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NASA is Showering One City With Sonic Booms and Hoping No One Notices

posted by mrpg on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:10AM   
from the did-you-hear-that? dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

NASA is showering one city with sonic booms and hoping no one notices

NASA has been deliberately creating sonic booms off the coast of Galveston, Texas, since Monday in the hope that residents on the barrier island community won't be too bothered by the sound of an F/A-18 aircraft briefly going supersonic.

That's because the research jet is performing a dive maneuver designed to reduce the normally thunderous sonic boom to what NASA calls a "quiet thump," more like the sound of a car door slamming.

The test flights are aimed at measuring the community response to the new, quieter booms and are part of NASA's larger effort to develop a new, more muted supersonic plane that might be able to fly over land.

Previously: NASA Quesst Project - Quiet Supersonic Transport
Concorde Without the Cacophony: NASA Thinks It's Cracked Quiet Supersonic Flight
NASA Tests Light, Foldable Plane Wings for Supersonic Flights
Trump Administration Supports NASA's Quieter Supersonic Plane Design
NASA Awards Quiet Supersonic Aircraft Contract to Lockheed Martin

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Original Submission

• Re:I Lived In The Mountains During The Vietnam War Re:I Lived In The Mountains During The Vietnam War (Score: 4, Interesting) by donkeyhotay on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:33PM (1 child)

  by donkeyhotay (2540) on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:33PM (#759387)

  Like you, I'm old enough to remember sonic booms. The small Missouri town in which I spent my early childhood was not far from an air force base. I remember the first time I heard a sonic boom. I was in the front yard observing honey bees gathering pollen from the dandelions. It was a warm, sunny day without a cloud in the sky. Then suddenly, WHAM! It scared the daylights out of me. I ran inside the house calling for my mother. "It's okay," she said, "It's just a sonic boom. The fighter jets do that when they fly really fast." I instantly went from being scared to thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. :-)

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• Re:I Lived In The Mountains During The Vietnam War (Score: 2) by Booga1 on Saturday November 10 2018, @10:16AM

  by Booga1 (6333) on Saturday November 10 2018, @10:16AM (#760293)

  Yeah, I remember sonic booms from military jets when I was a kid. I thought they were cool too.
  Though they did sometimes do it flying so low it rattled the windows and knocked VHS tapes off the shelf.

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