"Its carbon composite airframe retains its rigidity and strength even under the temperatures of supersonic flight and its delta wind balances low-speed performance for take off and landing with high speed efficiency." " fuselage is designed for speed minimizing drag and supersonic performance," Scholl said. As with the Concorde, a long pointy nose will obscure the view of the runway from the cockpit during landing, but cameras will take the place of the Concorde's dropping nose. The 71-foot XB-1 will use three General Electric engines with 12,000 pounds of thrust. "Today we stand on the precipice of a new age of travel." "We have begun to pave the path of a mainstream supersonic future," said CEO Blake Scholl. The XB-1 that rolled out at an event in Colorado won't carry passengers, but it'll serve as a demonstration aircraft to test the company's technologies.
General references for the top three photos and many others: United States Navy (USN, ), United States Department of Defense (DoD, or ), Government of the United States of America (USA).Boom Supersonic on Wednesday unveiled what it hopes to be the first step in letting ordinary people fly at supersonic speeds again. It appeared in the Decemissue of Aviation Week and Space Technology. This photo is credited to Bobbi Garcia, a civilian aerial photographer working for Rohmann Services in support of the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC). The aircraft was completing a mission over the Pacific Ocean. This photo of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, which does not break the sound barrier, shows that the extraordinary cloud effect is not exactly tied to the breaking of the sound barrier. F/A-18 Hornet Fighter Jet, United States Navy, off the coast of Pusan, Taehan-min'guk - Republic of Korea, July 7, 1999Photo credit: Ensign John Gay, Navy NewsStand - Eye on the Fleet Photo Gallery (, 990707-N-6483G-001). Osborne, Navy NewsStand - Eye on the Fleet Photo Gallery (, 030422-N-0382O-588). Photo credit:Photographer's Mate Airman Justin S. F14-B Tomcat Fighter Jet, United States Navy, Mediterranean Sea, ApLoad video of F-14 Valdez, Navy NewsStand - Eye on the Fleet Photo Gallery (, 040129-N-0905V-024). The photo credit is Photographer's Mate Airman Chris M. This general description probably applies, even though in the presence of condensation, the gases are not exactly "ideal". If the associated volumes cannot quickly change, then the ideal gas law suggests that the temperature in the low pressure regions must drop, leading to condensation of the water vapor present. In this phenomenon, the non-linear or "chaotic" effects amplify all pressure perturbations, leading to some regions of anomalously high and low pressure. Mark Cramer describes this condensation effect in terms of the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity. It seems safe to say that the phenomenon is associated with the extraordinary conditions very near the speed of sound.
But the photo of the B-2 below, which is slightly subsonic, blurs that distinction. The report of the photographers is that they snap the shutter when they hear the sonic boom, which certainly associates the cloud with the breaking of the sound barrier. One of the extraordinary sights associated with this supersonic transition is the production of a sudden visible vapor cloud around the aircraft. United States Fighter Jet from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 (VMFA-314), January 29, 2004, Pacific Ocean The passage from subsonic to supersonic speeds is accompanied by some unusual phenomena which lie in the realm of "nonlinear" mechanical events - events involving some degree of chaos. Historically, this was referred to as "breaking the sound barrier". Military aircraft routinely accelerate to speeds greater than the local sound speed. Breaking the Sound Barrier with an Aircraft Breaking the Sound Barrier with an Aircraft