President Trump Repeals 52-Year Ban On Speed Limit

Boom Supersonic welcomed the news of President Donald Trump’s executive order that included removing the 52-year-old ban on supersonic flight over land in the U.S., and also ordered the FAA to develop regulations that balance “community acceptability, economic reasonableness, and technological feasibility” to resume such flights.

The only requirement for supersonic flight is that there must be no sonic boom audible on the ground.

Fortunately for Boom, the company has developed a set of conditions and flight profiles that does just that, as the company demonstrated multiple times at supersonic speeds.during flight testing of its XB-1 one-third scale demonstrator aircraft.

Boom engineers leveraged a long-known physics effect that causes an atmospheric phenomenon called “Mach cutoff” that prevents a sonic boom from reaching the ground. The Mach cutoff works due to refraction of the sonic boom sound waves off of the layer in the atmosphere where the air temperature becomes distinctly warmer below a certain altitude. Boom refers to that layer as the ‘cutoff altitude’.

The temperature change at the cutoff altitude causes sound waves created above it to be refracted, or bent so they bounce off the interface layer and do not reach the ground. 

Boom calls this capability their “boomless cruise” and have shown it repeatedly during their flight testing. Boomless cruise combines real-time weather data, advanced computers, and powerful engines with a reduced sound profile, to reliably fly in the ‘Mach cutoff’ condition. This allows the aircraft to fly at supersonic speeds, over land and populated areas without causing any disturbance on the ground.

Blake  Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, said that boomless cruise will enable flights 50% faster over land and 2x faster over water.

FMI:  boomsupersonic.com/