Whoop-dee-derp, looks like they aren't trying to make the Skylon an SSTO anymore

[PakledHostage]

53 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

Everyone always says how uneconomical it was, in its lager years it was profitable. not as profitable as larger slower planes but it was making a profit. It was so tiny didn't fit very well at 6'4, luckily I was only on it for a few hours to New York hehe

While it is true that Concorde was profitable in its later years, that doesn't mean the concept was economically viable. A ticket for that small little seat on Concorde that you mentioned above cost about twice as much as a first class seat on a subsonic aircraft. And you only saved about 4 hours on a New York to London flight.

Prestige and exclusivity was the motivating factor for people to pay that premium, not the time savings. There's no prestige or exclusivity if something is mainstream.

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, Lord_intet said:

The difference between 2500 and 25000 is a question of altitude when it comes to sstos like Skylon and planes like concorde, it's why concorde flew so very high compared to what we had and have.

This simply proves that you have no idea what you're talking about. By that logic, if you stick a rocket on a 747, you would get a Space Shuttle.

The main differences are thermal requirements, attitude control, and of course, the massive amount of propellant that is required to acheive the dV. 

Quote

It was a design the Americans gave sud https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde yes it's Wikipedia but it's cited and I know it as a fact.

Nowhere in that article is it said that. Pretty much everyone in the late 50's was drawing up concepts of supersonic airliners. It seemed like the logical next step after the 707 and the Caravelle.

Quote

None of the airlines today use that configuration because they prefer designs that are less risky and can take more people for less cost.

Hence, SST was a dead end. So was the Chevrolet Corvair or the nuclear bomber. The junkyard of the history of engineering is full of bad ideas that seemed good at the time.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Lord_intet said:

...they prefer designs that are less risky and can take more people for less cost.

WHAT?! MADNESS!!

***

What is the underlying question here anyway? I've lost track...

[Lord_inter]

Just now, p1t1o said:

WHAT?! MADNESS!!

***

What is the underlying question here anyway? I've lost track...

My point is that concorde was a test-bed for tech needed to develop a ssto later called hotol, now called Skylon.

Everyone seems to find this hard to believe for some reason. How else we would of tested delta wings, fly by wire, heat cycles, fueling, advanced materials, all the other things, in the 60s I have no idea though.

[p1t1o]

Just now, Lord_intet said:

My point is that concorde was a test-bed for tech needed to develop a ssto later called hotol, now called Skylon.

Everyone seems to find this hard to believe for some reason. How else we would of tested delta wings, fly by wire, heat cycles, fueling, advanced materials, all the other things, in the 60s I have no idea though.

I can believe that there would have been collaboration (on or off the books) involving people, companies, institutions and possibly governments between relevant projects, especially when involving strategic technologies such as high-speed propulsion.

But Concorde-as-testbed for HOTOL? This not only makes little sense, the timelines dont really match up either and more importantly, your word is quite literally the first sign of any connection between the two. The same goes for the claim that Skylon is the same project as Hotol, they may have similar design goals and a few of the same people involved, but its a little more complicated than "Hotol is now Skylon". May as well say: Niel Armstrong travelled to the Moon in a V-2 rocket (now called Saturn-V).

This is the internet, if you dont come with some solid backup, then you cannot expect your theory to be met unchallenged. It is a big ask for most things actually, bringing evidence to the table, but that is the internet for you, it is full of idiots and charlatans. Please do not take it personally, I would say the same to anyone (I would not, for example, want to believe you and repeat it to someone else, who then shows me sources proving me wrong - and all I would be able to say is "But this guy on the internet seemed sincere!")

[Green Baron]

56 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

My point is that concorde was a test-bed for tech needed to develop a ssto later called hotol, now called Skylon.

Everyone seems to find this hard to believe for some reason. How else we would of tested delta wings, fly by wire, heat cycles, fueling, advanced materials, all the other things, in the 60s I have no idea though.

Call me everyone. I cannot remember don't know of anyone having an ssto in mind in the 60s. Concorde was a product of a prosperous time when fuel was extremely cheap and the jet set started out into an ever smaller world. Flying cars for everyone ! It was planned to fly supersonic to many other places, like South America. When it was announced quite a few airlines ordered options for it.

From the mid 70s on oil prices rose to heights that at certain days car driving was forbidden in Germany (Oil Crisis), That, the exploding production costs, and the noise (they forbid supersonic flight over inhabited areas, making it even more ineffective) meant the end of the Concorde. It ailed over the years, only a few could afford the ticket prices. I know someone who won a ticket in a product contest :-)

It was mentioned here that it was cost effective, but that isn't true. No carrier bought Concordes except the national ones of the states were it was constructed, probably partly due to politic intervention (prestige project, "technology carrier", this sort of things ....). If it was for the airlines they would have dismissed Concorde much earlier than the Gonesse accident. Flight safety had suffered, popping tires and tank ruptures were a problem before Gonesse.

There are a few dreams, even concepts of modern supersonic aircrafts for the new "jet set" right now, partly funded by internet billionaires or visionaries like Mr. Branson (i admire people like him).

 

Edited November 29, 2016 by Green Baron

[Nibb31]

51 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

My point is that concorde was a test-bed for tech needed to develop a ssto later called hotol, now called Skylon.

Which is wrong. HOTOL was initiated in the mid 80's. Concorde goes back to the early 60's. 

Nobody at BAC or Sud Aviation the early 60's was considering SSTOs. None of the technology in Concorde is applicable to spaceflight. In those days, Europe was barely messing around with the Black Arrow and Diamant rockets.

Skylon is only vaguely related to HOTOL in than Alan Bond worked on it. None of BAE's intellectual property was transferred to Skylon, which is a private venture completely separate from BAE. The whole concept is wildly different.

Quote

Everyone seems to find this hard to believe for some reason. How else we would of tested delta wings, fly by wire, heat cycles, fueling, advanced materials, all the other things, in the 60s I have no idea though.

This makes no sense. Delta wings were used for supersonic flight since the early 50's. The F102 Delta Dagger flew in 1953. The French Air Force were flying the Mirage III since 1956. Fly-by-wire was introduced on the Antonov ANT-20 in the 1930's. The most advanced material in Concorde was aluminium.

None of those technologies were developed under some secret agenda to build an SSTO. They were developed because the industry needed them and then implemented in Concorde because they were state-of-the-art at that period.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Nibb31

[Lord_inter]

this is an article that states that hotol is Skylon https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/secret-files-reveal-us-interest-in-uk-hotol-spacepla-322955/ for example the r n d development officer to the cabinet stating;

" the HOTOL engine as "ingenious" and "based on a secret patent awarded to Alan Bond of the UK [Atomic Energy Authority] Culham Laboratory".

As for concorde being hotol I'll have to find it later while I try and take my space station to duna, I have 2000dv but it weighs 200tons 

[p1t1o]

11 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

this is an article that states that hotol is Skylon...

Umm not really, it talks a lot about how and why hotol was cancelled...

[Lord_inter]

It says that the major issue with hotol development was it's engines, which Alan Bond had patented and then formed reaction engines Ltd to continue the development of to continue the project.

 

Indeed none the technology from bae went to Skylon. Alan Bond was working for the atomic energy authority.....on a space plane.....in the 1980s......

Incidentally this doesn't question an airframe, these people from bae, military, the government etc, in the 1980s, just after concorde had gone in to service. An airframe capable of low speed and high speed flight, high altitude flight, several cooling and heating cycles. Remind me the issues with an ssto apart from the engines, fuel and therefore delta v? An airframe capable of high speed, high altitude flight, capable of surviving heating cycles right? Must be a coincidence......

 

It mentions hotol here too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

Here Alan Bond specifically says he developed Skylon from from hotol http://www.wired.co.uk/article/skylon-alan-bond

 

Don't worry I won't bring up the a2 sst either (yet)

 

 

Oh yeah, Saturn V and the V-2, you ever heard of this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Edited November 29, 2016 by Lord_intet

[p1t1o]

@Lord_intet 

These are all just articles which mention both aircraft on the same page...

Its clear to anyone that Bond brought, and took advantage of, a lot of knowledge from the work on Hotol, but aside from that...skylon is a new aircraft from the ground up, the engines share an idea and the project shares design goals, and probably there is some raw research that is relevant to Skylon, in the same way that Von Brauns work on the V-2 was applicable to the Saturn series - but that does not make the Saturn rockets "extensions" or "successors" to the V-2.

Sure ok, if you are going to agree with my joke that the V-2 was "developed into" the Saturn-V, that much of a link I will give to Hotol and Skylon, but thats about it.

(And there would be little point in mentioning the A2 since it is quite literally a paper aeroplane)

[Val]

53 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

hotol is Skylon

is not the same as 

14 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

developed Skylon from hotol

Such grand simplifications of the truth makes your statements seem very unfactual.

 

[Lord_inter]

Skylon is the successor of hotol as much as steam trains are the successor of steam pumps. The Great Britain is the successor to modern metal ships.

Without hotol you cant design skylon, if you look at Skylon on its own it looks like some ludicrous dream. When you look at how it's been developed from hotol it all makes more sense. When you look at previous work the designers did at bae, the mod etc (some say coincidentally not on concorde) it all makes the design much more practical. 

 

For example;

"we want a plane that can get across the commonwealth very fast" = concorde

"wouldn't it be good if we could get things in to space on a plane instead of a rocket" = hotol

"what do we need to make an ssto" "well a supersonic plane capable of lifting lots of weight, decent engines, the heating and cooling is an issue too" "well just 5-10 years ago I was working on concorde that has lots of lift, supersonic, heating and cooling stages"

"Perhaps an air breathing engine, one that basically burns the oxygen, nitrogen and stuff already in the air" "we don't have the tech for that"

This idea then developed in to sabre as it was not practical. same reason they got rid of a slingshot take off for hotol to vet it up to speed where the original design of engine would work.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Lord_intet

[Val]

18 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

"what do we need to make an ssto" "well a supersonic plane capable of lifting lots of weight, decent engines, the heating and cooling is an issue too" "well just 5-10 years ago I was working on concorde that has lots of lift, supersonic, heating and cooling stages"

If you read the Heating problems section in the wiki you linked earlier: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

You'll see that it says:  "The highest temperature that aluminium could sustain over the life of the aircraft was 127 °C (261 °F), which limited the top speed to Mach 2.02."

An airframe limited to a max speed of Mach 2.02 is not really that useful for an SSTO project that needs to go to Mach 25.

[Lord_inter]

It was limited to match 2.02 at the height it flew at where the engines were efficient. With different engines and fueling, say the sabre engine, it could get more height so less air resistance which means less heat so more speed to keep the temperature at or more importantly below 127c.  You guys know this, why am I having to point it out? 

It'll only go mach 25 in the outer atmosphere, till then it will be accelerating and keeping its speed (therefore) heat low enough that it won't blow up.

 

Also I believe we have materials now that can cope with more heat and can be cooled better using similar tech as applied to concorde. specifically moving it's fuel around the craft ro maintain a certain temperature. 

[mikegarrison]

On 7/12/2016 at 4:29 PM, Nuke said:

idk i always figured the skylon is way to big to be a first step. rel should get the engines working and see who buys them. you can save a lot of money using an existing aircraft as a test bed, they mentioned a dc-10 in the article, figure replace its center engine with a sabre and your tankage in the fusalage. that would be something to see. however that configuration isnt going to do anything to test supersonic operation, let alone hypersonic. its probibly enough to test airbreating mode in the subsonic regeme, and cycle switching. you would need to send a few engines to nasa to have them test it on an sr71, which is probibly the only aircraft that can get into sabre's full air breathing flight regime, nasa has used them in tests before. thats ignoring the fact that its a lot of engine for a not very big bird.

It would be easier to build an all new airplane than to convert an SR-71.

[p1t1o]

"if Concorde were designed and built differently with different materials and components, it would have had different capabilities"

Really?! You don't say...

[mikegarrison]

Concorde only had one market, the North Atlantic corridor. It couldn't fly supersonic over land. Arrival and departure noise was super loud. It likely could have competed well with the turbojet 707s that were flying when it was conceived, but by the time it was delivered it was competing against high-bypass turbofan 747s that could carry people much, much cheaper than those original 707s or the Concorde.

So it ended up being a niche market airplane, continuing to be flown in large part because of sunk costs and national flag carrier pride. And when it was discovered that a blown tire on takeoff was enough to cause a crash, it was retired for good.

Bottom line is that it made sense in the early 60s when it was conceived, but the aviation world had changed so much by the early 70s that it was a dinosaur.

People keep trying, but nobody has gotten a supersonic transport to pencil out ever since. The current push is toward supersonic bizjets. The thought is that bizjet customers are more likely to pay for speed than commercial customers. The trick is going to be whether sonic boom can be minimized enough to allow using that speed over land.

[p1t1o]

39 minutes ago, Lord_intet said:

It was limited to match 2.02 at the height it flew at where the engines were efficient. With different engines and fueling, say the sabre engine, it could get more height so less air resistance which means less heat so more speed to keep the temperature at or more importantly below 127c.  You guys know this, why am I having to point it out?

This is wrong. And you were already told it was wrong. That is why you are having to "point it out"...

No more patience left for this one. An entire page of comments to discover that yes, Skylon is an aircraft...whoop dee derp indeed.

Do you know what you'd get if you redesigned Concorde enough to be a decent testbed for SABRE? FLIPPING SKYLON!

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Call me everyone. I cannot remember don't know of anyone having an ssto in mind in the 60s. Concorde was a product of a prosperous time when fuel was extremely cheap and the jet set started out into an ever smaller world. Flying cars for everyone ! It was planned to fly supersonic to many other places, like South America. When it was announced quite a few airlines ordered options for it.

From the mid 70s on oil prices rose to heights that at certain days car driving was forbidden in Germany (Oil Crisis), That, the exploding production costs, and the noise (they forbid supersonic flight over inhabited areas, making it even more ineffective) meant the end of the Concorde. It ailed over the years, only a few could afford the ticket prices. I know someone who won a ticket in a product contest :-)

It was mentioned here that it was cost effective, but that isn't true. No carrier bought Concordes except the national ones of the states were it was constructed, probably partly due to politic intervention (prestige project, "technology carrier", this sort of things ....). If it was for the airlines they would have dismissed Concorde much earlier than the Gonesse accident. Flight safety had suffered, popping tires and tank ruptures were a problem before Gonesse.

There are a few dreams, even concepts of modern supersonic aircrafts for the new "jet set" right now, partly funded by internet billionaires or visionaries like Mr. Branson (i admire people like him).

Pretty much this, see an increased interest for faster than sound, better materials and engines, the modeling tools are also so good it would probably be cheaper to design. 
They focus on smaller planes as one issue with Concorde was to fill it. 
Think BA found they lost money after canceling the concord as many of the passenger moved to other airways or bought cheaper tickets.  
It did however not pay for the development cost and supersonic will always be more expensive than wide body planes. 

You could not build an ssto plane  in 1960, it was however plenty of ideas with an fast supersonic plane with an rocket upper stage. 

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Concorde only had one market, the North Atlantic corridor. It couldn't fly supersonic over land. Arrival and departure noise was super loud.

Just so we're clear, it's not just noise that limited Concorde to the North Atlantic corridor...  There's also a range issue, which is what prevented it from entering the trans-Pacific market.

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

No more patience left for this one. An entire page of comments to discover that yes, Skylon is an aircraft...whoop dee derp indeed.

You've taken this thread so seriously you stated that Skylon is an aircraft.  When it flies I'll call it an aircraft.  Right now it is as much a paper airplane as any other SSTO.

5 hours ago, Lord_intet said:

It was limited to match 2.02 at the height it flew at where the engines were efficient. With different engines and fueling, say the sabre engine, it could get more height so less air resistance which means less heat so more speed to keep the temperature at or more importantly below 127c.  You guys know this, why am I having to point it out? 

It'll only go mach 25 in the outer atmosphere, till then it will be accelerating and keeping its speed (therefore) heat low enough that it won't blow up.

Skylon (and the especially the SABRE engine) is only interesting between mach 2-6 in the atmosphere.  Once it breaches the atmosphere (or possibly just hit mach ~6, although atmospheric separation remains an unsolved problem and is dangerous to test) it is likely to launch the payload.  

Also, just how much oxidizer do you think you will need to carry the concorde from service ceiling to out of the atmosphere (at no more than mach 2).  Take the amount of fuel needed to get to 40,000ft, multiply it by a factor of 5 (which *still* isn't out of the atmosphere, but 200,000' is impressive), then multiply it *again* by a factor of roughly 16 (the factor of 5 was for your fuel.  The factor of 16 is for the oxidizer).

You aren't getting to space in the Concorde.  It isn't built for it (this is ignoring the whole issue of replacing the engines with things that can run with either air or oxidizer.  My guess is that the time you can run on air is so limited to not even bother, which would be a serious nail in the coffin for the entire concept of Skylon if true).

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Just so we're clear, it's not just noise that limited Concorde to the North Atlantic corridor...  There's also a range issue, which is what prevented it from entering the trans-Pacific market.

Noise (specifically boom) limited it to over-water operation, and there is only one major over-water market that it had the range for.

Really it was only designed for two markets: North Atlantic and Domestic US coast-coast. With the overland restrictions, it lost half its market.

It went counter to a lot of trends that developed: quieter airplanes, cheaper tickets, short flights (A320/737/RJ-style), really long flights (777-style), big twin aisle airplanes (DC10/747/A330/777/etc.).

[DerekL1963]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Noise (specifically boom) limited it to over-water operation, and there is only one major over-water market that it had the range for.

o.0  I'm not entirely certain what the point is of quoting me and then repeating what I said.

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Really it was only designed for two markets: North Atlantic and Domestic US coast-coast. With the overland restrictions, it lost half its market.

o.0  The UK and France teamed up and put their national pride on the line to build an aircraft for the US domestic market?  What are you smoking?  BOAC in particular was eager to operate them on a wide variety of routes - but sharply increasing costs (both to purchase the aircraft and operational costs) and limiting supersonic flight to overwater pretty much ended those plans.

[Nibb31]

15 hours ago, Lord_intet said:

It was limited to match 2.02 at the height it flew at where the engines were efficient. With different engines and fueling, say the sabre engine, it could get more height so less air resistance which means less heat so more speed to keep the temperature at or more importantly below 127c.  You guys know this, why am I having to point it out? 

The X-43 flew at Mach 9 at an altitude of 33 km, which is twice the service ceiling of Concorde. It reached temperatures around 1500°C. On re-entry, parts of the Space Shuttle could reach 2000°C.

Concorde was nowhere near capable of hypersonic flight, orbital flight, or atmospheric reentry. Even if you strapped rocket engines, a TPS, and RCS onto it, it couldn't carry nearly enough propellant to reach orbital speed.

It was designed as a passenger jet, not a spacecraft. If you stuck it on top of an SLS and flew it to space, it still wouldn't be a spacecraft, just like if you sank it to the bottom of the ocean, it wouldn't become a submarine.

15 hours ago, Lord_intet said:

It'll only go mach 25 in the outer atmosphere, till then it will be accelerating and keeping its speed (therefore) heat low enough that it won't blow up.

Pedantic mode: The Mach number specifically refers to the speed of sound, which depends on air density. By definition you can't fly at Mach 25 outside the atmosphere.