Slashdot Mirror
More On Silent Supersonic Planes
Reverberant writes "Popular Science describes the latest attempt at developing a supersonic plane designed to minimize sonic booms. The article describes some of the history behind the research, and recent attempts at validating the theory. Also note that researcher Ken Plotkin is a frequent contributer to alt.sci.physics.acoustics."
It's just you being paranoid.
A modern airliner with all the latest gadgets (GPS, EFIS, ILS) can be flown without any sort of external vision at all. Heck, the modern autopilots can take off, fly to the destination, fly the approach, and do all but about the last 50ft onto the runway.
TODO: Something witty here...
...can be found here.
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
My company's UK office is very close to the flight paths into and out of Heathrow. Work comes to a stop when the Concord flies anywhere near on take off. No one notices the other commercial jets. I didn't notice it until last summer. Most of my time in the UK office was spent while those beasties were grounded. It was quite noticible when they were allowed back in the air.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
A sonic boom can also be detected at many miles distance by a wired or radio connected listening device, analyzed in a few seconds to get a fairly good idea of what sort of plane emitted it, and that information sent to the potential target, or interceptor forces, at the speed of light or close to it, long before the plane can cross the terrain to get to its target. The Soviet Union was deploying such systems in the early 1960s, and it's a fair bet that even some "third world" countries have their own variants on them today.
Who is John Cabal?
Here's an F-14 creating a sonic boom overhead in some type of airshow.
. mpg
http://users.wpi.edu/~jbendor/F-14%20Sonic%20Boom