NASA Lowers The 'Boom' In Supersonic Travel
There’s been plenty of coverage about the Texas bullet train promising trips between Dallas and Houston in 90 minutes. But what about traveling between New York and London in couple of hours? Decades after the first supersonic flight, we haven’t made much progress toward quicker air travel. But this week, NASA announced it’s one step closer to a better passenger supersonic plane.
The first supersonic passenger plane, the Concorde, made its maiden flight in 1969. Commercial flights soon followed, becoming routine throughout the next decades. But the U.S.-Europe race to compete for supersonic transport eventually hit a wall amid complaints about the noise pollution – sonic booms – caused by the aircraft. When the Concorde was finally grounded in 2003, some saw aviation take a step backward.
Reducing the plane’s loud shockwaves became NASA’s main goal.
“NASA, for the last 30 years, probably 40 years, has really worked a lot of supersonic technologies and so, we’ve worked the tools and techniques to get that sonic boom down,” says NASA’s David Richwine, project manager for the Quiet Supersonic Transport (QueSST) aircraft design.
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