Airbus patents Mach 4.5 plane
 

Damn ugly, if you ask me.

"Yo mama's rocket-plane so ugly, passengers must be blinkered for boarding."

Jokes aside, this seems to be the most ambitious leap in transportation technology since the Ford Nucleon. :ok:

Airbus??
Must be a misprint for M.45 !:E

with current emissions restrictions and other regulatory bollocks we won't see anything supersonic for another half a century at least

That'll get your doors trimmed quickly!

OB

On the premiss that 'If it looks right - it flies right' that thing will never get off the ground.

Must be the same ugly-design team that worked on the A380.

Seem to remember a supersonic transport that used to carry 120 pax.:{

TSR-2 ????

Looks like Star Trek's USS Enterprise mated with an A330. Yuck.

A decidedly risky mudus operandi too. A lot can go wrong when combining those technologies and flying at mach 4.5.

Someone give Airbus the phone number of Reaction Engines . .

:)

Secret files reveal US interest in UK HOTOL spaceplane - 23/02/2009 - Flight Global

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOTOL

The multiple donk's scenario for different flight regimes appears to make this a non-starter.
Hotol/Reaction Engines is a better starting place, more flexibility and more payload which ultimately should make it more cost effective.

This would be the logical point to introduce the first fully automated i.e. single pilot airliner.

It is a common practice for patents to be used as a means of formally disclosing ideas so that nobody else can patent them.

The procedure is generally to take a number of ideas put forward by ones staff and to combine them in a 'portmanteau' patent which you register but do not pursue. This way those ideas cannot be patented by anyone at all.

In this case the various engines, the retracting of engines, the rotation of the fins, and the inward facing seats are all ideas that might one day be useful, and if anyone else were to patent them this might get in the way of ones design work.

Would EADS seriously pursue this patent with all the severe costs of patenting longer term in various countries? No, I don't think so. I think they are just preventing anyone else from getting in their way.

I would expect a maiden flight any time early next century:

Retrieving Patent from PAT2PDF.org - Free PDF copies of patents: Download and print!

Am I right that the London/New York Concorde flight used to cost over £4,000? What is this thing going to cost its passengers?

As for the shock wave, do they have a solution?

This is an interesting take on the security (not safety) aspects of hypersonic and sub-orbital air transport:

Why we're not going to see sub-orbital airliners - Charlie's Diary

In short, the author asserts that it will not happen since the risk of misuse is to big: a multi-Mach, multi-ton piece of titanium and plastic makes a good kinetic energy projectile, and regularly having those on trajectories pointing directly at densely populated areas would not be a Good Idea - mainly because the warning time between detection of malicious intent and impact is too short.

My initial understanding was that the near vertical flight path was intended to
prevent the shock waves reaching the ground. [Or at worst only at long range.]

The shock waves from supersonic flight travel pretty much perpendicular to the direction of travel, so Peter is correct - during vertical flight the shock wave is unlikely to reach the ground. However to be useful, eventually they need to travel horizontally, and that shock wave will still reach the ground. They're quoting 100k ft. cruise altitude - the higher altitude means the shock won't be as strong when it hits the ground relative to something like Concorde, but will reach a wider area. Further, they're quoting 4.5 Mach cruise, which would make for a much stronger shock than Concorde's ~ 2.0 Mach. In short, I still doubt such a vehicle would be allowed to regularly cruise supersonic over populated areas.
I also question the value of the patent as anything more than a PR exercise. First off, patent's expire, and we're talking an aircraft that is decades away. Further, much of the 'new' isn't so new. The Bomarc used a combination of rocket and Ramjet power 60 years ago, the XB-70 moved aerodynamic surfaces from horizontal to near vertical to improve cruise stability 50 years ago, the military has been using 'inward facing' seats since WW II, and while I'm unaware of anyone actually building an aircraft with a retracting engine, the concept is far from new. This stuff is public domain 'common knowledge' so even if a patent is granted, it won't stand up if someone challenges it.

As Tdracer points out, this is a farrago of wishful thinking and old concepts.
The only thing lacking is the laser propulsion feature.
Airbus should be ashamed of putting their name on this content free document.

Schleicher ASH 26e self-launching motor glider has a retractable engine - so not even that's new!