Can i fly supersonic

Travelling faster than the speed of sound causes a sonic boom, which can be heard on the ground as a loud thunderclap or explosion.

It's where the company Boom got its name. The boom limits where the planes can fly. Typically they must lower their speed until they are out over the ocean, away from citizens who may be disturbed by the loud bang. Boom says it is confident that its plane will not be any louder than other modern passenger jets while taking off, flying over land and landing.

It also hopes improvements in aircraft design since Concorde will help it reduce and mitigate the sonic boom. But she expects Overture to be operated as a "net-zero carbon aircraft". Central to Boom's plan is for Overture to run entirely on sustainable aviation fuel Saf. That can take the form of "posh biodiesel" made out of everything from waste animal fat from the farming industry to specially grown high-energy crops, explains Dr Guy Gratton, associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University.

But one big problem is that "the world is very far from having anything like the production capacity needed" to produce enough biofuel to power the entire aviation industry, he says. Boom predicts "power-to-liquid" processes - where renewable energy such as wind power is used to produce liquid fuel - will make up the shortfall.

It may well be done but it has not been done yet. Despite the enormous cost of Concorde's development more than 50 years ago, it is thought to have been profitable for British Airways in its final years of operation. A good compromise might be a low bypass turbofan with an afterburner, which injects additional fuel to significantly increase the available thrust, and is commonly used on military jets.

Such an engine was used in early production versions of another supersonic passenger jet, the Russian Tupelov Tu , but was too inefficient because it needed to keep firing its afterburners to maintain supersonic cruise. But these restrictions could be lifted with refined aerodynamic design. Getting the aerodynamics right could also open up the possibility of using modern, lightweight composite materials to enable better thrust-to-weight ratios — perhaps eliminating the need for afterburners at take-off.

Part of the United deal involves collaborative development in establishing a reliable supply of sustainable aviation fuel. Read more: How a s treaty set airlines on a path to high emissions and low regulation. Sustainable aviation fuels include biofuels and synthetic kerosine that are manufactured using renewable and sustainable materials. These sustainable fuels are compatible with conventional jet fuel, which means no changes to airport fuelling infrastructure or engine design will be needed for them to be introduced — a critical factor in their uptake.

The total amount of sustainable aviation fuel currently being used amounts to just 0. Projections estimate this needs to reach somewhere between 1. Among them is the fact that the service was allowed to reach supersonic speeds only over the ocean.

This month, United Airlines announced plans to purchase planes from Boom Supersonic, a Denver startup that aims to produce a new generation of supersonic passenger planes. Overland supersonic travel—J. Only in the past twenty years, with enhanced computer models of aerodynamics, has a kind of sonic thump become possible. In both cases, the idea was to round off the peak of the leading compression wave, turning a sharp-edged tsunami into a more gradual swell.

Planes, with their distinctive shapes, actually cause many distinct wavelets; as the wavelets approach the ground, they coalesce into the bow and tail waves that cause the booms. The agency dropped a sleek, twenty-six-foot unpowered glider from a balloon nineteen miles above Sweden. It reached Mach 1. Like decibels or earthquakes, PLdBs are measured on a logarithmic scale.

Lockheed Martin is currently constructing the plane, which will fly over American cities in With its pointy nose and delta wings, the one-seat X resembles a mini-Concorde in some ways and differs in others. It will be a hundred feet long, with a wingspan of thirty feet, an engine centered on the tail, and more surfaces than appear necessary: horizontal stabilizers at both the bottom and top of the tail, and also on the nose.

The team hopes to stretch the front of the boom wave from a single millisecond out to twenty or thirty. The plane contains other technology that might translate to a commercial design. One promising feature is the eXternal Vision System, or X.