Everyone is trying to revolutionise air travel, and you’ve probably read a story or two about some new jet that is going to do just that.

There’s a slight difference with NASA’s new Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator, or LBFD, though, because it’s trying to solve the classic problem of the “massively loud and very annoying sonic boom that these ultra-fast planes create as they blast over the landscape”.

How bad can a sonic boom really be? Well, drop the volume down on this video below and check out what happened when the Brazilian Air Force shattered a whole bunch of windows at their Supreme Court back in 2012:

That’s why there is a need to cut down on that boom, friends. Here are a few details via Jalopnik:

Construction officially begins today on the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator, or LBFD, with a $247.5 million contract awarded to Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks division, according to a NASA press release. The idea is to create an experimental version of a supersonic civil airliner that would reduce (but not eliminate) supersonic booms, so that nobody is particularly annoyed when a New York to Los Angeles supersonic flight overflies the poor denizens of Oklahoma City…

NASA says the new plane should make a “thud” or a “a quick series of soft thumps,” while Lockheed Martin says that at an altitude of 55,000 feet and a speed of Mach 1.4 (or approximately 940 mph) it “will generate a gentle, supersonic heartbeat instead of a sonic boom.”

A gentle, supersonic heartbeat doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that shatters windows, so that’s a good start.

Via Wired, a little more on the design of the LBFD:

The Low Boom Flight Demonstrator takes the Concorde’s long pointy nose and swept back wings to an extreme. The result looks like a missile with small wings, which should minimize [sic] the pressure waves that come off the plane in supersonic flight—they’re what make all the noise. The plane is designed to hit 940 mph and cruise at around 55,000 feet, far higher than the typical 35,000 for subsonic airliners. For people on the ground, Lockheed says, the shockwaves should sound more like a car door closing than the Concorde’s canon-like boom.

It’s going to be quite some time before we get to lay eyes on this jet, with NASA hoping to start flying their new toy in 2021. Once testing has been carried out, they may start flying over select US cities in 2022.

To finish, here’s a video on sonic booms and what actually occurs before and after we hear the sound:

[sources:jalopnik&wired]