Twenty years after Concorde's last flight, the supersonic airliner returns, this time even more ...
Today it takes about eight hours to fly from Paris to New York, soon it could take a quarter of that time and from London to Singapore just over two hours, aboard Drako-Airbus. A supersonic aircraft, or rather a hypersonic aircraft capable of exceeding Mach 3, equal to about 3675.13 km/h, well beyond the fateful Mach 2 exceeded by its predecessors.
But is all this really possible? For now, we are only talking about a 'concept plane' created by French designers, according to the livery on the plane in the renders made for the press and released by Found and Explained.
Drako will be used on direct routes, those now flown by the famous Boeing 777 or the Airbus A350 between Europe and North America and between the North Pole and Asia. Before commercial use, it is likely that this type of aircraft will be tested in private tourism and then potentially in mass tourism.
Civil aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier have already crossed the skies, we speak of the Tupolev Tu-144 and the Aèrospatiale-BAC Concorde capable of flying over the Atlantic in three and a half hours.
In the late 1950s, the superpowers also measured themselves in the field of civil aviation by designing supersonic aircraft. France, Great Britain, the USA and Russia confront each other. The Soviets beat the Westerners by being the first to present a supersonic vehicle, the Tupolev Tu-144 in service from 1968 to 1998 with Russian Airlines, later used by NASA in its last years of service as a flying laboratory. The Tu-144 breaks the sound barrier for the first time on 5 June 1969 and on 15 July is the first commercial aircraft to exceed Mach 2.
In the late 1960s, an Anglo-French consortium formed by the French Aèrospatiale and the British British Aircraft Corporation designed Concorde. The first tests of Concorde date back to 1969, and on 4 November 1970 it passed Mach 2, reaching 2179km/h. It officially entered service on 21 January 1976 on the Paris-Dakar-Rio de Janeiro and London-Bahrain routes. In 2003 it made its last flight before being decommissioned due to a disastrous accident. On 25 July 2000 Air France flight 4590 crashed after take-off into a hotel south-west of Charles de Gaulle airport, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew members as well as four people who were on the ground and injuring six others.
Drako's direct competitor is Boom Supersonic's Overture. A light supersonic that promises to make supersonic flights greener and more affordable for everyone. Capable of reaching Mach 1.7, powered by Sustainable Aircraft Fuels (SAF) currently under development, it can carry 80 passengers with a range of 5000 miles. It has already been optioned by several companies from American Airlines to United Airlines.
A supersonic aircraft is an aircraft conceived and designed to carry passengers at speeds faster than the speed of sound.
Characterised by tapered fuselages and narrow wings, they are not very comfortable aircraft. The passenger cabin, capable of withstanding differential pressurisation, is very narrow and furthermore, despite the soundproofing systems, the loud noise produced by the engines can be heard inside the aircraft. Compared to the Boeing 747, they are also much heavier because they need stronger structures to increase rigidity and to be able to overcome the sound barrier.
Concorde mounts four engines with Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 afterburners. In a simple turbojet engine, thrust is provided by the exhaust gases downstream of the turbine that are allowed to expand in the nozzle. In the Olympus 593, on the other hand, the gases are first passed through an afterburner, which re-heats them to provide greater thrust. The afterburner is only operated on the Concorde at take-off and in the acceleration of the aircraft from Mach 1 up to Mach 1.7, almost twice the speed of the fastest civil aircraft currently on the market.
The idea behind hypersonic aircraft is to use the most efficient engine according to the speed being reached. Therefore, two TBCC (Turbine-Based Combined Cycles) engines are used to break the sound barrier, while at low speeds the aircraft uses a typical turbofan engine.
The realisation of these new aircraft is planned for around 2050. But before the actual implementation, quite a few problems will have to be solved. Among these is legislation; in the airspace of many states, in fact, sonic booms are not allowed, so one should only fly at supersonic speeds over oceans. Reaching the speed of 1200 km/h at sea level and 1100 at high altitude equal to Mach 1, the aircraft impacts against the air molecules that are unable to move before its passage, creating a sort of barrier, the impact causes the sonic boom. The noise is very loud and permission must be sought from the control tower to overcome this barrier.
Among the most significant technical challenges is the choice of materials, cooling system and type of fuel. Factors that will also affect the list price of these futuristic planes, which could be in excess of $1 billion, much more expensive than a normal Airbus.
There are many knots to unravel, but once again the dream of flying has given wings to the imagination. We just have to watch to see if technological innovation will be able to fulfil our wishes this time as well.
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