![]() Within a couple of years, the FAA formally proposed a rule that would restrict operation of civil aircraft at speeds greater than Mach 1. This was followed on July 21 with Congress directing the FAA to develop standards for the “Control and Abatement of Aircraft Noise and Sonic Boom.”.A week later, on June 8, the New York Times published an editorial using the incident in Colorado to underscore the danger sonic booms presented to the nation’s peace and well-being, claiming many are “scared to death of it.”.The sonic boom blew out 200 windows on the side of the iconic Air Force Chapel and injured a dozen people. On May 31, during a ceremony at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, an F-105 Thunderchief fighter jet broke the sound barrier flying 50 feet over the school grounds.Three events during the summer of 1968 demonstrated this: But those researchers couldn’t outpace the speed at which environmental concerns and policy discussions were cropping up, threatening to ground the aircraft before it was even built. The aviation community was racing to develop its understanding of supersonic shockwaves to reduce the SST’s potential sonic boom noise levels. At sea level and 68 degrees Fahrenheit it is 768 mph) ![]() (Note that the speed of sound varies depending on things like temperature and altitude. The SST project aimed to produce the prototype for a new commercial supersonic airliner, capable of carrying as many as 300 passengers anywhere in the world at speeds as great as three times the speed of sound. Kennedy in June 1963 raised interest in studying and mitigating sonic booms from a technical standpoint, turning the research into a top priority. The announcement of the SST by President John F. government began to work with industry in an attempt to develop the Supersonic Transport, or SST. NASA / Maria Werries The Supersonic TransportĪs this work to better understand and predict sonic boom formation continued and gave rise to the first notions of how to minimize a sonic boom by changing an airplane’s shape, the U.S. The tests generated national news and fueled strongly negative sentiment about supersonic flight. Louis in 1961 and the other over Oklahoma City in 1964 (dubbed Bongo and Bongo II, respectively) – left no doubt the public was not fully supportive of routine sonic booms coming down from above. Through those years, using many types of supersonic jets, residents of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, among others, all were exposed to sonic booms from military fighter jets and bombers flying overhead at high altitude. No one gave the sonic booms a second thought, mostly because few people lived where the research was taking place.ĭespite early interest in what was then a mysterious phenomenon created as an airplane flies faster than the speed of sound and generate atmospheric shock waves we hear as sonic booms, there were few tools and only limited data available to help understand what was happening.īut as the Air Force and Navy began to deploy large numbers of supersonic jets at bases around the nation, interest in sonic booms quickly grew as more of the public became exposed to the often-alarming noise.īeginning in 1956 and continuing well into the 1960s, the Air Force, Navy, NASA, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employed resources to study how sonic booms formed under various conditions, what their effects might be on buildings, and how the public would react in different locations. The origins of the federal ban on supersonic flight go back to 1947, the first time the rocket-powered XS-1 airplane broke the sound barrier and initiated the heroic era of faster-than-sound research.Īt first, it was all about learning to fly X-planes faster and higher. NASA's Quesst Mission Integration Manager Boom Boom “It’s a rule that many people today aren’t aware of, yet it’s at the heart of what our Quesst mission with its quiet supersonic X-59 airplane is all about,” said Peter Coen, NASA’s Quesst mission integration manager. Officially put into effect on April 27, 1973, the ban’s introduction was strongly influenced by public opinion surveys in cities where supersonic military jets were flown overhead, and many folks said they didn’t like what they heard or the way their windows rattled because of the sonic booms.Īlthough some research suggested ways to soften the impact of sonic booms, aeronautical technology during the 1960s and early 1970s wasn’t sophisticated enough to fully solve the problem in time to prevent the rule from being enacted.īut today, NASA is working on a solution. The rule prohibits non-military aircraft from flying faster than sound so their resulting sonic booms won’t startle the public below or concern them about potential property damage. Fifty years ago, the federal government banned all civilian supersonic flights over land.
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