tonyw
Well-Known Member
If this thing works, it will be very, very, very cool.
Two Groups Vie to Build Supersonic Business Jet
It's from the Wall Street Journal, so I'll post a few snippets since they make you pay.
Two separate groups with deep pockets have begun an expensive, speculative race for one of the most sought-after but elusive goals in aerospace: Supersonic business jets without the window-rattling boom.
One group is led by Michael Paulson, the son of the late founder and chief executive of Gulfstream Aerospace, a General Dynamics Corp. unit that makes some of the world's most luxurious private jets. The other is headed by Robert Bass, the Fort Worth, Texas, billionaire investor.
Researchers say it probably will be impossible to do away with a sonic boom altogether. The phenomenon occurs when an airplane travels so fast that the air flowing around it begins to form a spike-shaped pressure wave. That wave travels outward from the airplane like a boat wake, creating the sound heard on the ground. The hope is that those pressure waves can be smoothed out enough that they don't startle people and set off car alarms.
Existing engines can easily provide enough power for supersonic flight. The trick is to tweak the fuselage design so that the noise produced is more of a whoompf and less of a crack.
In wind-tunnel tests and computer simulations, the [airplane] made a noise comparable to somebody softly shutting a door, even though in the simulations it was racing above populated areas at more than 1,200 mph.
Cool!
Two Groups Vie to Build Supersonic Business Jet
It's from the Wall Street Journal, so I'll post a few snippets since they make you pay.
Two separate groups with deep pockets have begun an expensive, speculative race for one of the most sought-after but elusive goals in aerospace: Supersonic business jets without the window-rattling boom.
One group is led by Michael Paulson, the son of the late founder and chief executive of Gulfstream Aerospace, a General Dynamics Corp. unit that makes some of the world's most luxurious private jets. The other is headed by Robert Bass, the Fort Worth, Texas, billionaire investor.
Researchers say it probably will be impossible to do away with a sonic boom altogether. The phenomenon occurs when an airplane travels so fast that the air flowing around it begins to form a spike-shaped pressure wave. That wave travels outward from the airplane like a boat wake, creating the sound heard on the ground. The hope is that those pressure waves can be smoothed out enough that they don't startle people and set off car alarms.
Existing engines can easily provide enough power for supersonic flight. The trick is to tweak the fuselage design so that the noise produced is more of a whoompf and less of a crack.
In wind-tunnel tests and computer simulations, the [airplane] made a noise comparable to somebody softly shutting a door, even though in the simulations it was racing above populated areas at more than 1,200 mph.
Cool!
