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NASA Has a Way to Cut Your Flight Time in Half (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg Businessweek article: For almost a half-century there's been a clear speed limit on most commercial air travel: 660 miles per hour, the rate at which a typical-size plane traveling at 30,000 feet breaks the sound barrier and creates a 30-mile-wide, continuous sonic boom. That may be changing. In August, NASA says, it will begin taking bids for construction of a demo model of a plane able to reduce the sonic boom to something like the hum you'd hear inside a Mercedes-Benz on the interstate. The agency's researchers say their design, a smaller-scale model of which was successfully tested in a wind tunnel at the end of June, should cut the six-hour flight time from New York to Los Angeles in half. NASA proposes spending $390 million over five years to build the demo plane and test it over populated areas. The first year of funding is included in President Trump's 2018 budget proposal. Over the next decade, growth in air transportation and distances flown "will drive the demand for broadly available faster air travel," says Peter Coen, project manager for NASA's commercial supersonic research team. "That's going to make it possible for companies to offer competitive products in the future." NASA plans to share the technology resulting from the tests with U.S. plane makers, meaning a head start for the likes of Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and startups such as Boom Technology and billionaire Robert Bass's Aerion. [...] NASA is targeting a sound level of 60 to 65 A-weighted decibels (dBa), Coen says. That's about as loud as that luxury car on the highway or the background conversation in a busy restaurant. Iosifidis says that Lockheed's research shows the design can maintain that sound level at commercial size and his team's planned demo will be 94 feet long, have room for one pilot, fly as high as 55,000 feet, and run on one of the twin General Electric engines that power Boeing Co.'s F/A-18 fighter jet.
We were told that the Concorde was not commercially viable even when tickets were 5-10x the price of coach for the same route. What will this new design do to put the tickets into a price range that more consumers can justify paying? Otherwise we already have ways to hold meetings in France in the AM and make it to NYC in time for dinner, it's called videoconferencing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The industry will probably find ways to chew up time savings with bullshit procedures and restrictions.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
because the delays in flight are caused by physics, not fucking morons in the Airline-Managements...
Or is it?
I'm also curious how much more fuel this uses than subsonic commercial airliners. Air travel is already notorious for CO2 generation.
Did I miss a link or does TFA have absolutely no information on how they actually reduce the sonic boom signature?
News for nerds, right? Where is the nerd part?!
But.. the fuel cost is really high and when the oil price shot through the roof, there is no way commercial super sonic transport could become a success. Supersonic transports are coming back, this time as small 20 seater or smaller targeting the super rich. There was an Airbus concept a couple of years ago. Now an American trial balloon.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'd rather have a cheaper flight.
Or a more comfortable flight.
Or a more private flight (fewer passengers sat on top of me).
A quicker flight is very low on my list of priorities. Flights are already pretty fast.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
We need to get the government out of the business of doing basic research for corporations. "Gubment handouts BAD!", remember? If the airlines and Boeing et al. want to do this, they can do it on their own in their precious precious sacred free market, without government gravy-train taxpayer handouts.
I've done some binaural nature recordings, or at least tried to—airplane noise is ubiquitous and nearly constant, and can take an hour of recording down to only a few minutes after editing them out. A number of researchers and others have shown that the sound of planes, even at high altitude, disrupts natural environments (Bernie Kraus is notable in this area). So how loud would this be in comparison?
NASA Has a Way to Cut Your Flight Time in Half
Not to worry. The TSA has found a way to double it.
I'm pretty sure I don't want busy restaurant background level noise going on continuously. That would suck. I don't even want quiet restaurant background noise going on continuously.
And I'm an American, but isn't it really time we started using metric for all things tech? Thirty miles is about 50km. It's just not that hard.
[quote] NASA is targeting a sound level of 60 to 65 A-weighted decibels (dBa), Coen says. That's about as loud as that luxury car on the highway or the background conversation in a busy restaurant.[/quote]
Mentioning a sound level without the location or distance is meaningless.
Will this sound level occur on the ground inside your home when the plane is flying overhead (very unimpressive)? Or at the hot end of the engine (extremely impressive)? Or in the cabin (quite impressive at that speed)?
That quote was from Negroponte in the time of Wired: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Air travel is noise polluting, air polluting and fossil fuel driven. Half the time, with network improvements, we can make do with teleconferences. In fact, working in Brussels in the 1980s, we already used teleconference to save trips to the computer centre in Luxembourg.
I'm not saying that we stop air travel, I enjoy my holiday too, but we really need to minimise and substitute. I take the the high speed train (TGV) from Paris to Marseilles now, it's 4 hours, probably less than the flight once I've dealt with two internal airports. So, whilst this is interesting research, it should a be white elephant in a greener, quieter, less polluted world.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
NASA and the government in general is nothing but a bunch of wasteful bureaucrats, taxes are theft and anything that doesn't pay dividends this week or next is prime for downsizing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Have you ever seen a Sonic boom? I did once, and almost went blind! This swirling dervish knocked literally destroyed everything in it's path! Don't believe me? It has a Wiki page!
I can't wait to see the size of these new mufflers.
Big time!
I'm pretty sure I don't want busy restaurant background level noise going on continuously.
I prefer to think of it as a constant thunderstorm, since that's probably closer to what it'd be like - a series of double-booms at various intensities (depending on the distance of the aircraft).
And I'm an American, but isn't it really time we started using metric for all things tech? Thirty miles is about 50km. It's just not that hard.
Tell that to a non American who never learned dimensional analysis more complicated than moving a decimal point. The fact is that some non-SI units are still commonplace globally; the calorie being the big one that comes to mind.
I agree it's antiquated and quaint to continue to use imperial units, but having to do something _other_ than shift a decimal point around is very useful in teaching dimensional analysis.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Ok ok, whats the Business Justification?
All I see in the article snippit here is "i want" , " i want"
with that said, why not funnel that money being spend on BS to homeless programs. Why pay to develop the future when the present is soo screwed up?
Continuously? Unless you're traveling at the same speed across the ground in the same direction, it won't be continuously. It's a wave - it moves past you.
Having to drive about an hour to the airport, and sometimes having to be there 3 hours before departure because of 'reasons' , I can think of easier and more economical ways of reducing travel time.
I'm pretty sure I don't want busy restaurant background level noise going on continuously. That would suck. I don't even want quiet restaurant background noise going on continuously.
Might want to compare the projected noise levels to the noise you hear sitting right under a busy air corridor. Or living next to a motorway. Not that I'm entirely happy with the noise we already have. We might endeavour to work on noise (and light) pollution caused by other things than just aircraft, too. Question is, of course, will there be so many hypersonic flights that the noise would be more than a couple minutes a couple times a day?
And I'm an American, but isn't it really time we started using metric for all things tech? Thirty miles is about 50km. It's just not that hard.
It would be about time*, but I don't think you 'merkins will. NIH, and powertripping because empire. Compare your inability to write dates (NUXI all the way, compare ISO8601), or times (so after 11 AM follows... 12 PM, and after that, 1 PM, because logic), or insisting on randomly mixing metric and backwardian, or, well, you know.
* Says I, having grown up in a country that's been metric for over 200 years.
The sonic boom is not really an issue. The actual sonic boom from Concorde at cruise altitude...posed no real risk.
No, the sonic boom really was a serious issue and was the reason why Concorde was limited to flying to the eastern seaboard of the US. It was not that it was dangerous but more the noise which you can hear in in this video around the 1 minute mark from a plane claimed to be at 50-60,000 feet. It is certainly not negligible and you would not want to be hearing that multiple times a day if you were living under a flight path.
The take-off noise is also not negligible. As a grad student, I remember waiting on a plane to take off at Heathrow one evening when there was a deep-throated roar, the plane vibrated slightly and Concorde shot down the runway next to us with blue flames shooting out of its afterburners. It was a heck of an impressive sight but not exactly a quiet one! While fuel costs are certainly an effect when they were shutting down the Concorde program one expert commented that a plane designed today would be hugely more efficient but that the fact it would still make a sonic boom would limit it to so few routes the market would be too small to make it financially viable. If NASA can fix this then it could well cause a renaissance in supersonic flight.
There is no such thing as 12am or 12pm. ante meridiem or post meridiem – before the meridiem, i.e. noon, or after it. 12 o'clock is either 12 noon, or 12 midnight. I put idjits that write 12am right up there with the ones that can't figure out your, you're, there, their, and they're.
having grown up in a country that's been metric for over 200 years.
So France.
Eliminate the security theater we are forced to go through before boarding the plane.
That would cut the total trip time significantly!
Is this "private sector" somehow?
Seems like nobody is even trying to object economically, ethically, or otherwise to large scale "socialize costs, privatize profits" projects any more.
People hardly notice. Certainly they rarely note that there's an specific economic theory advocating integration of political power and business interests--it was, and is, properly referred to as "fascism".
If I only have to cram myself into a tiny seat and sit there with blood flow below my knees cut off by pressure from the seat in front for 4 hours instead of 8 hours I'd call that a more comfortable flight.
Commercial airliners actually fly slower today than 50 years ago. Cruise speed on the Vickers VC-10 was Mach 0.86 while it is Mach 0.78 on an A320. Fuel prices are responsible - it simply costs efficiency to go fast. But compare that to business jets: The fastest ones (Citation X and Gulfstream V) go as fast as Mach 0.935. This is due to a peeing contest between their owners who like to have the fastest plane in the sky. Who cares about the fuel bill when your shareholders pay it?
Now NASA is helping them to make their playthings even faster. What would the bragging rights to the fastest jet be worth at the next meeting in Davos? Right, Priceless! But so far nobody assumed the risk of developing such an aircraft when certification was in doubt. But don't despair, your government money is hard at work to remove that last barrier to supersonic air travel, so the 1% can travel how they truly deserve it.
"like the hum you'd hear inside a Mercedes-Benz on the interstate."
Which Mercedes? A G-wagen with 35" wheels with snow chains?
I recently took a ~4 hour flight, and spent almost 6 in the airport tween TSA sloths, the cattle car of an airplane being loaded, delays on the runway, getting my luggage at baggage claim, and waiting for a fucking bus to go to the car rental place
Then to top it off, it doesnt matter how early or late my flight is, or where I am going, I always get there at either morning or afternoon rush hour
While most jetliners are capable of approaching the speed of sound, in practice they fly at a speed commonly called "economy cruise," a tradeoff of speed and fuel efficiency. In practice, it's about 450 MPH.
Is it eliminating the TSA? Because that would sure cut the time down.
There's usually more than one plane flying overhead within a 50km radius. I don't need to follow one plane to be bothered by its sonic booms.
Sure, cutting flight times are nice but for most travelers the longest part of the trip is getting through airport security. Faster airplanes won't fix this, but it will make that time stick out more to the consumer.
If the TSA still insists on people arriving 2 hours in advance for a 5 hour flight instead of a 10 hour flight then people are going to notice that wait time more.
For many people the flight time could be cut in half by just doing a proper security check instead of this over the top crap the TSA has been doing.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I agree it's antiquated and quaint to continue to use imperial units, but having to do something _other_ than shift a decimal point around is very useful in teaching dimensional analysis.
It's worse than you realize because the American's don't use Imperial units, they use the same units with different definitions. If you order a pint of beer in the US you will be sorely disappointed. It is only about 80% of a UK pint because they have a different number of fluid ounces in a pint and a (slightly) different definition of a fluid ounce. If this is not bad enough for dimensional analysis on top of this Imperial units use pounds for both mass and force resulting in further confusion.
Technically I believe a pound is supposed to be force and the slug is the Imperial/US unit of mass but mention 'slug' to someone in the US and they will think you are talking about gardening problems, not units of mass. The US physics textbooks which we also get up here in Canada talk about "pound-force" and "pound-mass" so the dimensions of just a pound is somewhat ambiguous e.g. I have seen density in 'lb/ft^3' and pressure as "lb/in^2" where one is used as a mass and the other as a force! Using Imperial/US units for anything serious is a terrible idea. The Imperial and US unit systems are inconsistent and ill-defined which makes them absolutely terrible for doing dimensional analysis let alone teaching it!
I live in a small city in Michigan. Some woman has built a house right next to the airport (at the end of the runway) and now she shows up to every airport meeting and complains that the planes keep flying over her house, that it is too loud, etc.
People suck...
Flight time will be cut in half, but TSA ball-fondling/porn-scanning-your-daughter time will double, evening things out.
So now the portion of my travel time taken up by TSA is even greater? Fuck that, I'll take a train.
A fucking cool story about a technology breakthrough is posted, and the comments are 100% crap. People complain about random other bullshit, say they don't want the new invention, bitch and moan about everything under the sun. I hope you all get sick, this site is a toxic shithole and YOU all are the reason why.
I'm not sure how reliable the "NATS" site is (http://www.nats.aero/environment/aircraft-noise/) but according to that page, aircraft at cruise altitude appear to come in around 40 dBA. This NASA target is 60-65 dBA... more than 50% higher than the people-movers of today. As someone who lives under the ingress/egress route of a local airport, this seems like an egregious increase in ambient noise. Huge fan of halving flight time but not at the expensive of my auditory sanity!
An interesting fact mentioned is the use of the engine from an F-18. Fighter jet engines aren't very fuel efficient, they are fast. (Not an aeronautical engineer, but) I have read that the reason commercial jet engines are so large is because they are fan jets. They suck in a huge amount of air and bypass the main engine. The more air you suck through the main engine, the more fuel you can burn and you go faster. The large bypass allows slow jet planes to cruise along at 500mph while sipping gas.
So with all that in mind, is the barrier to selling a lot of supersonic jet tickets really the sonic booms? The Concorde didn't go under because it was annoying too many transatlantic tanker crews with sonic booms. I may not be fully informed, but this seems like a dumb business plan if you are just trying to solve the audio problem.
An interesting alternative: It is NASA, they do work with the military on occasion. Perhaps this is a research project that can apply to supersonic military aircraft in an effort to make them more stealthy. If you are invisible to radar, but everybody hears you once you punch the throttle, you have wasted a lot of green on stealth technology. So, for maximum stealth, you need to fly slow. This type of tech would solve that, and I can see the military spending hundreds of million on R&D to solve that problem.
An F-18 engine is exactly the sort of engine I would test with if I planned on introducing this technology to next generation military aircraft.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rosie-osmun/sleep-sound_b_8401364.html
Anything over 55 decibels is "Considered a dangerous level for public health, increasing annoyance levels and sleep disturbances. Some evidence of increased cardiovascular disease risk."
You'd have to limit this to daytime flights only (8 AM to 8 PM) at the listed decibel level to even consider it. Even then, I'd say getting the decibel level as low as possible should be the ultimate goal to make this a reality.
http://gothamist.com/2014/09/24/plane_noise_data.php
Every 10 decibels doubles the perceived volume, so the noise level here matters a great deal. Get it under 40 decibels, and honestly, work on regular flight noise as well, and then we'll talk.
Blog it.
...that he ain't dead yet?
In this video by Wendover Productions on why the Concorde failed, they mention the economics of commercial flight. Sonic booms aren't the problem. Long story short, flying time doesn't matter as much as ticket revenue and fuel cost. If an airplane consumes more fuel flying faster than the speed of sound than slower, and people aren't willing to pay for the increase in cost, then airlines won't fly faster.
What does it hum, Deutschland Uber Alles?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wanted to say: I believe it when I don't hear it.
something like the hum you'd hear inside a Mercedes-Benz on the interstate
Can you give me that volume in "cell phone ringtones from a football field away" please? I'm not sure I've been in a Mercedes-Benz on the interstate. I mean, in town, sure, but ... Come on, let's have some standards here.
Shouldn't we spend this money on hyperloop? Tunnels on the ground make more sense than flying in the empty sky.
Lockheed, of F35 "won't fly, but will do cost overruns like no other" Lightning II infame? That Lockheed?
I think we can safely expect this new tech no not be viable for at least another twenty years. For shame.
There was a bunch of old pilot fogeys proposing to drop their $160mn of gathered mattress stuffing and piggy bank guts on reviving the Concorde a while back, and to me that's... adorable but wrong. Much better drop that money on hiring some hotshot up-and-coming aerospace engineers and seeing what 50+ years of tech improvements can do to the idea of the Concorde, that of a supersonic airliner. A quiet, fast, efficient supersonic airliner would make for a much better tribute to the Concorde than reviving one and having it do special permission fly-bys on airshows but nothing else.
But you shouldn't leave any of that to NA"space shuttle"SA or Lockheed "stand and deliver" Martin. Shit, bring back Fokker Aerospace or something. Gather people that can actually design, not people that're just in it to keep their government-sponsored management jobs or even outright specialise in fleecing the taxpayer.
I spend half an hour or more driving to the airport, five to fifty minutes waiting to check a stupid bag (you can eliminate this time by flying pretty much naked), and then anywhere from fifteen to forty five minutes waiting for security. Then I have to wait for a train to get to a gate (smaller airports don't have this problem, and even some bigger ones let you walk, but not the ones I am usually at), and take said train, then get to the gate, another minimum twenty minutes and usually closer to thirty.
At that point, you could teleport me to my destination, and as long as I still have to wait for a dumb machine to spit my bag out, then wait for a van to go to rental, and then wait in line at Avis Preferred booth to figure out why their system of directing me directly to my car failed yet again and they have to punch shit into my computer- and it would still be a pain in the ass.
If I take a four hour flight, I have at least two, and sometimes four hours of drama pre-flight, and around one afterwords. The actual time flying is the most pleasant part of the trip, because I can pass the fuck out. I just need a seat that is not scientifically designed to be totally bullshit, and to not have a bunch of security theater, which represents real risk when they decide to rifle through my belongings for a prolonged period of time.
...when the sound of a turbojet-engined airliner taking off was deafening. Today's turbofans whisper in comparison. People are willing to put up with a certain amount of noise pollution if there's a big enough payoff.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Isn't this a case of big gubbermint overreaching and interfereing with business? How dare they presume to tell business what's best for them!
noise is a problem, but there's also that pesky fuel thing...
Let people arrive 30 minutes before the flight, and get them out within 15 minutes within landing. Nothing more than snail pace speed require, no supersonic NASA stuff.
tax dollars > public funded research > product given to private companies > private companies make profit from publicly funded research
then if things go pear shaped the tax payer gets to bail out the private company with more tax dollars.
Ah, I don't think we have any sonic booms yet, from wikipedia.
In dry air at 20 C (68 F), the sound barrier is reached when an object moves at a speed of 343 metres per second (about 767 mph, 1234 km/h or 1,125 ft/s).
Within the United States, it is illegal to break the sound barrier. The Federal Aviation Administration regulations are quite clear: "No person may operate a civil aircraft in the United States at a true flight Mach number greater than 1" except in certain, very limited conditions.
Pink slips for the TSA. Cost to taxpayers, $0.
Watching those chucklef*cks as they receive the slips: Priceless.
the TSA?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
First read title as: "NASA has a way to cut your fingers in half time" .. wait .. what? *reading again* aaaah...