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Narrator: Historically, October has been a big

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month for supersonic flight.

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Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in

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an aircraft on October 14, 1947.

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The Concorde made its final passenger flight

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on October 24, 2003.

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Now, NASA is developing a prototype of an aircraft

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that could bring supersonic flight

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back to the traveling public.

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The aircraft is called the Low-Boom Flight

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Demonstrator and is slated for a series

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of test flights in the early 2020's.

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Don Durston: The major challenge facing NASA

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and the US aerospace industry for designing future

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supersonic transport is the loudness

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of the sonic boom.

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We need to get that boom away from that sharp

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"boom, boom" and get it down to more like a

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"thump, thump" and maybe even a "whoosh, whoosh"

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sound, where it might sound like a distant rumble.

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If it's not nearly as bothersome, then we've

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achieved our goal of reducing the boom so that

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it's not bothersome to the public.

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Narrator: Many of the studies to reduce the

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intensity of the sonic boom were conducted in the

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wind tunnels at NASA's Ames Research Center.

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Ames has long legacy of researching how to design

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aircraft to fly at supersonic speeds.

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Researchers made several key breakthroughs in

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supersonic aerodynamics beginning in the 1940's

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using unique high-speed wind tunnels,

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experimental flight testing and later on,

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advanced computer simulations.

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One of the greatest results to come from this

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research was the blunt body design that made it

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possible to safely return astronauts

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back from space.

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Perhaps someday in a future October, a commercial

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supersonic airplane based on the Low-Boom