Supersonic aircraft Supersonic aircraft A supersonic aircraft is an aircraft able to fly faster than the speed of sound (Mach number 1). Supersonic aircraft were developed in the second half of the twentieth century and have been used almost entirely for research and military purposes. Only two, Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144, ever entered service for civil use as airliners. Fighter jets are the most common example of supersonic aircraft. The aerodynamics of supersonic flight is called compressible flow because of the compression (physics) associated with the shock waves or "sonic boom" created by any object travelling faster than sound. Aircraft flying
Sonic boom 1,300 recordings, some taken inside the shock wave by a chase plane, the SSBD demonstrated a reduction in boom by about one-third. Although one-third is not a huge reduction, it could have reduced Concorde's boom to an acceptable level; one below the FM = 1 limit stated above, for instance. As a follow-on to SSBD, in 2006 a NASA-Gulfstream Aerospace team tested the Quiet Spike on NASA-Dryden's F-15B aircraft 836. The Quiet Spike is a telescoping boom fitted to the nose of an aircraft specifically designed to weaken the strength of the shock waves forming on the nose of the