Posted on 08/28/23
| News Source: WBAL
From New York City to London in just 90 minutes? NASA is exploring the potential of a supersonic jet that one day could do just that.
Transatlantic jetliners currently travel at about 600 miles per hour, according to the federal space agency. But NASA's plane could theoretically travel at Mach 4 -- four times faster than the Mach 1, the speed of sound, which is typically 761 miles per hour at sea level.
The plane's unique shape also would theoretically allow supersonic shockwaves to be spread out, preventing the familiar sonic boom from occurring on the ground when the aircraft breaks the sound barrier.
If the project gets off the ground, it would be the first time in more than two decades that there has been a supersonic transatlantic flight since the Concorde, jointly developed by the British and French over 60 years ago, was retired in 2003 due to operating costs.
The news comes as NASA's separate Quesst mission involving its X-59 plane gets underway, one of the goals of which is amending the rules that prohibit commercial supersonic flight over land, in hopes of dramatically reducing travel times in the U.S. and overseas, a NASA spokesperson told ABC News.
Starting in 2025, the Quesst mission will see the X-59 fly over some U.S. cities and ask residents to share how they respond to the sound, NASA said. The agency will analyze the data and submit it to U.S. and international regulators in 2027 to consider allowing new commercial supersonic flights, including passenger flights.
NASA said it has been conducting studies on about 50 commercial routes to gather data on how humans respond to the sound generated during supersonic flights. Because the federal government banned all civilian supersonic flights over land 50 years ago, the studies examined transoceanic travel.
Lori Ozoroski, project manager for NASA's Commercial Supersonic Technology Project, said similar studies were conducted more than a decade ago, looking at flights traveling between Mach 1.6 and 1.8, just over half again as fast as the speed of sound.