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Flying faster

想来一场超音速的旅行吗？

There is no Overture yet. But Boom Technology has shown what it will be like. The company has planned 600 different routes (路线) across the world for the plane. They want it to be people’s first choice for travel in 10 to 15 years.

Air companies are always trying to make people’s trips faster. American Airlines now turns to supersonic airplanes (超音速飞机). In August, the company said they were going to buy 20 supersonic planes. They are called Overture. The US Company Boom Technology makes them.

Smoother flight

The Overture can carry 65 to 80 passengers (乘客). It flies 1.7 times as fast as sound (1,235 km/h) – twice that of today’s fastest traditional airplane. The idea of flying faster than sound might scare you; but in fact, it might even be smoother (更流畅)!

Most passenger planes (客机) fly between 11.5 and 12 kilometers high in the sky, but the Overture will fly at about 18.29 kilometers because of its powerful engine (强大的引擎). The higher a plane flies, the thinner the air is, and the less turbulence (颠簸) there is.

Better than before

The US Air Force (空军) did the first supersonic flight (飞行) in October 1947. Since then, air companies have tried to use supersonic airplanes as passenger planes. But there is one big problem: when the plane becomes faster than sound, there’s a huge “sonic boom (音爆)”. It sounds like thunder (打雷) and brings noise pollution (噪音污染). This problem made people stop using Concorde – the first supersonic passenger plane made by France and the UK in the 1960s.

The new Overture tries to deal with the noise problem. It has four engines instead of two. According to Boom Technology, this will help make less noise. Overture will also use the world’s first automated noise reduction system (自动降噪系统).

Future plan for Overture

2022: Show Overture design (设计)

2024: Start to make the plane

2026: First flight

2029: Passenger flights begin

How are sonic booms made?

When airplanes travel faster than sound, they can make sonic booms. How does that happen?

You can think of air as water. When something moves through water, you see ripples (波纹). If the thing moves very quickly, the ripples start to run into each other.

The same happens in the air, even if you can’t see it. When the thing moves faster than sound, the air is pushed hard, and it compresses (压缩) like the ripples in water. This will make a very loud sound. That’s a sonic boom.

In fact, lots of things can make sonic booms. When you go to the park and see people play with whips and tops (鞭子和陀螺), you might hear a small sonic boom, too!