NASA Wants To Replace The Concorde

If you have the slightest interest in aviation then you certainly would have heard about the Concorde. It was the only supersonic passenger jet that flew for a few years before being retired. There hasn’t been one since but NASA is looking to fill that gap. The agency has asked industry teams to submit preliminary design concepts of a “low-boom” passenger jet that can fly at supersonic speeds.

The Commercial Supersonic Technology Project at NASA has asked industry teams to submit their design concepts for a test plane that can hit supersonic speeds. The idea is to create a supersonic “heartbeat,” a soft thump, as opposed to the loud sonic boom that’s currently associated with breaking the sound barrier.

NASA has selected a team headed by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics to provide a preliminary design for Quiet Supersonic Technology a.k.a (Quesst). It’s the first of “X-planes” that’s a part of NASA’s New Aviation Horizons initiative.

It’s going to provide Lockheed Martin with almost $20 million over the next year and a half for its work on the Quesst design. Lockheed is going to develop the baseline aircraft requirements as well as a preliminary design with specifications and provide supporting documentation for concept planning and formulation.

NASA expects to start flight tests on a scaled-down version of the Quesst aircraft by 2020 though that’s contingent on funding.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Transportation
Tags: concorde, NASA