Tag: supersonic airplane

Lockheed Martin Wins $247.5M NASA Contract to Build X-Plane

Reading Time: < 1 minute Supersonic commercial travel is on the horizon. NASA awarded Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® a contract to design, build and flight test the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator, an X-plane designed to make supersonic passenger air travel a reality. “It is super exciting to be back designing and flying X-planes at this scale,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate […]

Russia to Renew Tu-160 Supersonic Bombers Fleet by 2030

Reading Time: < 1 minute The entire fleet of Tupolev Tu-160 supersonic strategic missile-carrying bombers with new weapons is expected to be renewed by 2030, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said on Wednesday. “We are going to purchase the entire fleet of our strategic Tu-160 bombers in their new version and carry out heavy upgrade of operational aircraft where […]

Spike Aerospace Predicts Supersonic Market Exceeds 13 Million+ Annually

Reading Time: 2 minutes Supersonic flights could be enjoyed by over 13 million passengers annually when flights begin in 2025,” according to Vik Kachoria, CEO & President of Spike Aerospace. “While supersonic aircraft might be ushered in by the wealthy, they will ultimately benefit anyone who wants and needs to get to their destinations faster. This is going to […]

NASA Continues Sonic Boom Research With F-18s

Reading Time: < 1 minute This month, a research program called SonicBAT II (short for Sonic Booms in Atmospheric Turbulence), is set to begin to help understand sonic booms and how to reduce the noise associated with supersonic flight. The program is a partnership between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Langley Research Center […]

NASA Completes Milestone Toward Quieter Supersonic X-Plane

Reading Time: 2 minutes NASA has achieved a significant milestone in its effort to make supersonic passenger jet travel over land a real possibility by completing the preliminary design review (PDR) of its Quiet Supersonic Transport or QueSST aircraft design. QueSST is the initial design stage of NASA’s planned Low Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) experimental airplane, otherwise known as […]

Boom Technology Unveils Supersonic Demonstrator

Reading Time: 3 minutes Boom Technologies expects to start subsonic flight tests of its XB-1 supersonic demonstrator in late 2017. The engineering design was unveiled at the company’s Centennial airport facility in Denver, Colorado, on November 15. Dubbed “Baby Boom,” the delta wing aircraft is a one-third scale demonstrator for a small supersonic airliner which Boom aims to certificate […]

Lightning Lands in the UK

Reading Time: 2 minutes The first of Britain’s new supersonic ‘stealth’ strike fighters has touched down in the UK for the first time.  The F-35B Lightning II jet was flown by RAF pilot Squadron Leader Hugh Nichols on its first transatlantic crossing, accompanied by two United States Marine Corps F-35B aircraft from their training base at Beaufort, South Carolina. […]

Richard Branson Backed Startup To Build Next-Gen Supersonic Airplane

Reading Time: 2 minutes A company called Boom Technology Inc. has unveiled plans for a supersonic airplane of the same name, which is being developed as a replacement for Concorde. Boom airplanes are predicted to fly 2.6 times faster than any other aircraft (and faster than Concorde Mach 2.0), and hit speeds of Mach 2.2 or 1,451 miles per […]