An artist’s concept shows Lockheed Martin’s low-boom supersonic airliner. (Courtesy: NASA)
At www.flightglobal.com
Science and resultant technology may well have made Low Boom supersonic flight practical. A 100 to 150 passenger aircraft could fly NY to LA in something like 2 hours, making one day two way coast to coast trips a practical comfortable reality for premium passengers. This has been impossible because of the glass breaking, cattle disturbing sonic boom, but now aerodynamics and aircraft technology have shown a road forward.

With the ending of NASA’s last ‘five year plan’ on ultra efficient airliners, money will be available to build a scale but largish (fighter sized I’d guess) x-plane to make test flights provingthe boom mitigating design techniques. This sounds like a great idea, the sort of thing that NASA should be doing, has been doing, quietly, since its founding as NACA all those decades ago.