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| New supersonic jet promises NY to LA in 2.5 hours |
by Allison Wallace
It may have been a decade since the Concorde made its
last flight but the race for supersonic air travel just got hotter.
Designed by US global aerospace Lockheed Martin, The N+2
aims to cut the travel time from New York to Los Angeles in half – from 5 hours
to 2.5.
The plane would be able to accommodate up to 80
passengers and to reduce sonic boom, it would have THREE engines, ONE under
each wing and one on top.
This means that it would travel at speeds of Mach 1.7
with sonic boom levels one hundred times quieter than the now-retired Concorde
supersonic passenger airline.
'To achieve revolutionary reductions in supersonic
transportation airport noise, a totally new kind of propulsion system is being
developed,' said Michael Buonanno, Lockheed Martin manager of the NASA N+2
program.
“We are also exploring new techniques for low noise jet
exhaust, integrated fan noise suppression, airframe noise suppression and
computer customised airport noise abatement.”
This is good news as the jet could make flights over
land. Concorde only flew transatlantic flights, because it was so noisy that
regulators wouldn't let it go anywhere else.
Lockheed Martin has built a special wind tunnel and
software to TEST exactly how loud the planes will be. Though it is unlikely to
ever be possible to get rid of the noise entirely, the aim is to get the sound
“more like a distant thump than a sharp crack”, the company says.
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