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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @10:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-that-whooshing-sound dept.

NASA says the preliminary design review of its Quiet Supersonic Transport (QueSST) project suggests it is possible to create a supersonic aircraft that doesn't produce a sonic boom.

NASA says "Senior experts and engineers from across the agency and the Lockheed Martin Corporation concluded on Friday that the QueSST design is capable of fulfilling the LBFD aircraft's mission objectives, which are to fly at supersonic speeds, but create a soft 'thump' instead of the disruptive sonic boom associated with supersonic flight today."

NASA's commercial supersonic technology project manager Peter Coen explains, in this video, that "the idea is to design the airplane so that the shock waves that are produced in supersonic flight are arranged in such a way that you don't have a boom. You have just a general kind of a gradual pressure rise that produces a quiet sound."

NASA's next step is finding organisations willing to build a working model of the Low Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) experimental airplane and fly it over American cities and towns to hear how much noise it makes. It's hoped those flights could start in 2021.

Nah, rather travel in the kind of zeppelin Sergei Brin is building.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:27AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:27AM (#532327)

    Like some motorcycles I know... loud noisy thing that seems to spend more energy making noise than moving the bike.

    I heard explanation that it's a safety feature ... apparently, bikes have low visibility, so allegedly they need to be heard from inside car cabins, from a distance.

  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:43AM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:43AM (#532330)

    I heard explanation that it's a safety feature ... apparently, bikes have low visibility, so allegedly they need to be heard from inside car cabins, from a distance.

    For some reason the visibility is apparently only an issue with mostly one brand of bike.

  • (Score: 1) by Rich26189 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:51PM

    by Rich26189 (1377) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:51PM (#532678)

    If the pipes pointed forward I'd believe it.
    Have a friend that rides a Harley, he told me that at times when he's out riding in a group there are some that are asked to ride in rear of the pack.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:41PM (#532693)

    ...besides being rattly, slow, crap bikes, that is:

    (South Park clip)
    https://vimeo.com/15758959 [vimeo.com]