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turgid writes:

The Guardian reports that NASA has begun another project [Javascript required] to design a quieter (low boom) commercial supersonic transport aircraft and has awarded the contract for the preliminary design to a team lead by Lockheed Martin.

Part of the project will be to study what would be acceptable noise levels from such a vehicle, and advances in design mean that the sonic boom associated with traditional supersonic aircraft could be replaced by a less disruptive pair of soft thuds.

A quieter supersonic aircraft would have potentially much larger markets than Concorde, which was effectively limited to going supersonic only over the ocean because of the intensity of its sonic boom.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

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.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

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.

Related: 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
NASA Releases 2018 Edition of Spinoff

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Quieter, Faster, Stronger: The Next Jet Age Is Coming

Human flight is on the verge of a second renaissance, with new technology ushering in an age of faster and quieter passenger jets. Although the supersonic Concorde jet launched over 40 years ago, commercial flight speeds have stagnated (and even regressed) since then. But new breakthroughs from NASA and jet startups show that innovation is finally returning to air travel.

NASA is working on quiet supersonic tech that is able to muffle the inevitable sonic boom to a "soft thump." At the same time, they've found new technologies that can reduce noise from existing aircraft by over 70%, potentially improving the quality of life near airports and reducing noise complaints. Meanwhile, three US startups are working to revive commercial supersonic travel, with lighter and stronger materials, a quieter design, and cleaner and more efficient engines. They hope to deliver their first jets to the airlines by the mid-2020s.

In 1976, the Concorde premiered as the world's first supersonic commercial jet, and for the next 27 years, it limped along as a cautionary tale of innovation gone sideways. The plane was extremely loud at even normal speeds, especially during takeoff and landing, but its ear-splitting sonic booms were completely intolerable.

Public opposition to the noise led the FAA to preemptively ban supersonic flight over land, effectively imposing a speed limit of Mach 1 (or 767 mph) across the country.*