by Gary R. » Sat Dec 18, 2004 1:46 pm
You guys may not have to lament Concorde too long. In the most recent issue of "Flying" is a small article about two proposed ssbj's . One will use silencing airframe design to create only 1% of Concorde's boom and the other will be a conventional design with a wing much like an F-104 and limit speed to .98-1.1 over land because they mathematical determined that the dbm's will still be with-in law at that speed. Also, I may mention other ideas which I read about in Popular Mechanics about ssbj's utilizing other technologies derived from the tests conducted earlier this year with that nose modified( oh heck, I can't remember the fighter model that they pellicane nosed for that). I'll probably remember it after I'm done with this post. Anyway, the designs I saw illustrated in PM are all needle nosed with no forward visual means. It is intended that the pilots will visually navigate using camera and LCD views in the cockpits of these ssbj's which isn't actually that great a problem considering that 100% of the flying in such a plane would be ifr anyway.
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