APOD: Concept Plane: Supersonic Green Machine (2010 Jul 07)

[grump]

This picture raises a couple of questions for me -

1) I thought aerodynamics/streamlining were pretty much irrelevant for supersonic flight (or not so important as it is for subsonic flight) ... oh, I figured it out - the thing has to go through subsonic before and after it goes supersonic

2) Since ordinary jetliners fly at an altitude where the atmospheric pressure is about 30% of that at sea level, they could just as easily 'fly' in space as long as there was a means to get them there and back, and steer them while there. Surely they would not need much more in the way of engineering the structure to pressurise them except for a source of breathable gas (Jetliners draw air in from outside to pressurise the cabin, but above the atmosphere they would have a hard time finding enough stuff to pump in!). Of course they would not survive re-entry in space shuttle fashion, or being accelerated at regular launch rates. Getting an A380 into space is beyond the scope of my speculation - a mere detail for someone else to work out.

[bystander]

Another green plane, Solar Impulse, successfully completed a 24-hour test flight.

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 31&t=20170

[Chris Peterson]

1) I thought aerodynamics/streamlining were pretty much irrelevant for supersonic flight (or not so important as it is for subsonic flight) ... oh, I figured it out - the thing has to go through subsonic before and after it goes supersonic

Aerodynamics and streamlining are far more important for supersonic flight. For subsonic flight, you can make just about any shape work, it just costs you in drag. For supersonic flight, shape is critical. If you don't get things just right, you'll end up with uncontrolled shock waves and pressure effects that will destroy the aircraft. It was understanding the details of body shape, wing shape, and wing placement that determined when the first supersonic flight was possible, not the engine technology.

2) Since ordinary jetliners fly at an altitude where the atmospheric pressure is about 30% of that at sea level, they could just as easily 'fly' in space as long as there was a means to get them there and back, and steer them while there.

If I had some ham, I could have some ham and eggs, if I had some eggs.

A jet airplane can't fly in space because it needs air for its engines, and it needs air for its lift and control surfaces. There's no way a plane with a design like that shown in this APOD would be flying at the height suggested by the rendering. This image is really not much more than the cover illustration for a sci-fi paperback- a work of fantasy.

[AeroBob]

Load of horse hokey. TANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Drag is still 1/2ρv^2CDA, period, as in increasing with the square of velocity. Painting it green doesn't mean it wouldn't be an enormous fuel hog. That is what doomed the Concorde and caused the American SST to be stillborn. Very, very few people are willing to pay what it costs to travel at Mach 2+.

[Henning Makholm]

Load of horse hokey. TANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Drag is still 1/2ρv^2CDA, period, as in increasing with the square of velocity.

I had the impression that this formula starts to break down seriously when you reach Mach speeds, with the drag coefficient bouncing up and down in not quite intuitive ways. Going faster is still more expensive, as far as I understand, but not by a v² factor.

[Chris Peterson]

I had the impression that this formula starts to break down seriously when you reach Mach speeds, with the drag coefficient bouncing up and down in not quite intuitive ways. Going faster is still more expensive, as far as I understand, but not by a v² factor.

The formula remains largely correct. The coefficient of drag rises gradually with subsonic flight velocity, then rises dramatically from about Mach 0.8 to Mach 1.5 (due to shock wave effects). It then drops again, but never gets back down to less than twice the typical subsonic value. So managing drag becomes a huge problem for supersonic aircraft.

I deal with the aerodynamics of meteors, and the calculations are relatively simple in this hypersonic regime, due to the fact that Cd is essentially independent of velocity above about Mach 5. But the velocity squared component is still there.

[bystander]

On the other hand, Terrafugia is about to deliver a flying car ...

The Little Flying Car That Could …

[bystander]

Back to the Future: New Supersonic Passenger Jet Set for Takeoff
TechNewsDaily | Space.com | 22 July 2010

Click to view full size image

Supersonic passenger travel was grounded in 2003 when British Airways and Air France cancelled their transatlantic Concorde service because of falling revenues and rising maintenance costs. The Aerion Supersonic Business Jet (SBJ) promises to help travelers break the sound barrier again.

Named after a fleet-of-foot horse in Greek mythology, the Aerion SBJ will be able to carry a dozen passengers at speeds of up to Mach 1.5 for more than 4,000 miles. It is currently undergoing proof-of-concept aerodynamic testing of critical components in NASA wind tunnels and under the belly of a NASA F-15 supersonic jet.

This Aerion SBJ will make it possible to fly from Paris to New York in four hours and 14 minutes, shaving three hours off the trip compared to conventional jets.

And even in the United States, where supersonic flight is banned because of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sonic boom restrictions, the SBJ will be able to fly at a high subsonic speed of Mach 0.98 because of its unique, patented wing design, reducing coast-to-coast travel by 41 minutes vs. conventional aircraft.

The Aerion SBJ's wing represents a breakthrough in supersonic design and is the key to why the SBJ will be able to avoid the fate of the Concorde. Drag — the resistance caused by air as an airplane flies though it — is the enemy of speed and the enemy of economical operation. The Aerion SBJ’s magic sauce is the use of supersonic natural laminar flow (SNLF) technology in the design of the wing. SNLF reduces drag.
...
Aerion’s design completes a virtuous circle — it satisfies environmental regulations while providing economical operation and high performance. [Separately, Lockheed Martin is working on a new aircraft that would fly faster than the speed of sound but without making a sonic boom.]
...
Aerion also sees a supersonic future that involves larger commercial passenger jets. The design of the SBJ, Barents said, “is very scalable. That’s clearly a point we’ve discussed with potential partners. This is not a single point design. We consider it to be a family of aircraft.”

Image Credit: Aerion

[BMAONE23]

Back to the Future: New Supersonic Passenger Jet Set for Takeoff
TechNewsDaily | Space.com | 22 July 2010

Click to view full size image

Supersonic passenger travel was grounded in 2003 when British Airways and Air France cancelled their transatlantic Concorde service because of falling revenues and rising maintenance costs. The Aerion Supersonic Business Jet (SBJ) promises to help travelers break the sound barrier again.

Named after a fleet-of-foot horse in Greek mythology, the Aerion SBJ will be able to carry a dozen passengers at speeds of up to Mach 1.5 for more than 4,000 miles. It is currently undergoing proof-of-concept aerodynamic testing of critical components in NASA wind tunnels and under the belly of a NASA F-15 supersonic jet.

This Aerion SBJ will make it possible to fly from Paris to New York in four hours and 14 minutes, shaving three hours off the trip compared to conventional jets.

And even in the United States, where supersonic flight is banned because of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sonic boom restrictions, the SBJ will be able to fly at a high subsonic speed of Mach 0.98 because of its unique, patented wing design, reducing coast-to-coast travel by 41 minutes vs. conventional aircraft.

The Aerion SBJ's wing represents a breakthrough in supersonic design and is the key to why the SBJ will be able to avoid the fate of the Concorde. Drag — the resistance caused by air as an airplane flies though it — is the enemy of speed and the enemy of economical operation. The Aerion SBJ’s magic sauce is the use of supersonic natural laminar flow (SNLF) technology in the design of the wing. SNLF reduces drag.
...
Aerion’s design completes a virtuous circle — it satisfies environmental regulations while providing economical operation and high performance. [Separately, Lockheed Martin is working on a new aircraft that would fly faster than the speed of sound but without making a sonic boom.]
...
Aerion also sees a supersonic future that involves larger commercial passenger jets. The design of the SBJ, Barents said, “is very scalable. That’s clearly a point we’ve discussed with potential partners. This is not a single point design. We consider it to be a family of aircraft.”

Image Credit: Aerion

Interesting concept but highly impracticle to divide the cost of an Atlantic crossing between 12 passengers.

[Chris Peterson]

Interesting concept but highly impracticle to divide the cost of an Atlantic crossing between 12 passengers.

In simple terms of cost per passenger, business jets are already hugely uneconomical. But this market is unusual. There are plenty of people who think nothing of spending a few tens of thousands of dollars on a chartered flight. As long as this peculiar situation exists, there is likely to be a market for supersonic business aircraft.

[Beyond]

Interesting. Page one started off with a green space plane.
Page two ends with a red space plane.
Will there be a page three with a blue space plane?
And dare i hazzard a guess as to a page four with a yellow space plane?
Will this thread end up being a colorful report on space planes?
Stay tuned for future space plane reports as we all find out.

[owlice]

One plane, two plane

[Beyond]

I don't know about that #2 blue plane, owlice. It looks more like a submersible to me. I think you are going to have to do better!! And the yellow one could have been a lot more spacey looking. Even though you are going to school there are standards to uphold, you know

[BMAONE23]

Actually, the yellow one looks like a Moller Sky Car

[Case]

To See This Picture Please Visit www.weirdomatic.com

[BMAONE23]

That Moller M 200 X reminds me of the Jetsons

[orin stepanek]

That Moller M 200 X reminds me of the Jetsons

I haven't seen the Jetsons for a long while.

[neufer]

That Moller M 200 X reminds me of the Jetsons

I haven't seen the Jetsons for a long while.

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 92#p126992

[orin stepanek]

Art! Did you notice? The Jetsons are in a green machine.

[neufer]

[color=#008000][b]Flintstone Green Car[/b][/color]

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Art! Did you notice? The Jetsons are in a green machine.

• You've got to think Green in the sense
  of the Flintstone Green Car, Orin. =>

[orin stepanek]

You've got to think Green in the sense
of the Flintstone Green Car, Orin.

Aww I like the color better! I suppose we We could have the ol' hollowed out tree trunk painted. Maybe we could add pedals; so Fred doesn't wear out his soles. Oh I see Barneys stearing.

[bystander]

NASA Puts the "Green" in Its Other Mission: Developing Revolutionary, Energy-Efficient Airplanes
Scientific American | 26 July 2010

The first "A" in NASA stands for aeronautics, and the agency is leading a host of federal programs and initiatives that aim to develop a fleet of environmentally friendly aircraft

It took 24 years for humankind to advance from the first powered flight in 1903 to Charles Lindbergh's famous crossing of the Atlantic (and even less time for the U.S. space program to go from launching the first American astronaut into suborbital space to landing men on the moon). NASA officials are now hoping 25 years into the future is enough time for the nation's aerospace engineers to come up with more ecofriendly airplanes.

The agency's main initiative in this arena, N+3, calls for ideas that look ahead three generations into the future of aircraft design—from 2030 to 2035. NASA also has a similar program, N+2, which focuses more specifically on making airplanes more environmentally friendly in the nearer future, from 2020 to 2025. Through N+3, the aerospace agency is funding research into "green" planes that would use 70 percent less fuel than today's airliners while generating at least 75 percent less nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas) as well as less noise pollution. These future aircraft are also expected to require less real estate and air space for takeoffs and landings, which could help alleviate air congestion and flight delays. (The N+2 initiative has a somewhat more modest fuel consumption target, a 50 percent reduction, but also shoots for a 75 percent cut in nitrous oxide.)

A number of aircraft-makers and aerospace engineers are bidding to become part of N+3. NASA has already awarded $12.4 million in contracts to Boeing, GE Aviation, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) to support their research and design efforts. NASA expects to hand out the next round of grants in April 2011.

[bystander]

Four Engineering Giants Dream Up the Airplane of the Future
Discover | Technology | 30 Dec 2010

[url=http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/nplus3-0517]MIT’s “double bubble” design[/url] [i](MIT/Aurora Flight Sciences)[/i]

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[url=http://aviationweek.typepad.com/files/boeing_sugar_phase_i_final_review_v5.pdf]Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR), Volt design concept[/url] [i](NASA/The Boeing Company)[/i]

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[url=http://aviationweek.typepad.com/files/nasa_ge_final_report_out_4.22.10.pdf]GE's 20-passenger commercial aircraft design concept[/url] [i](NASA/GE Aviation)[/i]

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[url=http://aviationweek.typepad.com/files/northrop_grumman_final.pdf]Silent Efficient Low Emissions Commercial Transport (SELECT)[/url] [i](NASA/Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation)[/i]

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