NASA研发新型超音速飞机
美国宇航局表示正在研发新一代超音速飞机,该机型发出的声音只有60分贝,远小于协和式超音速飞机的90分贝,噪音仅仅相当于坐在车里听到的汽车发动机的嗡嗡声。美国宇航局已经在风洞里成功测试了相关技术,并预计在2022年对原型机进行测试。如果新型超音速飞机研制成功,那么从纽约到伦敦的飞行时间只需要3小时。 Nasa might be famous for sending rockets up to space quickly. But it could be making your next holiday come more quickly, too. The space agency is working on a new plane, dubbed Concorde 2 by some people, that could solve the problems of super-sonic flight and vastly increase the speed of journeys abroad. If successful, the plane would be able to fly between New York and London in just three hours. And it would halve the time spent flying other journeys, since it could be used more broadly. Until now, the problem with such planes has been the sonic boom, made famous by the original Concorde. That happens when a plane reaches supersonic speeds. It is a thunderous noise that upsets people on the ground – disturbing livestock and even causing physical problems to materials and houses underneath. It was irritation with that effect that led Congress to ban such planes from being used over US land, a decision that in turn was partly responsible for Concorde failing to be commercially viable and getting mothballed. The space agency has successfully tried out the technology in wind tunnels, and now believes that it could be put to commercial use. It now wants to test that out by having commercial companies build a version of the plane that could be put to use. That plane will fly as high as 55,000 feet – far higher than normal planes – and make a sound of only 60 decibels. That's far less than the 90 decibels thrown out by Concorde, and is roughly in line with a car on the motorway or a busy restaurant. “Now you're getting down to that level where, as far as approval from the general public, it would probably be something that's acceptable,” said Peter Coen, project manager for NASA's commercial supersonic research team, in a new Bloomberg report. If that allows the team to get approval, it hopes to have full-sized versions of the planes to try out by 2022. |