NASA to revive supersonic flight

NASA has not given up on supersonic air travel. It wants to build a jet so fast you can fly to any city in six hours. The space agency recently released a preliminary design of a low boom flight demonstrator aircraft.

Together with Lockheed Martin, NASA is working on early efforts to design and build a plane so fast it could whisk you to any city on the planet in a few hours. The idea is to make supersonic flight 2.0 more quiet and more comfortable. If supersonic flights were quiet enough to be allowed widely, the appeal of shorter flight times would likely be appealing to travellers.

The Washington Post reports that NASA envisions a plane that emits a quieter sonic boom, more like a subtle thump. Supersonic 2.0 would be the better and safer follow-up of the well-known Concorde that made its final flight in October 2003

Further reading on washingtonpost.com

Image by NASA/Lockheed Martin