tokyo that way.

[Kaleva]

22. The Saturn V would be faster. Five times as fast.

"At this point, the Saturn V had achieved a speed of 15,700 m.p.h."

http://spaceline.org/rocketsum/saturn-V-apollo.html

Some naysayers and Debbie Downers may whine about not being able to survive the trip on a Saturn V but that's just minor as the important thing is to get from London to Tokyo as fast as possible.

[blindpig]

23. Who needs anything like that?

Other than the very rich and the military, that is.