Future aircraft designs always closely resemble something out of Captain Scarlet?

...will find a way to stop this making any money. Too dangerous to land at a US airport, probably. A Boeing version, on the other hand...

....just popping across to Sydney for lunch.

Just think - it will take you longer to get to the airport than it will to fly halfway round the world!

It'll be nice (probably) if it happens. Though one wonders whether it is technically feasible. Mach 5 is almost twice as fast as current spy planes I believe. And if a terrorist takes this baby over you can't shoot it down because no missiles fly that fast, shirley?

So it will take just 4 and a half hours to get from the gate at Heathrow to the sunny shores of Bondai Beach.

As is typical with the good old british (spanish owned) arports it will take just as long from check in to duty free. Assuming that bottle of coke is chucked so you can by a new shiny double-the-price one on the other side.

Thats before good old Gordon finds a way of taxing it to a less restrictive country - say China.

Gerry Anderson got there first not only with Mark's Captain Scarlet look-a-like but more like Thunderbird's Fireflash

A notable point about that first episode was that there was some in-flight espionage aimed at bringing down Fireflash with bombs planted by 'The Hood', an amazingly arabic looking chappie.

Did Gerry Anderson tell the future again?

IANAAD (I am not an aero-dynamicist) but surely the plane in that picture is the wrong shape, IIRC super sonic planes should have the same cross sectional area throughout the body as much as possible, that one is shaped like a wedge.

Its the Fireflash, from the pilot episode. Only that was driven by nuclear engines. I hope this one is more reliable.

http://www.thunderbirdsonline.co.uk/episodes/trapped/index.htm

This headline only proves that the English language and creative literary writing is now only safe in the hands of Canada, US and India. Good work "buggering" journalism, "dim-brits". Grow up, it isn't cute.

I was actually thinking more of Firefly from Thunderbirds!!

They are going to strap a 4-wheeled robin reliant to each wing for mach 4?

They must have advanced the timing a bit.

What am I missing here? Why do they make such a deal out of going subsonic while over populated areas? Ok I can understand people not wanting sonic booms while the plane is a few hundred feet up just after takeoff. But surely there's going to be 10,000 feet at least between the 'plane and the ground for most of the flight. Does it really make a difference on the ground how fast it's going?

The cost is €10bn. The €10m figure is the total tax on the €3000 ticket to Sydney. On the positive side most of us would only need a one way ticket.

By the time this gets off the ground (pun intended) the septics will have made something similar, licensed it the the military, then banned the use of this technology in their airspace by anyone else in the world because they can.

Nice to see that the EU isn't letting its eco-friendly policies get in the way of the development of an uncecessary technology that will only benefit the wealthy.

So 4 1/2 hours to Australia. 4 1/2 days to the US.

Concorde still looks better, beautiful.

Look at the size comparison between the A380 and the A2... Already there are major airports not able to handle the 380, and they want to build a monstrosity as big as the A2, and call it commercially viable? Hah! Pull the other one - it's got bells on. No, it's just the EU government funnelling yet more money under the table into the airline industry. I swear they're *trying* to make it easy for Boeing to win its WTO complaint.

Not so much because of the plane itself, although it will be nice to cut the time spent trapped in a metal tube with Cat Piss Man (who may or may not have showered before the filght, but you can't tell because the stink is so deeply ingrained), but because it'll drive development of the engines, which as mentioned will be usable for a nice SSTO reusable spaceplane...

This A2 thingy is nowhere near as aerodymically 'ambitious' as the 'Fireflash' in Thunderbirds - no triple bank of 'atom engines' sat atop a Y-form tailplane.

Actually, this A2 thingy looks more like the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, which "gained a reputation as a 'flying coffin' and 'Witwenmacher' (Widowmaker) for their high accident rate. In Germany and Italy alone, more than 400 airplanes were lost in accidents" - bodes well!

Oooer missus, I just looked at that title again!

It does look like a Gerry Anderson rip off - I think he should sue!!!

Nice to see that you're not letting the article get in the way of some misinformed ranting.... (Hint: Runs on potentially zero-carbon hydrogen.)

Is this the Paris Hilton angle, or am I just old-fashioned?

I can see a very serious downside to being able to go from London to Sydney in 4.5 hours, it means we'll get even more Aussie and Kiwi bar tenders coming over and they'd be able to nip home for the weekend.

Why must it always be some sort of airplane? Heinlein, Clarke, and all the rest were writing about intercontinental ballistic rocket passenger service in the 50's. That should be able to get you from London to anywhere else in the world in about an hour and a half, give or take.

-Chris

Hypersonic hydrogen airliner to bitchslap Concorde

Even though the cost of it is something quite enormous

If you fly it fast enough, it might become explosive

Hypersonic hydrogen airliner to bitchslap Concorde

Um diddle um diddle um diddle ay

Um diddle um diddle um diddle ay

there never will be an American version of this, because there's no legal way to force every airport to install cryogenic fuel capability for the one or two times this aircraft lands.

Unlike your new big wonky Airbus, in which the big mean EU forced major airports to build in the capability to take a practically non-existant aircraft, because existing infrastructure (gates and terminals) simply couldn't fit it.

Big governments like the EU and China have no problem forcing massive civil engineering projects (funded by unwilling and unrecognized taxpayers) do they? Boeing attempts to build transsonic airliners and mega passenger aircraft were all terminated in the design stage specifically because of their inability to operate from preexisting infrastructure. Especially with snobby uncooperative Euro's whinging about how they'd have to make a change and refusing to do so. Boeing designs included weird stuff like folding wings and even aircraft that loaded sideways or folded in half Super Guppy style. All to be good Global Neighbors and not force the rest of the world to catch up. Needless to say, all designs failed.

That's why Northrop doesn't build a flying wing airliner-no way to make it work at existing terminals. Airbus could have done so, used a superior design, but didn't need to. Why do anything better when you're guaranteed no competition? Just make it bigger and have Big Brother ram tax money after it to make it fit.

And when it all turns out to be a big boondoggle, there's no worries-you can't vote out your Constortiums, they'll still be around to come up with their next your-taxes-to-their-pocket routine. Complain enough and the new EU military doesn't have to worry about violating your constitutional rights, because there isn't one of those either.

Imagine the bandwidth of one of these creepers full of DLT tapes!

telldodo: nod to andrew tanenbaum

"Though, this engine design is spot on. Get it working, ESA!"

You need to read about hydrogen economy when used as a straight fuel. Hydrogen is NOT an energy source, it is merely an energy carrier. As such its EROEI is negative. That's fine if you want to go lemming-like down that particular route to mankind making this planet into another Mars.

Get real!