Nasa’s new ‘quiet’ Concorde-style plane will fly you from London to New York in just four hours but will cost nearly £6k – The Sun

NASA is developing a new "quiet" supersonic plane which would travel up to 940mph – meaning a flight from London to New York would take just four hours instead of eight.

However, you will need deep pockets as a seat on the 40-passenger jet will set you back £5,774.

However, this is still cheaper than previous Concorde flights, which were around £10,000, according to the Mail Online.

The design of the new plane, known as the X-59, will lower the noise level of the supersonic boom.

The boom, often heard when planes break the speed of sound, was one of the issues with the Concorde – the noise level meant that it couldn't fly over cities and could only travel at top speeds over water.

Previous speeds set by the Concorde hit highs of 1,354mph, compared to the current X-59's 940mph. Current commercial flights fly at approximately 600mph.

But on the X-59, the boom will be reduced to a loud "thump" thanks to the shape of the nose according to Nasa, travelling at 1.4 times the speed of sound.

The long, thin nose resembles a duck's beak with the sharp point at the end reducing the sound to just 75 Perceived Level decibels – similar to a car door closing.


However, the new streamlined shape means that there is no way of having a cockpit with windows at the front of the plane.

Instead, pilots will sit in a cabin with a video system simulating the front of the plane.

The External Visibility System (XVS) will create an augmented reality experience by stitching together data from two external cameras and 3D data of the landscape outside the plane.

The cockpit will still have windows on the side to allow pilots to see the horizon-line.

Current testing is being performed on the wings alongside the construction, with Craig Nickol, NASA’s Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project manager saying in a statement: "I’m happy with the progress we’re making and excited to see the aircraft starting to come together."

Tests have also been conducted in Texas with an experimental aircraft F/A-18 Hornet, to determine the noise levels for residents.

Jerry Baker, one of 500 residents recruited by Nasa for the tests, told Mail Online that they heard "several loud bangs" during the experiments although some were just "two tiny bumps".

The first flight is scheduled for 2021.

Concorde first flew as a passenger plane in 1976 and stopped all operations by 2003 due to a number of reasons, including a devastating crash in 2000 and the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Instead, it is being used for research to gather data for Nasa that could be used to engineer supersonic passenger planes in the future.

NASA is also developing fully-electric planes which use frozen hydrogen fuel to offer more environmentally friendly options.

Tourists even soon go to the International Space Station with NASA by 2020.

It doesn't come cheap however, with trips costing £39 million each.

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