Free Republic

EDWARDS AFB - After more than 55 years of window-rattling and heart-thumping sonic booms, the familiar "Sound of Freedom" may be in for a change. In flights this week in the same supersonic corridor used by Chuck Yeager, a modified F-5 "Freedom Fighter" jet successfully proved that changing the shape of an aircraft can lessen the impact of breaking the sound barrier for those on the ground. "We're trying to fix what Chuck Yeager broke," said Northrop Grumman chief test pilot Roy Martin. In two flights Wednesday, the F-5 with a specially-shaped nose produced a smaller sonic boom than a...

Northrop Grumman/Government Team Shapes Aviation History With Sonic Boom TestsEL SEGUNDO, Calif. --- Northrop Grumman Corporation's Integrated Systems sector, in cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA, has made aviation history by demonstrating a method to reduce the bone-jarring impact of sonic booms, a technology that could usher in a new era of supersonic flight.     In flights conducted Aug. 27 on the same supersonic test range where Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier nearly 56 years ago, the government/industry team showed that modifying an aircraft's shape can reduce the intensity of its sonic...

A French is on the point of trying to cross the wall of the sound in free fall The French parachutist Michel Fournier is on the point of trying a jump of 40.000 meters above the large Canadian plains, with the ambition to become the first man to cross the wall of the sound in free fall, indicated Thursday its attached of press. Eleven months after having had to be solved to defer to 2003 its tests, for lack of favorable weather conditions, this old ordering army, 59 years old, reinstalled since August 11 its headquarters on a site...