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Rockwell Collins To Develop Cockpit Display To Show Sonic Boom Over Land
An anonymous reader writes: Under contract from NASA, Rockwell Collins is developing equipment to let pilots of supersonic craft know where a sonic boom will be produced. The hope is to make supersonic flight over land practical. Flying higher widens impacts but lessens intensity. “In order for supersonic travel over land to happen, pilots will need an intuitive display interface that tells them where the aircraft’s sonic boom is occurring,” said John Borghese, vice president, Advanced Technology Center for Rockwell Collins. “Our team of experts will investigate how best to show this to pilots in the cockpit and develop guidance to most effectively modify the aircraft’s flight path to avoid populated areas or prevent sonic booms.”
If it's no big deal, they're working on a non-existing problem, right? There's no need to avoid the populated areas at all.
Yes, exactly. Sonic booms from airliners have never really been a big problem, because airliners want to fly as high as possible to minimize fuel consumption. Most of the damaging booms are from military aircraft at lower altitudes.
But, unfortunately, saying 'it's no big deal' isn't good enough for the NIMBYs.