In good news for somebody, NASA and Lockheed Martin have announced that work has been completed on the X-59 supersonic passenger jet and that flight tests will be performed later this year. The significance of the new aircraft is that when traveling faster than the speed of sound it shouldn't produce the "sonic boom" that has been prohibited by the US and other countries over the ground below for 50 years.
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
The aircraft is an experimental one, meant to test the ability of its design to eliminate the sonic boom. If successful, its elements will be incorporated in other designs that could be used in passenger service.
It wasn't only noise that led to the abandonment of the SST, a supersonic passenger jet that flew a schedule from the US to Europe. The fare made regular trips prohibitively expensive for most.
So NASA and Lockheed Martin have spent a fortune to design an airframe that can exceed the speed of sound for what? The technological challenge? Is it really necessary for civilian passengers to complete a journey in half the time it does now when the time is measured in single digit hours? At some point will even faster speeds be desired? Aren't there more important problems seeking solutions than a quiet supersonic airplane?
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