Another Meteor
by wjw on August 5, 2015
The US Patent Office has approved Airbus’ application for Concord 2.0, an “ultra-rapid air vehicle and related method for aerial locomotion”.
In other words, a commercial aircraft capable of reaching 100,000 feet, after which the ramjets will kick in and the vehicle will approach Mach 4.5. The 2.0 will take off vertically, like the space shuttle, and passengers will be in hammocklike webbing for the trip. (Paris to New York, one hour.)
Airbus says the design features “concepts and ideas in a very nascent stage of conceptualization.”
Uhh, yeah.
Still, I’m glad someone is thinking along these lines.
With a passenger capacity of 20, I suspect this idea will remain in the conceptual stage pretty much forever.
Unless all those NACA and NASA aerodynamics papers I’ve read are horribly wrong, that’s not even remotely a supersonic shape, much less a Mach 4.5 shape. It’s not even a good subsonic shape.
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