The NASA High-Speed Research Program

Abstract

Since its inception, one of NASA's commitments has been to develop the technology to advance aeronautics. As such, a new High-Speed Research Program was activated to develop the technology for industry to build a High-Speed Civil Transport - a second generation Supersonic Transport (SST). The baseline for this program is the British Concorde, a major technological achievement for its time, but an aircraft which is now both technologically and economically outdated. Therefore, a second generation SST must satisfy environmental concerns and still be economically viable. In order to do this, it must have no significant effect on the ozone layer, meet Federal Air Regulation 36, Stage 3 for community noise, and have no perceptible sonic boom over populated areas. These three concerns are the focus of the research efforts in Phase 1 of the program and are the specific areas covered in the technical video report.