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Concorde Mark 2: Airbus files plans for new supersonic jet
New jet could cut flight time from London to New York to just one hour
Concorde might have gone out of service, but aircraft designers have hopes for a successor to the iconic jet Photo: Dennis Stone / Rex Features
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By Alan Tovey, Industry Editor
12:23PM BST 04 Aug 2015
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214 Comments
Supersonic passenger planes could once again be racing through the skies with Airbus having filed a patent for what could become the 'son of Concorde'.
The new jet could fly from London to New York in an hour - opening up the possibility of a transatlantic return journey in a day.
Concorde 2 would be capable of flying more than four times the speed of sound – or more than 2,500mph, according to documents lodged with the US Patent Office by the aerospace and defence group.
• What it was like to fly by Concorde
The filings refer to an “ultra-rapid air vehicle” and “method of aerial locomotion” for the aircraft, which would cruise at an altitude of more than 100,000ft and carry up to 20 passengers or two or three tons of cargo for distances of about 5,500 miles.
According to the patent, power would come from three different types of engines:
• “at least one” conventional jet that could be retracted into the fuselage
• one or more ramjets, which use the forward speed of the aircraft to compress the air entering them before it is mixed with fuel and ignited
• a rocket motor powered by hydrogen and oxygen.
Flights in the new aircraft look set to be a wild ride, with the rocket motor used in combination with conventional jets to power a “near vertical ascendant flight” until its breaks the sound barrier when the engines are retracted in the fuselage and the ramjets take over.
The sketches supplied with the Airbus filing are rudimentary but give a basic idea of the design
The aircraft would then cruise on the edge of space, high above conventional aircraft, before slowing down and entering normal air traffic close to its destination.
Concorde – built by Aerospatiale, a forerunner of Airbus, and British Aircraft Corporation – was the only supersonic passenger airline to successfully enter service.
It flew at Mach 2.04 – twice the speed of sound or about 1,350mph – at an altitude of up to 60,000ft while carrying up to 120 passengers. It began scheduled services in 1976, though only 14 ever went into service.
However, the jets were withdrawn in 2003 following a crash in Paris three years earlier, ending the age of travelling faster than sound for all but a select few military pilots.
• Picture gallery: Concorde, the supersonic airliner
Airbus suggested the market for the new aircraft would be “principally that of business travel and VIP passengers, who require transcontinental return journeys within one day”.
It also imagines the military using it for strategic reconnaissance and “ultra-rapid transport of high added-value goods or elite commandos”.
The height the aircraft would fly at gives it “almost total invulnerability to conventional anti-aircraft systems” the designers say, adding that it could also be used for “precision strikes and to take out preferred high added-value targets, for example by high-power electromagnetic pulses (EMP)”.
• NASA prepares for supersonic flight
Sonic boom
The patent filing contains basic sketches of Airbus designers’ ideas but does acknowledge the problem of supersonic aircraft making sonic booms as they break the sound barrier.
This boom is seen as one of the main reasons Concorde was not a commercial success, with noise complaints leading to it being banned from operating at high speed over land by many countries, negating the main attraction of travelling on the jet.
The noise created by Concorde going supersonic limited the routes on which it could operate
The patent filing says: “The air vehicle proposed... substantially reduces the noise emitted when the sound barrier is broken, also called the ‘supersonic bang’; this noise has been the main limit, if not the only one preventing the opening of lines other than transatlantic ones for Concorde.”
Details are limited on how the supersonic bang would be reduced, but the height at which the new aircraft would fly and the “narrow” angle of the supersonic shock wave coming off its nose – estimated at between 11 and 15 degrees – would help reduce it because it has a longer distance to dissipate before it reaches the ground.
New jet could cut flight time from London to New York to just one hour
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Concorde might have gone out of service, but aircraft designers have hopes for a successor to the iconic jet Photo: Dennis Stone / Rex Features Learn a new language at your own pace Studying a new language doesn’t have to mean stepping back into the classroom. Babbel offers 13 language courses that can be studied online and on the go.Sponsored by Babbel
By Alan Tovey, Industry Editor
12:23PM BST 04 Aug 2015
Follow
214 Comments Supersonic passenger planes could once again be racing through the skies with Airbus having filed a patent for what could become the 'son of Concorde'.
The new jet could fly from London to New York in an hour - opening up the possibility of a transatlantic return journey in a day.
Concorde 2 would be capable of flying more than four times the speed of sound – or more than 2,500mph, according to documents lodged with the US Patent Office by the aerospace and defence group.
• What it was like to fly by Concorde
The filings refer to an “ultra-rapid air vehicle” and “method of aerial locomotion” for the aircraft, which would cruise at an altitude of more than 100,000ft and carry up to 20 passengers or two or three tons of cargo for distances of about 5,500 miles.
According to the patent, power would come from three different types of engines:
• “at least one” conventional jet that could be retracted into the fuselage
• one or more ramjets, which use the forward speed of the aircraft to compress the air entering them before it is mixed with fuel and ignited
• a rocket motor powered by hydrogen and oxygen.
Flights in the new aircraft look set to be a wild ride, with the rocket motor used in combination with conventional jets to power a “near vertical ascendant flight” until its breaks the sound barrier when the engines are retracted in the fuselage and the ramjets take over.
The sketches supplied with the Airbus filing are rudimentary but give a basic idea of the design
The aircraft would then cruise on the edge of space, high above conventional aircraft, before slowing down and entering normal air traffic close to its destination.
Concorde – built by Aerospatiale, a forerunner of Airbus, and British Aircraft Corporation – was the only supersonic passenger airline to successfully enter service.
It flew at Mach 2.04 – twice the speed of sound or about 1,350mph – at an altitude of up to 60,000ft while carrying up to 120 passengers. It began scheduled services in 1976, though only 14 ever went into service.
However, the jets were withdrawn in 2003 following a crash in Paris three years earlier, ending the age of travelling faster than sound for all but a select few military pilots.
• Picture gallery: Concorde, the supersonic airliner
Airbus suggested the market for the new aircraft would be “principally that of business travel and VIP passengers, who require transcontinental return journeys within one day”.
It also imagines the military using it for strategic reconnaissance and “ultra-rapid transport of high added-value goods or elite commandos”.
The height the aircraft would fly at gives it “almost total invulnerability to conventional anti-aircraft systems” the designers say, adding that it could also be used for “precision strikes and to take out preferred high added-value targets, for example by high-power electromagnetic pulses (EMP)”.
• NASA prepares for supersonic flight
Sonic boom
The patent filing contains basic sketches of Airbus designers’ ideas but does acknowledge the problem of supersonic aircraft making sonic booms as they break the sound barrier.
This boom is seen as one of the main reasons Concorde was not a commercial success, with noise complaints leading to it being banned from operating at high speed over land by many countries, negating the main attraction of travelling on the jet.
The noise created by Concorde going supersonic limited the routes on which it could operate
The patent filing says: “The air vehicle proposed... substantially reduces the noise emitted when the sound barrier is broken, also called the ‘supersonic bang’; this noise has been the main limit, if not the only one preventing the opening of lines other than transatlantic ones for Concorde.”
Details are limited on how the supersonic bang would be reduced, but the height at which the new aircraft would fly and the “narrow” angle of the supersonic shock wave coming off its nose – estimated at between 11 and 15 degrees – would help reduce it because it has a longer distance to dissipate before it reaches the ground.
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