NASA reveals design of a modern supersonic passenger jet

USA Today : One of the problems that faced the Concorde—the world’s first supersonic commercial airliner—is that it caused very loud sonic booms. In the US, civilian aircraft were banned from going supersonic over land. Yesterday, NASA revealed the design of a prototype passenger jet that would reduce the loudness of the booms at cruising altitude to just 75 db, which would be barely audible on the ground. The Concorde registered booms at more than 100 db. NASA’s new jet would reach Mach 1.4, or roughly 1100 mph (1770 km/hr), nearly twice the speed of a traditional commercial airliner but about 200 mph (330 km/hr) slower than the Concorde. The prototype design seats only one passenger, but NASA believes that it could be expanded to carry up to 100 passengers. The agency announced the design in the hopes of gaining $20 million from Congress to contract private firms to develop a more final design by early 2017. The goal is to gain another $280 million in funding to build a test vehicle by late 2019.