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Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has been developing the QSST – or Quiet Super-Sonic Transport – for six years. This luxury private jet could be the first civilian supersonic plane approved for over-land use, thanks to aerodynamics designed to muffle its sonic boom.

Developed under a $25-million contract from Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI), the 12-passenger (+3 crew) QSST would fly at between 47,000 and 57,000 feet with a range of 4,600 miles (approx Chicago to Rome). Designed to fly between Mach 1.6 and 1.8 (which are 1,056 and 1,188 mph), the two-engine gull-wing aircraft would leave a sonic wake that amounts to only one-hundredth of that of the Mach 2-capable Concorde…

A sonic boom is created when an aircraft accelerates to faster than the speed of sound. The pressure waves created in the air collide with one another and dissipate together, resulting in the deafening crack we know as a sonic boom. For this reason, these aircraft are not allowed to fly at supersonic speeds whilst over a land mass. The QSST solves that problem by reducing the pressure waves through aerodynamic streamlining, and so causing a much less significant boom when the waves collide.

Other characteristics of the design contribute to the lack of crack – the many lift-generating surfaces (eg the ‘canards’ on the nose) help distribute the pressure instead of it all forming in one place, as would be the case on wide wings such as Concorde. The inverted-V tail also allows the two engines to be mounted quite far back (aft) – a design feature that further separates the pressure waves and keeps them from crashing into one another. Normally, this engine placement would require extra material to support the cantilevered weight, but the inherent strength of the V tail’s truss shape compensates for this.

Source: PopSci