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NASA Drops $2.3M On Supersonic Aircraft Research

Posted by samzenpus on from the softening-the-boom dept.

coondoggie writes: This week the space agency said it invested $2.3 million for eight research projects that will address sonic booms and high-altitude emissions from supersonic jets. NASA's Commercial Supersonic Technology Project, which picked the new projects, focuses on developing sonic boom reduction methods and defines the necessary approaches or techniques for objectively assessing the levels of sonic boom acceptable to communities living in the vicinity of future commercial supersonic flight paths.

10 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. So sorry... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There is very little (none, really) demand for supersonic passenger transport, and in any case this kind of research has been going on for 30+ years now.

    1. Re:So sorry... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There'd be plenty of demand if these two particular problems (sonic-boom reduction and high-altitude emissions) can be overcome.
      http://www.gizmag.com/supersonic-passenger-aircraft-revival/32600/

    2. Re:So sorry... by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The biggest problems with supersonic flight weren't emissions or the sonic boom. It was the financial viability of it, enough people simply aren't willing to pay the extra to make this viable (at least historically).

    3. Re:So sorry... by davester666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      $2.3 million across 8 projects? That's less than $300,000 / project. Jack-squat to do much besides running a bunch of simulations on computers. Maybe one or two test flights.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    4. Re:So sorry... by Beck_Neard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not many aspects of the SR-71 would have translated into a passenger jet. The thing was huge and it was composed almost entirely of fuel tanks - and it had a passenger capacity of 2. It was obscenely expensive to operate. It needed in-air refueling. In the 80's a journalist wrote a piece about how SR-71-based tech would lead to hypersonic transport planes, and Ben Rich - the head of Lockheed Skunkworks which designed the SR and one of the designers of the SR's intakes - objected and said that such a thing would never happen in his lifetime.

      --
      A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
    5. Re:So sorry... by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah....but it is the coolest and fastest fucking plane ever built.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    6. Re:So sorry... by bobbied · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And the REASON we failed to replace it was that it wasn't profitable enough... That's why it didn't get upgrades, why nobody wanted to restart the manufacturing of it after the 70's oil crisis was over, why we didn't replace it with newer and better aircraft with similar capabilities.

      This thing burned way too much fuel per passenger mile, cost a lot to maintain and there wasn't enough interest for anybody to try to fund the NRE costs to replace it. Everybody knew that it would be impossible to make the thing profitable and we had decades of operational experience to prove it.

      So this was the fault of "all of the above"... Fuel costs, operating costs, maintenance costs, operating restrictions which limited routes they could fly AND the procurement costs of the aircraft which put the Concorde into the dust bin of history with no replacement. In fact, one could argue that its very existence in commercial aviation was an aberration to start with. Hindsight is 20/20, but it seems obvious now that the Concorde really should never have been put into service even though it proved to be marginally successful for operators, but that was only because the manufacturer took a loss on the NRE and sold the planes too cheaply to recover development costs, hoping that they could sell more aircraft to make up for it. They failed, the Concorde failed, and wasn't replaced.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  2. 2.3M? gosh! by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    2.3M isn't much for even one supersonic research project. 2.3M for 8 is 300K. That's less than the cost of 2-engineer years at most companies. If they need an actual lab forget it.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  3. That seem most unimpressive. by bobjr94 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They probably spend more than that on kleenex or toilet paper each year. 2 million for supersonic research seems not even worth a press release.

  4. Traveling for work by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You don't think that these folks who travel all the time do it because they don't like it do you?

    You've never traveled a lot for work I take it? I have and it's isn't a grand adventure. "High end hotels and food"? Not working for most companies. Certainly none I've ever worked for unless you consider dinner at Applebee's and a Holiday Inn to be high end. Most people who travel a lot for work do it because it pays well, not because it's particularly fun. Once in a while it has its moments but mostly it's just boring, expensive and tiring. There is a reason most consultants that travel a lot tend to be young. Hard to have a family and be on the road constantly.