supersonic – Fusion Nepal

Airplanes Aviation Science supersonic

Flying 1,300 mph on airplanes would be great. But future aviation has other plans.

sudshr47 February 18, 2019

In the year 2044, our cities might be energized by fusion power plants, our sleek cars may all run on electricity, and our doctors might regularly employ gene-editing to cure blindness.

But our airplanes will probably still fly at the same speeds they did half a century ago: between 550 and 600 mph.

Supersonic flight — which is to say speeds that exceed the speed of sound (768 mph) and can dramatically slash flight times — died out for civilians in 2003 with the retirement of the narrowly-shaped Concorde planes, which for 27 years cruised at 1,300 mph between the U.S. and Europe. “It failed,” Bob van der Linden, the Chairman of the Aeronautics Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, said in an interview. “It was a technological marvel, but it was too expensive to operate.” Read more…

More about Science, Aviation, Airplanes, Supersonic, and Science

Aircraft Nasa Planes Science supersonic

NASA believes its supersonic X-Plane will slice our cross-country flight times in half

sudshr47 February 16, 2018

Most of the pricey machines NASA outlined in a 2019 budget proposal this week — a 32-story mega-rocket, moon landers, and Mars rover — will be launched to Earth’s orbit or beyond.

But aside from those big-ticket items, the space agency’s budget also requests funding for a curious airplane that currently exists only in sketches and the minds of NASA engineers: The X-Plane.

This aircraft is designed to travel faster than the speed of sound, and to do so relatively quietly, without sending sonic boom sound waves into unsuspecting neighborhoods thousands of feet below. If it works, NASA’s X-Plane could revolutionize flight, cutting flight times in half and changing the way we fly. Read more…

More about Nasa, Science, Aircraft, Planes, and Supersonic

Gadgets Nasa Photography Science supersonic TC Transportation

NASA engineers stare at the sun to see shockwaves from supersonic flight

sudshr47 December 18, 2017

Before the eclipse this summer, NASA warned us over and over again not to stare directly at the sun — but now they’re doing just that. Its researchers have reinvented a photography technique more than a century old, using the sun itself as a backdrop in order to capture the shockwave produced by a new supersonic jet. Read More