and you thought Concorde was fast....

Russia's Cosmoplane

New aircraft 'could fly Moscow-New York in under an hour'

"Russian aerospace experts say they could be just 10 years from developing an aircraft capable of flying from Moscow to New York in less than an hour.

Dubbed the Cosmoplane, the 250ft long aircraft would fly at a height of 650,000ft and carry up to 1,200 people at speeds of up to 18,000mph."

ui !
and I always thought the US were the bleeding edge scientists on such things ... and now the Russians have a comeback!
if it is true ...
this is really interesting, thanx for pointing it out! I like those super high and fast thingies ...
bernhard

I know the U.S. is working on Scramjet engines for passenger planes, which turn on at Mach 5. A couple tests have gone kaput so far. These eliminate the need for separate oxygen tanks, since the oxygen is taken from the air passing through the engines at Mach 5 plus.

According to that link, the Russian version uses both hydrogen and oxygen tanks, which is what the space shuttle already does. Also, if memory serves, I thought the space shuttle could go faster than 18,000 mph. So I'm not sure exactly what new technology they're claiming to have, if any.

Well, one difference is that the Cosmoplane design calls for 1,200 passengers, while the Shuttle is designed for a maximum of 7 passengers IIRC. A Google search yields nothing beyond this article, BTW.

1200! Yea...guess that is a little differant than the shuttle. Time will tell if they actually build this...I`m sure they could...they may decide not to. Just not economicaly practical. Also...what runways could they land on?

The whole thing seems impractical. I start to imagine how it would fly (launch?) and it's not long hefore I start to shake my head: "no, no, no, that's just not going to work...." One example: How do you find 1,200 people willing to spend about $15,000 to fly from point A to point B all at the same time?

These are some pretty amazing figures!

For one, it is supposed to reach 650,000 feet altitude? That's about 123 miles; far beyond the atmosphere. This, along with the claimed 1 hour travel time, means that the thing is traveling like an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Perhaps it uses wings to get itself to the destination, instead of a parachute?

The claim of fitting 1200 people into a 250 foot long craft is interesting. Assuming 3 feet per person, from front to back, there is room for about 80 rows of seats. To fit 1200 people, each row of seats must be roughly 14 seats wide. This sounds more like the capacity of current jumbo jets. And this will travel along at 18,000 mph, far above the atmosphere??

Gee, is it April 1st already?? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif
Or have the Russians gone to American business schools, and learned to promise everything, regardless of what's feasible?

Steve K.

And who would want to fly on a russian built supersonic craft? Stories from the cold war era have it that passengers would issue a collective cheer whenever a plane would get safely off the ground... because that was NOT taken for granted! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif (Maybe the story was just cold war propaganda - but I heard that their military planes were not impressive in saftey or reliability either.)

1,200 in the 250 foot plane? It will either be very wide, or very uncomfortable.

[ QUOTE ]
Catapult said:
1,200 in the 250 foot plane? It will either be very wide, or very uncomfortable.

[/ QUOTE ]

The 747 is 231 feet long and seats a maximum of 490 passengers, though it's rarely used in this configuration.

The Russian "plane" would be only 9% longer to hold 145% more passengers so I suspect you're right on both accounts; very wide and very uncomfortable.

I hope DNA technology is advanced enough to ID passengers from single molecules after the first and possibly last flight

Brightnorm