Stinky cheese & natto-powered "Super-Concorde"

[Taro Toporific]

With a string of unbroken failures since the 1960s, if I were the French, I would be worried about the "Japanese Jinx."
<--- the "NEXST" prototype that Japan blew up in the Australian desert in 2002.
Japanese work on Super-Concorde
Agence France-Presse, June 15, 2005)--
JAPANESE engineers are embarking again on a cherished dream of designing a "Super-Concorde," a supersonic plane that could potentially make the nation an aerospace power..... a fresh push to build a plane that could link Tokyo with New York in six and a half hours and with Europe in less than six hours – half the current times.
However, Japan halted the research in 2002 with the conclusion that to build a new plane travelling beyond the speed of sound would face insurmountable problems in pollution and cost. That same year, a first aerodynamic test of a reduced-size model of the Japanese supersonic plane ended in fiasco with the rocket of the prototype blowing up in the Australian desert ...more...

[Tsuru]

JAPANESE engineers are embarking again on a cherished dream of designing a "Super-Concorde," a supersonic plane that could potentially make the nation an aerospace power

You see, there's the problem. For designing a supersonic airliner that is fast and efficiënt and cost-effective you need to already be at least that. NASA's Dryden and the various European manufacturers didn't spend the last 50-60 years experimenting with this for nothing.

The Japanese have relatively little experience in this field of aviation, and they are planning to make what is sometimes referred to as the holy grail of civil aviation. Another Concorde. So far the only truly supersonic aircraft Japan has built are ripoffs from small American fighter aircraft, the likes of which countries like Iran and the Czech Republic are prefectly capable of making as well... not exactly what you would call "aerospace superpowers" either.
So I don't really see them making this a success within the next 50 years... at least not with indigenous engines, the most complicated, critical and expensive part of any jet airplane... mind you this is ESPECIALLY true for a supersonic airliner.

Personally I think such a plane will never be needed. The current trend is that the wealthy would-have-been-Concorde-travelling businessman or moviestar rents his own Falcon, Citation-X or G5 to get where he wants to go, and in Europe as well as the US there are a few companies who are designing supersonic business jet models for just this market. So even if the Japanese succeed in making this plane a reality I fear it will be obsolete before it even takes off for the first time.

Besides that, it's hard to compete with a smaller plane that can go mach 2.0 in luxury and land on your local airfield.

[Buraku]

Japanese work on Ultra-Supa-Concorde that can fly faster than the speed of reality
another idiot idea from the Japanese, oh well if they're willing to waste all these billions of yen on fantasy toys that will never be practical then go ahead, but others are crying for them to do something serious and pump some real money into their sinking economy

[Tsuru]

If they have any sense they'll stick to doing what they're good at: making fuselage sections, wings and other aircraft parts for Boeing and Airbus and making stuff for their military.

This is a money loser anyway you look at it, but I guess it doesn't really matter if you already have a quadrillion-yen debt crisis to face up to

[Blah Pete]

I think the next major step in civil aviation will be a plane that will enter space and cut down on trans continental flights. Supersonic transport failed with the Concorde because of the noise factor.
I think that there are two trends for the aviation industry
1. Triple deck monsters like the Airbus if facilities can handle to hordes
2. Sort, wide bodied planes that can carry more but still take off and land at smaller regional airports.

[Tsuru]

Well, good as it may have been for the 1960s there was a lot to be improved on Concorde... it was essentially powered by military engines, carried more than half it's takeoff weight in fuel for an Atlantic crossing, and modern technology allows to even "soften" the sonic boom by adjusting the aerodynamic shape of the aircraft in a certain way.

By the way: I read in other news that this is a joint Franco-Japanese undertaking and so far the project is only to do research and gather data... not to build an airplane just yet

[Taro Toporific]

By the way: I read in other news that this is a joint Franco-Japanese undertaking and so far the project is only to do research and gather data... not to build an airplane just yet

Yikes that's an understatement! Japan is only doing a boring benkyokai ( study-it-to-death group).
I was reading this week's Travel Insider newsletter and it made the following interesting observation.

"Japan and France Havve signed an agreement to develop a new supersonic commercial aircraft ... Companies from the two countries will each invest the laughably small sum of $914,000 annually in research over the next three years. Are they really serious about this? $1 million barely covers the cost of research on the plane's tires, let alone other systems! More here.

[Mulboyne]

HeraldNet: Japan to test Concorde successor
Japan's space agency will launch an arrow-shaped airplane at twice the speed of sound high over the Australian outback in September or October in a crucial test of plans to develop a supersonic successor to the Concorde. The test follows a three-year hiatus since the first experimental flight of the unmanned aircraft, dubbed the next generation supersonic transport, separated prematurely from its booster rocket and crashed in the desert. "We've made some improvements so that won't happen again," Takaaki Akuto, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said Tuesday in Tokyo. "This is a pretty important test...more...