*WASHINGTON- *NASA has inked a deal with Lockheed Martin to develop asupersonic “X-plane” that could break the sound barrier without a sonicboom, officials said Tuesday.
The $247.5 million contract allows for the design, building and testing ofa plane that would make its first test flight in 2021, NASA said.
The experimental plane “will cruise at 55,000 feet (16,764 meters) at aspeed of about 940 mph (1,513 kph) and create a sound about as loud as acar door closing, 75 Perceived Level decibel (PLdB), instead of a sonicboom,” the US space agency said in a statement.
As early as mid-2022, NASA plans to fly the X-plane over certain, as yet tobe determined, US cities to collect data and gather community responses.
The goal is to enable quieter supersonic flight and create “new commercialcargo and passenger markets in faster-than-sound air travel,” NASA said.
Last month, US President Donald Trump signed a federal budget that fullyfunds the project, saying the new aircraft “would open a new market for UScompanies to build faster commercial airliners, creating jobs and cuttingcross-country flight times in half.”
But passenger seats are not part of the project Lockheed Martin is workingon, at least not yet.
First, the company must show it is possible to fly a quiet supersonicaircraft. Then, the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration would haveto be changed in order to lift the current ban on civil supersonic flightsover land.
“This X-plane is a critical step closer to that exciting future,” JaiwonShin, associate administrator of NASA’s Aeronautics Research MissionDirectorate, told a news conference.
Other companies in the process of building supersonic passenger jets forflight in the coming years include Virgin Galactic and Spike Aerospace. -APP/AFP