

Work starts in £15m plan to get Concorde flying again - abstractbill
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8712806.stm

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ctkrohn
Air transport is one area where technology has seemingly stagnated, or even
reversed. Airliners seem pretty much the same as when I was a kid. You
certainly don't get to your destination any faster. There have been
improvements -- aircraft such as the 787 are built with light and strong
composites; the A380 is the biggest airliner ever; low cost carriers have
driven down prices; you can get WiFi on certain flights. But you're not going
any faster, or traveling any more comfortably.

Compare that to the period from 1955 - 1975. Jets entered commercial service,
displacing slow and noisy gas-powered propeller planes. The Concorde made its
first flight in 1969, entering service shortly after. The US had its own
supersonic airliners on the drawing board. There were even proposals for
hypersonic transports. We ended up getting stuck with cosmetically identical
jetliners and a series of unmanned hypersonic test vehicles. Remarkable feats
like SpaceShipOne are few and far between.

Aerospace technology relies on inspiration. "Because we can" used to be a
large motivator. It's tough to get around economic or military reality, but at
the same time it's sad to see fewer mind-blowing engineering achievements.
Most of us couldn't afford a Concorde ticket, but I bet there were plenty of
people who still thought it was damn cool.

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Groxx
I _just_ had a thought... could a nuclear powered aircraft be possible? With
some form of electric turbines? Even if the thing could only land at a couple
airports, it could easily serve as a bulk transport for people / equipment to
get part-way to their destination. I mean, it'd have to be _huge_...

I mean, sure, people would _freak_ about a flying reactor, if only on
principle. But that sort of thing dies down with time.

/me starts hunting for weights of marine nuclear reactors

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Maktab
It has been done before.

In the 1950s, both the US and USSR did some fairly extensive research into
nuclear-powered aircraft, culminating in flight tests by a US NB-36H carrying
an operational 3 MW air-cooled nuclear reactor and a Soviet Tu-119 with a
reactor powering two of its engines. The US had progressed quite far in
developing nuclear-powered engines, culminating in Heat Transfer Reactor
Experiment-3 (HTRE-3), but the project was cancelled in 1961 before it could
go much further, with the Soviet project being cancelled soon afterwards. [1]

The program didn't solve all the problems that nuclear-powered aircraft could
case, such as escaped radiation after crashes, but it did prove that crew
shielding could be done safely at a low-enough weight that the concept
remained feasible.

 _Scientific American_ featured an article [2] a couple of years ago about
some people's recent calls to resurrect the idea for commercial use. But the
inherent safety risks remain a big issue.

It's probably an inevitable development at some point, once the core problems
have been solved. And with a new generation of high-temperature reactors
emerging, such as South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, we may see
reactors that are ideally suited to this sort of thing coming through.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft>

[2][http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-
pow...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-powered-
aircraft)

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Groxx
_exactly_ the sort of reply I was hoping to get. This site is fantastic.

And oops ^^; should've checked for "nuclear aircraft" on wikipedia first. I
dove into details without hunting for attempts first. Thanks for the summary!

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zandorg
I get the impression they're spending £15m just to fly for the Olympics. If
true, what a waste of money!

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kierank
Worth every penny to see the Red Arrows and Concorde in the opening ceremony.

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lotharbot
There are two Concordes at Le Bourget: The prototype F-WTSS, with only 812
flight hours, and F-BTSD, with close to 13,000 flight hours. The Concorde they
hope to fly again is BTSD.

I was hoping they'd get the prototype flying again. It's been sitting
stationary for a lot longer than the production model, but it doesn't have
nearly as much wear and tear. And it is, IMO, a more significant aircraft.

