NASA research led to the X-59 QueSST (for Quiet Supersonic Technology), a needle-beaked aircraft with lift and control surfaces spread over the 100-foot fuselage, of which 33 feet are nose. The slide rules and log tables used to design it had been pushed aside by supercomputers, which enabled engineers to test and tweak virtual aircraft designs comparatively cheaply and quickly. What the Concorde’s chief pilot called “the airliner of the future” was consigned to the past.īut the possibility of a supersonic renaissance was arriving even as the Concorde was on its way out. The Champagne-and-caviar flights were discontinued in 2003 after 27 years of intermittent profitability and one crash that killed 113 people. The far more successful Concorde mostly traveled trans-Atlantic routes at about $6,000 to $7,000 per ticket for a three-and-a-half-hour flight in a cramped, noisy cabin, which was nonetheless considered glamorous. In the following decades, the barrier was also broken by a succession of military jets, once by a passenger airliner (during a test flight of a Douglas DC-8 in 1961) and, ultimately, by regular commercial service from the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 and the Concorde, both long defunct. 14, 1947, when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier while piloting the rocket-powered Bell X-1 over the Mojave Desert. “The main objective is to open up new markets.” “The main reason NASA is working on this is to enable regulation for supersonic flight,” said Craig Nickol, NASA’s low-boom flight demonstration project manager. to lift the ban, which could allow for two-hour coast-to-coast supersonic flights. NASA and aviation entrepreneurs, however, are working to change that, with new aircraft designed to turn the boom into a “sonic thump” that is no louder than a car door that is being slammed 20 feet away.

But potentially lucrative overland routes were off limits, restricting supersonic travel’s business prospects. Planes could go supersonic only over the ocean - most famously, the Concorde, the sleek British-French passenger plane that flew a handful of routes in less than half the average time. In 1960s-era tests, booms reportedly broke windows, cracked plaster and knocked knickknacks from shelves in 1973, the Federal Aviation Administration forbade civilian supersonic aircraft from flying over land. That is largely because of physics: specifically, the sonic boom, the thunderclap noise made when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier (and continues as the aircraft flies beyond the barrier), which essentially doomed supersonic aviation as a viable business. This article is part of our series on the Future of Transportation, which is exploring innovations and challenges that affect how we move about the world.ĭespite the promise of two-hour flights from New York to Los Angeles, the supersonic airline industry never really got off the ground.

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