Supersonic commercial planes may be coming soon thanks to NASA

[-Kev-]

http://www.space.com/32143-nasa-supe...-contract.html

Note: Super sonic is faster than Mach 1(speed of sound) Mach 1 = 767 miles per hour.

Developing, building and flight testing a quiet supersonic X-plane is the next logical step in our path to enabling the industry's decision to open supersonic travel for the flying public," Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate

So basically in short in 1973 the FAA banned super sonic planes because of the loud sonic boom they would make. Now with NASA's new program called New Aviation Horizons, NASA will give $20 million dollars to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics for preliminary designs of supersonic jet. NASA is working with the FAA to get supersonic jets unbanned under stipulations that they can make a jet that has little to no sonic boom, and that's what this program is about. The article says, depending on funding, we could begin seeing flights in 2020. You ask yourself why is this important, this is important because:

The initiative aims to make future aircraft safer, "greener" and more efficient, using metrics such as fuel use, emissions and noise to judge their performance.

Pretty cool.