Supersonic flight is achieved when an aircraft is capable of traveling faster than the speed of sound. It is typically restricted to military aircraft, but we have had a supersonic passenger airliner in the form of the now decommissioned Concorde.

The benefits of supersonic flight come in the form of greatly reduced flight time. Where as a typical 747 can reach speeds of around 550mph, supersonic craft exceed 768mph (the speed of sound). In the case of Concorde, it achieved Mach 2.04, which is 1,350mph. That’s nearly 3x the speed of passenger planes today.

The issue with using supersonic aircraft is the sonic boom they create when breaking the speed of sound. It’s a very loud shockwave that sounds a lot like an explosion, and it’s one of the reasons we don’t see passenger aircraft capable of supersonic flight: no one could stand hearing loud explosions in the sky all day and night.

However, NASA has been working with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to reduce the noise associated with a sonic boom. The aim is to bring it down to a level that would be acceptable for use in business jets. And it seems NASA is on track to achieve that goal.

The ability to lower the sound a sonic boom produces has come about due to improvements in the tools available to model the systems associated with aircraft design. Computational fluid dynamics, the ability to create complex 3D flow perturbations, and the tools to optimize the designs of both engine systems and aerodynamics in the lab have allowed NASA to experiment more freely and figure out the problems.

Using scale models of new craft produced by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, NASA has reduced the boom to 79 decibels. To put that in context, Concorde was 25 decibels louder than that, and the expected “level of acceptance” by the general public is 70 decibels.

NASA’s plan is to have business jets in service by 2025 using its current design, and it is confident further development will bring the noise level down to that 70 decibels threshold. Reaching that will likely take a further decade though, and arrive in aircraft by 2035.

Scaling this up to larger passenger aircraft will require further design work, but whatever the final design is for this new class of supersonic business jet should aid in the design of larger, supersonic aircraft. One day we could all be jetting off on holiday at Mach 2, but it probably won’t be as fun asriding in an F18.

Read more at Aviation Week