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Trump Backs Supersonic NASA Jet That Will Fly From New York to London in Three Hours
A sleek, experimental plane that would quietly crack the speed of sound and transform a trans-Atlantic flight into a three-hour hop received critical backing on Monday under NASA's budget request for the fiscal year that starts October 1, 2018. The document signals the Trump administration would like to prioritize the jet, as well as further research into faster-than-sound airplane technology.
The budget request refers to the Low-Boom Flight-Demonstrator, a plane NASA wants in order to bring back supersonic commercial flights by mitigating their most annoying side effect, the loud sonic boom that accompanies them.
That boom has always been the biggest stumbling block for commercial supersonic flight. It is caused by the sheer number of air particles the nose of the plane pushes aside as it flies. Those molecules form a wave of high pressure, like a boat's wake as NASA describes it, which rolls out like a carpet beneath the airplane.
Also at Space.com.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:44PM
Concorde let you leave Paris at 11AM and have a morning meeting followed by a business lunch in NY. When your CEO is paid more per hour than most people get per year, it can matter.
Add rich people, bragging rights ... and you get a break-even flagship for BA and AF.
Which is why the US, which was late to that party, banned it under "noise concerns", which are total bullshit to anyone who's ever spent an hour in a US city.
You don't understand it, fine.
Given the cost of development, whether a supersonic plane could break even today or tomorrow is debatable, and the risk that the math would change before the first deliveries is why nobody's really trying.
I'm just sad that after retiring the SR-71 and Concorde, humans actually regressed in their ability to go fast from point A to fairly distant point B.