History Of Super Sonic Trans Essay Research

History Of Super Sonic Trans. Essay, Research Paper

Why Supersonic Transportation

Many ask the question, why do we need supersonic transportation. Supersonic transportation is a technology that has not been perfected as it raises to many environmental and safety questions to date. The reason for it s existence is speed and time, along with the fact that every technology that is discovered is almost always improved to be quicker and faster. In today s fast paced world we look anywhere we can to save time in our lives. If you could fly From the United States to Europe in half the time of a regular jet airliner for just a small increase in cost, this would appeal to many people. This was the thought of those designing the supersonic aircraft, that it could be done for a reasonable cost and offer people quicker flight times along with airlines could make twice as many flights as a regular jet could in a days time.

History of Supersonic Transportation

The history of Super Sonic Transportation began in the mid 1950 s, when the Russians, French and British began study this yet unknown technology. Supersonic airliner studies commenced in Britain in 1955 when enough aerodynamic progress had been made on lift/drag ratios to allow a commercially feasable aircraft to be considered . The United States was under the reign of the Kennedy administration. They felt Super Sonic Transportation was important enough to do a feasibility study, to tell whether is was a feasible for the United States to pursue this fascinating new element of technology. The hopes of American SST lobby rose at the end of 1962 when the president established a special cabinet-level committee headed by pro-SST Vice-President Lyndon Johnson . The idea being to design and build an SST that would be economically attractive to air passengers. NASA began to do extensive wind tunnel research at its Langley and Ames centers to determine aerodynamic computation, transonic exceleration, stability and the control needed for Supersonic Transport flight. The British and French had begun to do this prior to the United States starting an SST program. In November of 1962 France s Sud-Aviation and the British Aircraft Corporation and their respected governments signed cooperation agreements for the development of their own Supersonic Aircraft. In February 1965 they began construction of the first two prototypes one French and the other British. So it seems the development of Supersonic Transport soon became a race to see who could output the first Supersonic Transport. The race was won by the Russian s, who on December 31, 1968 made a maiden voyage with the Tupolev 144 Supersonic Transport. This aircraft went into service in late 1969, carrying mail and freight and on November 1, 1977 began to fly its first passengers with a flight from Moscow to Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. On December 11, 1967 the first prototype (British-French) Concorde is unveiled in Toulouse and the first Concorde (French #001) took flight on March 2, 1969. The second Concorde (British #002) was flown shortly afterwards on April 9, 1969 despite the inherent problems that still plagued the SST s such as noise, sonic boom, fuel consumption and cost. In 1974 an Air France Concorde flew from Boston to Paris, leaving at the same time as a 747 headed from Paris to Boston. The Concorde returned to Boston after an hour wait on the ground in Paris and beat the 747, completing the round trip in 11 minutes under the one way 747 by 11 minutes. By September 1, 1975 the Concorde was making regular flights although not with passengers, and recorded four Atlantic crossings in one day, making two round trips from London to Newfoundland. In January, 1976 British Airways and Air France began to regularly scheduled passenger flights, inaugurating a new era in Supersonic passenger travel. The United States Supersonic Transport program never really got off the ground as Boeing Airplane Company developed plans to build a faster and larger aircraft which would carry up to 250 passengers at a speed of Mach 2.7 and would weigh 350 tons. This plan was aborted just five months before the first prototype was to be built because of concern for costs, even though funded largely by the United States Government. The United States felt that the SST program was vulnerable for several reasons. The ability to show profitable operation in the 1960 s was a very difficult task along with the problems of noise and possible atmospheric pollution along with other environmentally questionable reasons put and end to the pursuit of the American supersonic and the SST program was terminated in 1971.

Since commencing operations in 1973, the Concorde fleets of Air France and British Airways, each with seven aircraft, have achieved a combined aggregate of more than 100,00 hours of flying at supersonic speeds(Barbaux et al 1994). In this regard, Concorde remains the only Mach 2.0 (2120 kph) supersonic transport (SST) that can cover 6000km in 3 hours carrying 100 passengers . The Russian TU-144 was grounded in 1985 after a crash at a 1973 air show in Le Bourget. It was made airworthy again 11 years later with a joint venture between the United States and Russia to use it for testing to develop a new high speed civil transport.

General Air Transportation vs. Supersonic Transportation

The ratio of general air transportation compared to that of supersonic transportation is