At the end of last week, American company Boom Supersonic flew faster than the speed of sound with its XB-1 supersonic performing aircraft. The first pilot to break the sound barrier since retired from Concord Service in 2003 is a non-monkey aircraft.
This is the first step in the ambitious target of the boom, in which supersonic airlines carry passengers by 2029.
But what is really supersonic trip? There are good reasons that it is not more common despite publicity.
What is supersonic flight?
The much number is defined as the speed of an aircraft that is divided by the speed that moves through the sound waves air. “Breaking sound barrier” means flying faster than the speed of sound, with more than 1 mach.
Mach number is a significant ratio: as an aircraft flies, it disturbs the air in front of it. These disturbances run at the speed of sound. In supersonic flights, this disturbance aligns to make shock waves around the vehicle.
When people say that you can see a fighter jet before listening to it, they are referring to supersonic flight: fighter jets can travel on almost Mach 2.
The sound from the fighter jet is trapped inside its shock wave; You will not listen to the aircraft until the shock wave goes to your position on the ground.
Supersonic trip attraction
For the causes of efficiency, most passenger jets are slightly slow cruise than sound speed, about 0.8 (it is subconsic flight).
Boom has planned to create an airline called Overcher that can fly at Mach 1.7. Flight can reduce the flight time significantly. The company claims that instead of eight hours, an overcher may take just four hours and 40 minutes on a trip from New York to Rome.
Boom is not the only company to work on this elevated target. The American firm Spike Aerospace is also developing a supersonic business jet, with the tagline “distributing the world in half a time”.
This is a proposal for supersonic passenger travel.
With limited methods, it was already present in the 20th century. However, due to the rules of time, poor fate and physics, it was not released.
Remember Concord?
The design for supersonic airlines began in mid -20th century, and we had supersonic travelers flight until the 1970s.
From 1976 to 2003, British Airways and Air France had a franco-british supersonic airlineer, a Franco-Bitish supersonic airlineer and concord.
Concord had a capacity of 128 passengers and hovering in Mach 2. It regularly traveled from London to New York in about three hours. Flights were expensive, mainly business people and rich and famous.
Why not take supersonic passenger flight
Concord was designed in the 1960s when it seemed that supersonic passenger transport was going to be the next big thing.
Instead, Boeing 747 entered the commercial service in 1970. Cheap, large and skilled airliners such as it came out of water.
Extremely designed for cruise at supersonic motion, extreme fuel was disabled while unloading and accelerating the Concord. Concord’s expensive, “Gas Gujling” nature was a complaint against it for most of its lifetime.
A 1973 dreaded Paris Air Show Crash of the Competitive Russian airlineer, Tupolev TU -144, also transferred public perception on supersonic flight security at the time when several airlines were considering whether to buy Concords or not.
Only 20 Concords were built out of 100 employed. Even today it is disputed whether Concord ever earned money for the airlines who operated it.
Noise for supersonic flight is a real problem
Remember fighter jets? When an aircraft supersonically travels, its shock waves spread to the ground, causing a sharp disturbance called sonic boom. In extreme cases they can shatter the windows and damage the buildings.
In the early 1970s, the concerns of the Sonic Boom led the United States government to ban supersonic passenger flights on the ground in the US. This hurt the possible market of Concord, so it had only two regular routes, mainly a trans-alantic flights above the water.
Concord also had a very loud aircraft in the take off, as it needed a lot of emphasis to leave the ground.
Future of supersonic journey
A future for supersonic trips depends on solving some or all issues that have faced conflicts.
The purpose of the Quest Project of NASA and Lockheed Martin can be disintegrated at managed levels to show the sonic boom. They plan to blow up their X-59 supersonic aircraft in American cities and gauge reactions from citizens.
The purpose of the Quesst is to use the geometry of the X-59, with a long long nose, to spread the sonic boom into a weak “tap”, hopefully supersonic airlines are allowed to travel on the ground in the future.
The spike aerospace’s spike S-512 Diplomat Concept is aimed at being a “cool” supersonic aircraft with a low disruptive sonic boom.
Can Boom cross Concord?
Boom is not planned to fly supersonically on supersonic ground. Their plans to fly on the ground at Mach 0.94, which they claim that standard passenger will allow an overland trip to a 20% faster than airlines, even by sub -form.
They also claim that the design of their engines will ensure that the overcher is not loudly compared to modern subconic airlines when it is closed.
In terms of gas Gujling, they plan to use 100% sustainable aviation fuel to emit and reduce their carbon footprint.
The Concord was made of aluminum using the design tool available in the 1960s. Modern design methods and modern aerospace materials such as titanium and carbon fibers should also allow overcharits and similar crafts to weigh much less than Concord, improve efficiency.
While the boom is currently getting a lot of interest, with the orders of many airlines, there was similar commitment before the concord was available. Most of these incidents did not occur.
Additionally, Concord was an analog era product when the idea of flying to London or New York for the day for an important business meeting seemed like an essential thing. In the world of distance work and video meetings, is still a supersonic airlineer in the 2020s?
For now, supersonic airliners such as overchers are likely to remain within the scope of rich and famous, such as Concorde. But with modern technological progress, it will be interesting to see if the supersonic traveler journey once again becomes the reality – or even goes into the mainstream. only time will tell.
(Author: Chris James, Uook University of Queensland)
This article is reinstated by negotiations under a creative Commons License. Read the original article.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is published by a syndicated feed.)
