supersonic buissness jets

Supersonic business jets will use aerodynamic shaping to minimize sonic booms. Don't be alarmed by the lack of windows: Cameras will send exterior images to the cockpit and cabin.

Aerospace engineer David Graham and his three colleagues had a deadline, and a little brown tortoise was putting it in jeopardy. In a few hours, as the sun rose over the Mojave Desert on an August morning last year, two Northrop Grumman F-5E fighter jets would come racing over the horizon. Flying 30,000 feet above Harper Dry Lake and traveling at 920 mph, the airplanes would be trailing long sonic booms--the distinctive aural signatures of supersonic flight that ordinarily make high-speed passages over land impossible.

The engineers, all members of a Northrop Grumman?led research team working to make those signatures significantly less distinctive, expected the two booms would be different from one another--a difference too slight to hear, even with your ear cocked to find out whether a 30-year-old theory aimed at mitigating supersonic shock waves worked in the real, turbulent and bubbly atmosphere, but one big enough to be detected by the instruments in the back of their SUV.

But this SUV, crammed with gear that had to be set out across the lake bed, wasn't going anywhere until the desert tortoise moved its reptile rear out of the way. The Bureau of Land Management's instructions were strict: Startling the endangered animal could threaten its life. The predawn hours are the male desert tortoise's time to roam in search of water, food and female company. That is arduous work, as every tortoise knows, and sometimes a guy just needs a rest. It was 15 long minutes before the beast waddled on its way.

Finally on the lake bed, NASA investigator Ed Haering supervised the placement of the portable instrument packages he'd designed, each containing an ultrasensitive Br�el & Kjaer 4193 microphone, in an array about 2.5 miles wide. Away to the north, Northrop test pilot Roy Martin lined up his F-5E, which Graham had disfigured until Welko Gasich's elegant 1956 design was barely recognizable. Martin pushed the stick forward and the pelican-nosed F-5E began to pick up speed in a shallow dive, accelerating through the sound barrier.

Pointing the aircraft accurately wasn't easy. Graham, Haering and Wyle Laboratories boom expert Ken Plotkin had chosen dawn for the test because, later on an August day, thermals rise from the desert floor and the atmosphere gets turbulent. The chosen course put the rising sun smack in Martin's face. Squinting at the instruments, Martin lined up and locked in the test speed--Mach 1.36, 36 percent above the speed of sound.

The cone of the sonic boom trailed miles behind Martin's jet, and by the time the pressure wave swept across Haering's array, he was slowing down, turning for a possible second run. Down the course after him, trailing by 45 seconds, came a standard F-5E from Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada. Plotkin had reckoned that the comparison between the two booms would be fair if the two fighters were more than 30 seconds and less than two minutes apart.

The second boom arrived on the lake bed with its usual authority--a thunderous double bang (one for the front of the aircraft, another for the aft) audible for miles--and the data was complete. "I definitely heard a difference," Graham recalls. That might be debatable. The two shock waves of each boom were less than 1/10 of a second apart, and the team had not even tried to alter the second half of the boom from the modified airplane. But within moments, the engineers were viewing the two booms on a laptop computer perched on a car trunk. A blue line showed the pressure wave of the modified F-5E; a red line represented the Navy fighter.

It was a dead-on match for the predictions. Ken Plotkin, who'd been in the boom business longer than anyone else present, danced a little jig. Graham says he saw tears in his eyes. Plotkin placed a call to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "It worked!" he said. The reply was calm: "I knew it would."


The August test flights over the Mojave Desert have answered a critical question about low-sonic-boom design: Engineers now know that they can predict how the sonic boom develops as it travels from the airplane to your ear. That means there's much less speculative risk involved in designing and building a low-boom airplane. Within a few years, a low-boom X-plane could be paving the way for a supersonic business jet--surveys have consistently shown strong demand for such an airplane, even at a $100 million price tag, and Boeing and Gulfstream are known to have SBJ efforts under way--or a quiet supersonic bomber, capable of sneaking into enemy territory at high speed without having its presence betrayed by piercing sonic booms. There are even signs that Lockheed Martin, with its long history of flying airplanes with capabilities that most observers deemed unattainable, could already be capable of building an operational supersonic business jet, under development in a code-locked vault and bankrolled by an unidentified sponsor.



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the rest of the article can be read here.


[edit on 8/8/2004 by machinegunjordan]

Good post Machine Gun. This is the holy grail of business aviation. The first commercial maker of low boom business SST will make a fortune. I think both Mig and Sukhoi did try a commercial venture with a business jet manufacturer but it never panned out to anything.

the only fear for it is that it will be a flop like the concorde,but it was not the right time for the concorde now we are ready for a supersonic commercial aircraft.

It has been said that supersonic commercial travel will always be a flop because-
1)Supersonic speeds are mostly reserved for Militrary Aircraft but not limited to.
2)Going at Mach 2.2 is not really easy to work with, can be unsettling.
3)Gas costs.
4)Not very economical, few people, large price per ticket, very fast ride.

Shattered OUT...

I just hope a bussines man dosen't get shot down by a military SAM that mistake's it for a cruise missile. Try going from California to Nevada and flying near the AF bases at mach 2.2

the only fear for it is that it will be a flop like the concorde,but it was not the right time for the concorde now we are ready for a supersonic commercial aircraft.

who said the concorde was a flop it has generated more money than any other airliner in the world. The only reason it was discontinued was because of the cost of fuel. They should not have the same problem with hyprsonic buisness jets.

Can we see some facts or links that prove that the Concord has generated more money than any other jet in service. If remember correctly there was no net gain with the concord the jet lost money instead of making any. By the way the jets are supersonic not hypersonic

Originally posted by neoninewho said the concorde was a flop it has generated more money than any other airliner in the world. The only reason it was discontinued was because of the cost of fuel. They should not have the same problem with hyprsonic buisness jets.

If the Concord was viable financially they would have kept it flying because of its "Flagship" Status. Thats why no other airline picked it up when it was in production. The only reason BOAC and Air France picked it up was from governmnet pressure to purchase the planes. The cost per seat mile was huge, the then new 747 was way slower but had such a lower cost per seat mile of operation, the airlines stuck with it.

It was not fuel that killed the Concord. Airbus which provided maintenace for the plane simply said it would no longer service it or the Olympus Engines that powered it. I even think that BA was actually turning a small profit on it towards the end as well.

It is a shame it was a cool airplane.....

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
It has been said that supersonic commercial travel will always be a flop because-
1)Supersonic speeds are mostly reserved for Militrary Aircraft but not limited to.
2)Going at Mach 2.2 is not really easy to work with, can be unsettling.
3)Gas costs.
4)Not very economical, few people, large price per ticket, very fast ride.

But for business aviation, there is going a segment of the population that doies not care. Take Bill Gates for example. He would in all likelyhood prefere a small business jet the size of say a G550 but one that flys at Mach2. He wont loose any sleep over the cost.

Didn't Westpoint post something about a supersonic plane with no windows at all. A bit dangerous if you can't find Ctrl-Alt-Delete. But I don' like the concept of supersonic buissness jets. Buissness jets are already easier to highjack then say a United Airlines 747 flight. And if they are high jacked the USAF will have a lot less time to intercept.

I definately read that Dassault and Gulfstream were trying to develop this. I think I also read that Dassault would be working with someone else to develop this idea. I will try to find links

As Fred said there are people who won't care. But further to his point, there will be companies and governments who won't care so much about the costs. I mean in some businesses an hour or two can mean millions of �/$ losses or gains and that would eventually pay for the price of the extra expense for the supersonic ability.

Originally posted by cyberdude78
Didn't Westpoint post something about a supersonic plane with no windows at all. A bit dangerous if you can't find Ctrl-Alt-Delete. But I don' like the concept of supersonic buissness jets. Buissness jets are already easier to highjack then say a United Airlines 747 flight. And if they are high jacked the USAF will have a lot less time to intercept.

Aint that the truth. When we do a long range critical care transport we charter a Lear or Gulfstream for it. I have been as far as Arizoan in a Lear. Its pretty cool actually. But the security involved is nothing. You pull up, load you equipment and take off. We could have loaded explosives instead of medical equipment for all they knew.

Just a link I found out about this, mostly speculation of course

Dassault Supersonic Business Jet

And from another site regarding the Gulfstream proposal:

Gulfstream's proposed supersonic business jet has evolved into a variable-geometry design as the company tries to satisfy requirements for take-off distance, airport noise, subsonic range, supersonic performance...

And another one:

France's aerospace heavyweight Dassault Aviation pointed to the future last year when it unveiled plans for the Falcon SST, a supersonic business jet. Though it may be another decade before the plane actually pokes its nose out of anyone's hangar, the announcement convinced the aviation industry that mini-SSTs are truly on their way. According to plans, the Falcon, built to accommodate eight passengers, will be able to fly farther than Concorde without refueling. And, thanks to noise-suppression technology, it won't generate the sonic boom that prevents the big bird from landing in cities like Tokyo. That's music to environmentalists' ears--and practical, too, since "quiet" supersonic aircraft can use existing corporate airport runways.

Dassault's arch-rival, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. of the U.S., is also trying to get into the act. Gulfstream, which is in the process of being acquired by General Dynamics Corp., accounts for 60% of the long-range/ultra-long-range business-jet market. It has a backlog of orders through 2007 for more than 125 Gulfstream Vs and Gulfstream IV-SPs, together worth more than $4 billion. And it, too, wants to go supersonic. Gulfstream and aircraft designer Lockheed Martin Skunk Works are jointly engaged in a feasibility study on producing such a craft. Explains Gulfstream president Bill Boisture: "The new frontier is time."

The partners hope to get funding from NASA's HighSpeed Research program. They may well need it. One big stumbling block is finding the right engine. Gulfstream and Lockheed, like Dassault, are experimenting with either modifying an existing engine design or creating an entirely new one. Either way, the process will be expensive and could take more than five years.

Although private supersonic travel is some way off, potential producers are enrouraged by the success of Executive Jet Inc. The company, which currently manages 226 aircraft, is the world's largest operator of private business jets. Through its NetJets program, Executive Jet pioneered "fractional" aircraft ownership, in which two or more firms share a private plane. NetJets allows individuals or companies to buy as little as a one-eighth interest in a business jet aircraft, depending on the flight hours needed. Executive Jet, which was acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway last year, currently has a backlog of 460 aircraft on order. Its client list includes individuals such as Tiger Woods and Pete Sampras and companies like General Electric and Texaco. The ever-effusive Buffett calls the arrangement "the premier provider of aviation solutions in the world."

Naturally, a plane of the sort Dassault and Gulfstream are dreaming up will carry a hefty price-tag--perhaps as much as $80 million, or roughly double the cost of a high-end conventional business jet. But that doesn't faze some potential customers. Executive Jet senior vice president Kevin Russell says his company could buy "anywhere between five and 50" supersonic jets when they become available. Until then, Concorde will remain the only supersonic show in the sky.

That is so true Al-Qeda has money they could rent a private jet, and in mid flight they could take over the cockpit it only going to be them and the pilot no other passengers to get in the way. Then all they have to do is fly the private jet in to a building. : They don't need to bring any weapons on the private jet cuz its going to be them against 2 pilots. If they wanted to bring guns I don't imagine it would be to hard since they dint even check you. So like CD said this is just what wee need al-qada hijacking a mach 2 business jet.

Just because they didn't check your bags "FREDT" doesn't mean they didn't do background checks, and a private jet can't take out a skyscraper.
and they wouldn't bring explosives on board because, if i'm not mistaken the pilot puts your luggage away, plus i think they would think something is wierd with a couple guys both named mohamid with scarves wraped around there heads dragging a 300 lb suitcase on the cement and trying to throw it up into the planes compartment.


I think what ever company comes out with the first "No-Boom" Supercruise business jet will make a lot of money from the fortune 500 and celebrities.
But if were talkin Mach 1.5 to Mach 2 then I dont see why there would be no windows.

Actually all you need is 3-4 Arab guys to rent a Private jet then when they are in the air they have to just take out the pilot they don't even need any guns or bombs on board all they need is some muscle. Once they take out the pilot it wont be hard to ram it onto a building. Plus imagine al qada renting private jets from different companies on the same day same time. I believe 3 private jets hitting the same building will take it out.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
.............. I believe 3 private jets hitting the same building will take it out.

- Given that many people were surprised the 9/11 attacks actually managed to collapse the towers what do you base this on Westy?

Pure guessword? Your imagination?

Even a moments thought tells you that 3 or 4 small private jets can't come anywhere near the ft/lb impact of a 757 or 767 nor could they carry the tonnage of fuel to augment the impact.

Please stop speculating like this Westy. It's rather unpleasant and very very silly.

Very very silly? I was actually surprised the WTC lasted as long as they did I though they would collapse as soon as the 747 hit. Not all Al-qaeda targets are going to be the highest strongest (structurally) buildings in the world. They con go after less structured buildings like financial centers in new your which are only like 50 stories high. Even if they don�t manage to collapse the building it would still have a huge impact.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
Very very silly? I was actually surprised the WTC lasted as long as they did I though they would collapse as soon as the 747 hit. Not all Al-qaeda targets are going to be the highest strongest (structurally) buildings in the world. They con go after less structured buildings like financial centers in new your which are only like 50 stories high. Even if they don�t manage to collapse the building it would still have a huge impact.

I think you meant 767 not 747.

Originally posted by Murcielago
I think you meant 767 not 747.

Still an impressive structure nonetheless. The fact that the towers were designed with a 707 in mind, The 767 was full of fuel, traving alot faster and weighted alot more than the 707. The towers stayed up long enough to allow thousads to escape. I saw an interview with the architect, he looks like he will be haunted to the end with the collapse of the towers. Really there was nothing he could have done to predict this or counter it.

One has to wonder, is it practical to design a building to survive a strike from a 500000 lb object traveling at 500 knots? The Towers came close. It was really the fire that doomed them, not the actuall strike in any case