lets play aircraft designer.

[bigred1970]

hey I have thought about posting this for a long time but did feel up to the long bout of typing.

the question I ask you all is if you were a aircraft designer, what niche in the market needs filled and what kind of plane would you design to fill it.

maybe if somebody like one of the proposals they would make a Flight simulator version of it...

Ok, to start this off I have two niches that I think are out there to exploit, the first is a transonic aircraft that has a ~7000 NM range and is about the size of a 777-200. there are a lot of national airlines that have routes that could use this, maybe a pacific one that would fly from there home country to a place like Chicago or something. This plane would have two cruse modes, on for overland that is sub sonic, (maybe M.85) and a over water super sonic cruse of about 1.7 - 1.6 M. this is fast enough to save a lot of time over convetioal aircraft but hopefully not too fast so that it needs a specalized design like the concord with all its issues,

it would have modern turbofans that would not need afterburners to take off for noise issues and maybe not afterburners at all if the engines can be powerful enough, (maybe four of the 100K lbs thrust engines from the 777, propelling a plane that size or smaller) they may not need after burners at all. here is a corporate jet that is being design that would fill exactly the same niche but for the business sector

http://www.aerioncorp.com/

they hit it right on the nose that the main thing with making the design work is the modern understanding of airflow, that was what the sonic cruiser from Boeing was gona do, I think the failing of that design was that is was not ambitious enough (it was not supersonic)

I will post my idea the other niche that needs filled in my opinion (a short range, High capacity airliner. they use 747s now which in my opinion are far from ideal even if they are special models) in a bit..

[bigred1970]

I will post my idea the other niche that needs filled in my opinion (a short range, High capacity airliner. they use 747s now which in my opinion are far from ideal even if they are special models) in a bit..

this is the next niche that I think there would be a market for, (mainly in japan, but if the plane can be made efficent enough it might be able to compete with other transportation modes between the big cites in the east an west of the USA (ie Washington-Boston, San deigo- san fransico, ect.) in japan they now use 747's for these type of routes, which seems to me far from ideal.

the routes I am thinkin of are between major cities that are closer than 400NM apart and in may cases much closer (New york - boston for example)

I think that they could use a large capasity turboprop and save a lot of fuel, maybe getting the cost down to the point that it would be competative with a train ticket. maybe a 500-600 passenger turbo prop with the fuel consumption of a much smaller jet airliner,

I was tinking of a high wing double decker turbo prop plane, with 4 engines of about 25,000 shaft horsepower, with a take off weight of around 800K . (it would only have a max range of 500nm so it would have small fuel tanks compared to a 747 or a380). no contra rotating props like the anitov 24 here since that would be a complexity would impact the economics. how about a 10 blades slow speed one with modern blade design like the latest generation of c130. the perfomance I would think would be needed would be a celing of 25k feet, and a cruse of 300kn IAS (~350 to 400 ground speed)
the wing would be a high loaded one optimised for these altitudes with extremely large area fowler flaps (aka 727) for stol.

I think the goal in economics would be to have the fuel consumption of a 737 and be able to operate out of the same size airport.. save the international ones for the jumbo jets....

so what do you thing, is there a market for these two designs?

and what niches do you think are out there and how would you fill them....

[jonesey2k]

"In the near future, it will be possible to
take off from Paris at 8 a.m. for a breakfast
meeting in Manhattan."

You could do that in the past too :sad:

I think they should be able to make a 737 sized craft no problem I mean us & the French did it over 40 years ago!