Spike Aerospace's S-512 Supersonic Jet

[Plutonic Panda]

Little known fact, I actually love airplanes and have drawn up a ton of sketches for some aircraft I'd like to try and come out with one day. This jet is freaking awesome and introduces some cool concepts. I suppose the biggest factor is replacing the windows with tv screens.

We have seen the future of flight — and it does not include windows. The latest idea for a supersonic business jet from Spike Aerospace involves replacing cabin portholes with windowless display screens showing a fake view. Claustrophobes, take note.

"Cameras surrounding the entire aircraft will construct breathtaking panoramic views displayed on the cabin screens," Vik Kachoria, president of the Boston-based company, wrote in a blog post.

Passengers would be able to change the image or dim the screen to sleep — assuming the gizmo always works.

As the company points out, getting rid of windows solves a pesky design problem of supersonic flight: Windows slow things down and add to the weight of the plane. For a jet meant to cut flight time in half, "The very smooth exterior skin will reduce the drag normally caused by having windows," Kachoria noted.


Spike Aerospace hopes to launch the new aircraft by December 2018.

The S-512 jet, estimated by the company to cost $60 million to $80 million, would hold up to 18 passengers and measure 131 feet long. The trip from New York to London is expected to take just three to four hours, rather than the seven it takes now. But will the shorter travel time be worth the windowless flight?
- Yahoo!

[catch22]

I just can't see that straight wing being very efficient at all for supersonic, or even high subsonic flight. It's a high lift generator, but wherever you have lift you also have drag. That wing structure provides great lift at low speeds, and high drag at high speeds.

Swept wings create lower lift, but lower lift, at a higher speed.

The engine placement seems bad too. Since the engines are in the low pressure area of the fuselage, the engines would lose a lot of power at critical stages of flight, such as during takeoff rotation, a sudden steep climb to avoid terrain, birds, other aircraft, an aborted landing, or go around. What happens is the fuselage creates a low pressure bubble on top of it when the pitch of the aircraft changes. The engine would then be ingesting that low pressure area that was generated. Jet engines rely on high air pressure, and when that in take air pressure drops, the engine suddenly has less air to compress. engines generate high pressure by sending engine through compression stages before the combustion stage. But if you are ingesting a low pressure "bubble" suddenly, you will not have a good compression ratio. Resulting in a lag. Or possibly a large flame shooting out the back as the engine will have injected more fuel for the amount of air that entered. Also, having all of your power in the same place, one catastrophic uncontained engine failure would leave you with no engines. Although an uncontained engine failure is extremely rare, it is a factor of design. You don't want one event to give you a total loss of power on a twin engine airplane.

Not sure about this one. Looks like a comic book airplane.

[Plutonic Panda]

Huh, never really thought about that. Most of my designs included curved wings, but as far as how much I know about mechanical engineering or avionics, I need to brush up on my knowledge pertaining to that. Sounds like you really know your stuff. I am looking at going into avionic engineering along with going into business school as well. There is so much I want to do in life. Hard to decide at this point.

One thing in defense for this aircraft is I believe it is a conceptual rendering and not the final product. I'm sure some of the points you made will be addressed, if it is indeed an issue.

[MustangGT]

Nice to dream but the economics just do not work. Aerion is miles ahead of this company on the design and financing aspects. There re many valid reasons why this has not occurred yet and frankly probably never will.

[Snowman]

The wings are incredibly far off the center of mass for a passenger jet, it is not a military jet where it needs to have a bit of instability to perform extreme manuvers

[catch22]

Good point. Also the wings look pretty small for the amount of fuel it would need to sustain long duration supersonic flight. Doesn't hold enough people to have a balanced center of gravity with the fuel load that far back.

Hard to tell scale by the pictures, but assuming it uses a Citation sized cabin height, but some rough numbers from the post, it has a length of 131 feet. a CRJ900 has a length of 119 feet. So they are pretty similar in length.

A CRJ900 can hold 1,110 gallons of fuel in each wing. And about 700 gallons in the center tank. Total of 2,920 gallons or 19,500 lbs.

In my experience, the CRJ900/700 typically burn about 3,000 to 4,000 lbs per hour of flight. (All in, including higher fuel consumption during takeoff and climb) Give or take. With a full load, you'd fly about 4.8 hours before the engines would quit. That's at subsonic with a much more efficient wing.

I just can't see how they can get that wing to go supersonic, and hold enough fuel to sustain any long range.

Could put a large fuel tank forward in the fuselage, but that would burn off during the flight, so at the end of the flight you'd still have a strong aft center of gravity.