For many years we have been traveling by air the same way. We keep improving and inventing more efficient and faster ways to travel by rail, road, and sea but there hasn’t been much difference made when it comes to travel by airways. For many regular people, being able to fly faster than the speed of sound is futuristic, but from 1976 to 2003 fourteen air crafts, collectively called the Concorde, would take off for supersonic flights.
It would fly three times faster than regular flights but unfortunately, it did not sustain, it was not very profitable for the airline and its unprofitability was a side effect of its speed. When the plane would fly past the speed of sound which is about 760mph, it would create shock waves in the air that would then hit the ground with loud and sudden thuds, which is called a sonic boom. These sonic booms were so alarming for people on the ground that the US federal regulations had to put a ban on all commercial air crafts from flying faster than the speed of sound when over the land. In 2000, the Concorde had a crash that took the lives of more than 100 people, so the jet was retired.
After many years, some companies are trying to bring supersonic flights back, one of which is Boom. Boom’s chief executive officer, Blake Scholl’s aim is to bring back supersonic air travel so there is a reduction in the time we require to travel, especially today when we see such a big increase in international travel.
Alex Bender, who studies at Northeastern University, started working at Boom Supersonic since July; he says the company is currently creating a prototype model that will fly at supersonic speeds. “So, on the day-to-day, I’m helping the chief engineer manage the weight, budget of the airplane, and creating financial models that help us make decisions going forward, like ‘how much outside investment should we take to reach our goals,” Bender said. So it is quite possible that soon supersonic flights would once again become a faster way to travel.
Mayuri Talgaonkar
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