The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency has taken its mind off space travel long enough to launch a new project to explore building a supersonic passenger plane, and has set out contracts with two industry groups to work on the idea.
NASA believes there are at least 50 trans-oceanic routes that could be feasible for its Mach 4 (about 3000 mph) concept. The trans-oceanic part is critical because most countries, including the U.S., have banned supersonic operations over land because of the loud sonic boom. That’s part of why another NASA project, the X-59, is working on a quiet supersonic plane.
The two one-year contracts are to develop concept designs and roadmaps as part of NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program. Boeing will be leading one team, joined by Exosonic, GE Aerospace, Georgia Tech Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, and Rolls-Royce North American Technologies. The other contract goes to Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems, with Blue Ridge Research, Boom Supersonic, and Rolls-Royce North American Technologies as partners.
The ghost of the long-gone Concorde never really goes away, and projects for resuming supersonic air travel keep popping up and fading away, but they have seldom had the support and financing of major government agencies. In this case, one of the teams includes Boom Supersonic, which has a plan of its own for a commercial supersonic jet.
An underlying question for many in considering these projects is not whether one can be built, but at what cost in high fuel burn to carry small numbers of passengers at high speed. NASA’s leaders say they are conscious of environmental cost, but it is hard to see how such a plane could avoid adding to, rather than ameliorating the problem.
