Slashdot Mirror
NASA Drops $2.3M On Supersonic Aircraft Research
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.
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.
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).
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.
$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!
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.
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.
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.