Europe to Australia in less than 5 hours

[Pedota]

Now this would be an interesting development . . .

New British jet could reach Aust in under 5 hours

British engineers have unveiled plans for a hypersonic jet which could fly from Europe to Australia in less than five hours.

The A2 plane, designed by engineering company Reaction Engines based in Oxfordshire, southern England, could carry 300 passengers at a top speed of almost 6,400 kilometres per hour - five times the speed of sound.

The LAPCAT (Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies) project, backed by the European Space Agency, could see the plane operating within 25 years, the firm's boss Alan Bond told the Guardian daily.

"The A2 is designed to leave Brussels international airport, fly quietly and subsonically out into the north Atlantic at mach 0.9 before reaching mach 5 across the North Pole and heading over the Pacific to Australia," he said.

The plane, which at 143 metres long would be about twice the size of the biggest current jets, could fly non-stop for up to 20,000 kilometres.

It operates on liquid hydrogen, which is more ecologically friendly as it gives off water and nitrous oxide instead of carbon emissions.

Passengers would have to put up with having no windows, due to problems with heat produced at high speeds.

Instead, designers may put flat screen televisions where the windows would be, giving the impression of seeing outside.

Fares would be comparable with current first class tickets on standard flights.

The flight time from Brussels to Australia would be four hours and 40 minutes.

"It sounds incredible by today's standards but I don't see why future generations can't make day trips to Australasia," Mr Bond said.

"Our work shows that it is possible technically; now it's up to the world to decide if it wants it."

- AFP

[Peter Fanelli]

So I'd have to take two flights, maybe three to get to Brussels so that I can have a 4:40 trip to Australia.
I wonder what they plan to do about the sonic boom getting from the pole to the pacific.

[Aussie]

If the sonic cruiser didnt get off the ground, then i expect this will have a similar result! Although it would be nice :}

[Lasiorhinus]

North Pole to Australia via the pacific is entirely over water.....

And anyway, isnt a sonic boom only produced when something passes through the sound barrier? An aircraft travelling at Mach 5 wouldnt make a boom in the cruise, only on accelleration at the start, and again before landing..

[Sukhraj]

Lasiorhinus - there is no "sound barrier" as such....., an aircraft travelling at any speed above Mach1 will produce shock waves which can be heard on the ground as a boom. Fly high enough, and by the time they reach the ground you can't hear anything. The restriction of commercial supersonic flying over land is more of a political one.

NOX isn't as bad as CO2?! Wonder how they'd safely store liquid hydrogen?

[lowerlobe]

Is this the same Alan Bond as in....Bond Corp....?

[Peter Fanelli]

North Pole to Australia via the pacific is entirely over water.....


The distance between Alaska and Russia at their closest point is only 2.5 miles. Unless they've found a way to confine the sonic boom to that size footprint then the trip from the pole to Australia is hardly what you could consider all over water.

[Pedota]

Not the same Alan Bond . . . more details here http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/05/theairlineindustry.travelnews

[Red max]

Meh ,Sounds Like a pipe dream!




Sounds Neat, But after 25 years ,Damn.

[TheNightOwl]

Bugger!!

In 25 years I'll be heading for 94, - can't see any insurance company giving me a quote! :hmm:

The Night Owl

[neville_nobody]

What technical difficulties have they overcome in the last 10 years? I was of the understanding that RPT hypersonic flight was deemed to risky. The amount of heat generated by the airframe alone was one major hurdle not to mention storing the fuel etc

[tail wheel]

In 1969 Bill Gates asked: "Who would ever need more that 250 Kb of memory?"

In 2008 even your mobile phone has at least 50 times that memory.

Aviation technology will change very dramatically in the not too distant future. I would not discard supersonic and hypersonic flight too quickly. Indeed, it is probably inevitable within this lifetime.

(From one old enough to recall traveling in state of the airline art DC3's, Connies, Short flying boats, the first turbine Viscounts and F-27's and excitement of the first "propless" B707s!!)

Tail Wheel

[Cypher]

so how do they intend to create the hydrogen fuel?
By burning more fossil fuel?

That'll hardly leave a carbon footprint...

[tail wheel]

I won't get into the carbon emission, fossil fuel, academic global warming debate, however I think it is fair to say that with the current price of fossil fuel, the world will very rapidly develop alternate and far more cost effective energy sources.

Thirty years ago Lockheed had a proposal to develop an H2 powered passenger aircraft comparable to the DC10, which was killed off by the then much lower price of fossil fuel.

The traditional suppliers of fossil fuel can only screw the rest of the world for so long, before alternate energy sources become very financially viable! :ok:

Hydro, wind and solar energy have been available for many years. I'm sure other sources of energy will become available. The transition will be driven by economics alone.

Tail Wheel

[altonacrude]

Nitrogen oxide gas is nasty environment-wise, but the amount produced in a hydrogen-air jet engine is likely to be only a few parts per million in the combustion gas, unlike the substantial proportion of CO2 from a conventional jet engine.

At present the most cost-effective way of producing industrial hydrogen is from natural gas, but it's something of a mystery as to why you would want to do that for aircraft fuel. Natural gas is cheaper and a whole lot easier to store. Presumably, use of hydrogen in the envisaged supersonic aircraft depends on new processes for extracting hydrogen from renewable resources (http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/production.html).

I can imagine why it's appealing for a European to think of flying to Sydney for lunch at this time of year then back home for dinner, but are there less ostentatious ways of spending a large amount of money? Besides, right now in Sydney it's been raining for more than a week.

[mainwheel]

My thinking has always been that the future should either be bigger or faster.

The A380 has arrived.

Maybe we can have both. The SST has already been designed and is probably old technology by now.

The choice of flying LHR-SYD with another 600 or more punters against getting there in minimal time leaves only one choice.

Depends on price though.

[ollie_a]

so how do they intend to create the hydrogen fuel?
By burning more fossil fuel?

That'll hardly leave a carbon footprint...

From http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html

Analysis of the Development, Production and Operating costs suggests that the average ticket price would be comparable to an existing Business class ticket... This estimate assumes hydrogen fuel derived from water electrolysis whereas the ticket price would roughly halve if the hydrogen is produced by steam reforming.

[tail wheel]

But what price a Business Class ticket of the future?

In 1953 the cost for a family of two adults and one child, to travel from Hobart to Sydney return by Short flying boat, cost the same as a new FX Holden sedan - the better part of a year's wages.

Today that same family could do the same return flight for significantly less than a week's wages.

Accept and embrace change. It is inevitable!

Tail Wheel

[Pedota]

The artist's impression in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/05/theairlineindustry.travelnews) shows no windows at all (referred to as 'portholes' in the article) - I wonder whether cockpit windows are planned?

[Cypher]

Fair enough..

I was just thinking along the angle that Hydrogen isn't really a 'fuel' as such, but more of a energy transfer medium.

Steam reforming and electrolysis all require energy, whether this be heat from combustion or electricity generation from solar or wind.

My concern is what size area would you have to devote to solar or wind to provide enough energy, to produce enough hydrogen, to support the current amount of air travel we have at the moment.

I'd hate to think what that foot print would be.

We've been lucky with fossil fuels, we just hunt for it, we don't produce it. Wheres with hydrogen, it's produced purely by the energy we put into it..

Just a thought anyway... :ok:

[altonacrude]

ollie,

As Cypher observes, hydrogen is an energy transfer medium rather than a fuel in its own right, as pure hydrogen occurs nowhere in nature. To produce it by electrolysis of water requires electricity generated from coal, natural gas, solar cells, windmills or turning your breakfast cereal into ethanol. Steam reforming is a process that reacts natural gas with steam, using up some of the natural gas's energy in the process and producing CO2.

There is no free lunch.

This thread is probably not an ideal place for an extended discussion of renewable energy vs global warming, but interested readers might check out this optimistic report (http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDetails.aspx?CID=9239) the other day, which estimates that $7 trillion could be invested by 2030 in production of clean energy.

While this sounds a huge amount of money - and it is and we should expect it to achieve a lot - to put it in context, US gross domestic product is just under $14 trillion per year, and $7 trillion over more than 20 years is rather less than the US annual military budget (estimated next year to top $650 billion).

If anything's lacking to attack the climate problem, it's not money.

[Yawn]

http://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Travel/Pix/pictures/2008/02/05/A2460.jpg


This is a million years way. Why release a picture if the design is extremely far fetched? Windows, fuel system, skin temperature control: all solvable with technology.

Would anyone like to comment on the controllability, Vmcg and Vmca aspects of putting your power source on the wingtip and combining this with the smallest possible rudder.

I think Channel 9 have come in spinner.

Yawn

[Pinky the pilot]

Vmca aspects

Yawn;My initial reaction when first seeing the artists impression of the design was something along the lines of......

''Hmm, in cruise at Mach 5 and an outer engine suddenly fails......'':eek::uhoh:

Some of the stories re the SR 71 having an engine failure in the cruise made for interesting reading. Apparently 'The Sled' behaves somewhat alarmingly!