NASA enlists Lockheed Martin in the quest for the supersonic thump

NASA has awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to build a full-scale experimental aircraft (X-plane) to be known as a low-boom flight demonstrator. The contract is the culmination of a decade of collaboration, and takes forward a contract awarded in 2016 for preliminary design of the aircraft.

The agreement is part of a project called QueSST (quiet supersonic technology), which aims to dull the volume of a sonic boom to about the level of the car door closing. At 75 perceived level decibels, the target noise is more of a dull thump than a boom. The aim is to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard that would allow the current regulations which ban supersonic travel over land to be overturned. It was these regulations which severely hampered Concorde's use in the 1970s and 1980s; with no possibility to fly at supersonic speeds over the US, the aircraft could not serve routes to the West Coast.