There's a New Scientist article which I also heard mentioned on NPR this morning. At the Paris Air Show, it was announced that Japan and France have agreed to split the cost of researching the creation of a new SST.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7531

Note that the article also ties in a loose fact from elsewhere:
Mach 5.5 is about 4000 Miles per hour (which is about twice as fast as any acknowledged aircraft has ever flown), which could make the NYC to Tokyo flight in three hours. The airplane being discussed would carry about 300 passengers.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

The article said the engine reached those speeds. I bet it was air launched when tested, the speed wasn't sustained for more than a few seconds, and that it wasn't attached to anything like the airframe that would be needed to carry 300 passengers.

I'm not sure mach 5.5 will come into play with any passenger aircraft, unless it is going to hop over our atmosphere in a suborbital jump. These speeds create too much friction, and thus too many problems, for the airframe and the engine to be commercially practicle. I see this new SST being comprable to the Concorde in design and performance (save materials and efficiency) if it will be done for 2015.

__________________
~ cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ~

Nothing in life is good nor bad; thinking makes it so.

If they could do it, then it would be cool. Pushing speed boundaries for transport is always cool.
I find it hard to believe though, after the concorde, that it can make money. People value an extra 3 or 4 hours of their time less than the fuel costs of going supersonic.

__________________
http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

of how much height of altitude has been derived : 60000 ft high or what?
because the noise-output will be more when the distance time is lesser and speed is greater, i.e. 5.5mc

Its business. You won't see Mr & Mrs Smith boarding with little suzie in the baby carriage. Business values those 3 or 4 hours.

suntrack, the Concorde cruised at around 60000 feet (it started lower and gradually got higher later on in the flight as fuel consumption continued and the plane got lighter). That's not the problem for noise, especially considering the cruise is usually over water for the most part. The noise problem comes into play for TO and landing. I imagine they'd have to use a hybrid engine for these speeds; one type for low speed, like a traditional turbofan, and another for high altitude cruise, like a ramjet.

__________________
~ cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ~

Nothing in life is good nor bad; thinking makes it so.

thanks aeolous, i think the future aeroplanes will be more state of the art hi-speed technology planes to move and we can see these roaring on our heads like a flying insects in hundreds !

I was born in the UK. Back then the UK had THE world beating motorcycle industry. Then Honda started to make and sell a little 50cc bike that was different... No one in the UK took Honda seriously. Today, Japan has the world motorcycle industry in its grasp..

NASA's budget for conventional aerospace research is in severe decline. I guess no one is taking Japan seriously.

You do not compete by arguing about who pays for what. You compete by DOING; research, development and MAKING it happen, not talking about it.

If I were the US administration, I would start worrying about this report. Why?

Because the IP goes to where the creator of the IP can get hold of investment.

And anyone that believes that you can proceed without that investment; Or, even worse, anyone that thinks that you can ignor the creator and take what is not yours with impunity, is quite frankly nuts! If you do not invest, as the UK has not for many years, you end up with no industry. PERIOD.

NASA should urgently re-consider their budget for investment in research into conventional aircraft design, or certainly, the US will lose a major industry.

If history follows the UK example, that will not be the last one you lose either.

__________________
Keep seeking whatever it is that sparks the mind. There is more of it there than most people can ever know exists and the effort pays dividends infinitely higher than anything Wall Street deals in.

The key to the Concorde's failure was cost and nothing else. A typical seat on a Concorde was about three times a ticket on a normal plane for the same trip. As about 90% of the passengers can barely afford the regular flight ticket, and of those that could afford the Concorde's price only about 10% of those people needed to make the trip that fast, the Concorde never caught on. In today's airplane and airtravel market, the golden rule is small and cheap. Unless they can build this plane to fly for the same cost as a regular jet, or unless the industry has a major turn around, then it won't succeed either. I fly for business about 20-30 times a year, some trans-Atlantic, and I know my company would not be willing to pay three times the price for a trip that takes a third the time. They'd be more than happy to pay one third the price and make me sit in a airplane for 8-12 hours. Business 101 - maximize shareholder value by maximizing profits.

__________________
...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

I'm in the same situation. Even VPs in our company fly coach, unless they pay for their own upgrade.

I expect that this plane COULD be a commercial success at $5000 per seat for flying from NYC or Paris to Pac Rim cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. IFF there are enough high end people who need to make the trip without getting crushed by the fatigue of 24 or more hours in planes and airports.

This might make having a fleet of a dozen or so of these planes commercially viable (until telepresence becomes sufficient for most business interactions).

Concerning Chris Coles statement that you make progress by doing: you need to do things that make sense. Maybe this plane makes sense. I'm not sure the US needs to make a competing plane, but they may just wait a generation and skip to the SCRAMjets in a couple decades and fly at Mach 10+. That seems to be where our research dollars are at.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Doesn't look like it to me. Production isn't going to be interrupted while the management team waits on you to make a personal appearance, so those hours really don't matter as much. The real timescale that most buisness is conducted in is days, weeks, and production cycles, not the minutes and seconds of a frantic daytrading venture.

We do need to be wary of new ideas. And we do need the government to get out of the way of our air travel industry. Let the defunct suicidal companies die and allow new saner ones to spring up and take their place. But that only reinforces the concept of smaller/cheaper/more fuel efficient. If companies revert to selling tickets for the actual fuel prices, then a supersonic plane will cost 3 times as much, and most people will revert to teleconferencing or sleeping on slow airplanes.

Look to the Embraer jets and the small region-jets to own a fairer market.

__________________
http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

ASEI, I think there is a place for some of these planes in the market. They won't be produced like DC-3s or 737s, but I can see business in Japan (which measure travel across Asia and the Pacific in dozen-plus hours) wanting a few of them.

But you are correct- we won't see AA or Jetblue adding them to their fleets.

__________________
~ cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ~

Nothing in life is good nor bad; thinking makes it so.

Wao! 4000miles/hr that will be a great thing if actualised. But have u considered the safety? I will love to see the dream come true without the engines splitting apart

I doubt the aircraft will be able to travel that fast, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird could only manage about Mach 3.5, problem is in order to withstant the high temperatures generated by friction (350C+) the aircraft had to had from titainium (expensive), and had to take off with it's fuel tanks vertually empty and re-fuel in the air, and it leaked fuel when it was on the ground, the leaks only sealed up when it was in the air and the metal expanded because of the heat.

None of this was a problem because of the special fuels they used, but think about it, if you were catching a flight somewhere how would you feel if you saw the plane leaking fuel before take off?

__________________
Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former.---Albert Einstein.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.---Oscar Wilde

The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.

A little off topic but a funny story, when I was about 15 my dad won a Wright Brothers award for an airplane that he built and we were invited to put it on display at the Dayton Airshow. The day after the show we were getting ready to leave when I saw a U2 taking off. There was an SR-71 about a half mile away being fueled and I thought it would be cool to go over and take some pictures. Let me tell you, nothing can scare a 15 year old kid like having a dozen armed MPs pull up in a truck that just came screaming across the airport. And after explaining why I was approaching their top secret spy plane with a camera in my hand, they explained to me the problem with having people near the airplane while it was being refueled. I hadn't noticed that everyone in that area had a firesuit on and the pilots were in their spacesuits. You are absolutely correct when you say it leaks fuel on the ground. A lot of it. By the way when that thing took off (from a runway at least two miles away) the ground shook and I had to cover my ears.

im of the opinion that it will prove to expensive for us holiday travellers to budget for. This leaves the viability of such an aircraft in the hands of business ,or in reality, big business. The vision i see here is that teleconferencing will become that good an experience that the need to travel so far, so quick to see people face to face will not be viable to any but the ultra rich CEO's. :P

__________________
[font=Times][size=7][color=purple]Supermc of partypoker.com [quote]knowing is not enough,we need to understand !

the plane seem to be most unsuitable for the middle budget people, because the fare is seem to be more creamy, short flight period in great speed, so the enjoyment is curtailed of long journey.

How much time/days/month: is/are required to reach on mars from earth through the concord like plane journey.

The Concorde / SSTs are designed for atmospheric flight. They are not spacecraft.

If you want to see how long it would take, theoretically, just divide the distance to Mars by the speed of the plane. Similarily, you can find out how long it would take to walk to Mars, or ride a horse.

__________________
~ cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ~

Nothing in life is good nor bad; thinking makes it so.

That's right. Following up on your suggestion about time, when Mars is closest to Earth, it is about 26 million miles away from the Earth, though a more reasonable trajectory would be closer to a 160 million mile trip. If you could take the Concorde at the speed of 1600 miles per hour for the whole trip, it would take 100,000 hours (which is about a twelve years)... except that that does not take relative velocities of the planets into account, or the fact that the Concorde can't ever escape the Earth's atmosphere, or accelerate in any way once out of the atmosphere.

I am assuming Suntrack2, that you asked this as a rheotrical question trying to point out that perhaps building such a plane is a waste of effort if our eyes are on Mars (even with that, I'm not sure I agree).

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

yes i agree, that there are limitations of such sort of plane to go in outer space, since such sort of planes are made for only domestic flights, but i have one question, will it be possible to 'carry' on columbia like space shuttle(by attaching to it) to send it in the outer space(beyond earth's atmosphere) and then such speed planes may found useful for further journey?

for a rapid search and for convinience which vehicles are available now, if the concord like plane is the speediest item on the earth?