Business & GA

Gulfstream is demonstrating its mobile supersonic acoustic signature simulator II (SASSII) in the static park. The mobile simulator forms part of its push for changes to Federal Aviation Administration legislation, which prohibits supersonic civil flight over land.

For the past seven months, Gulfstream has been demonstrating its sonic boom suppression technology to scientists, legislators and environmentalists all over the USA.

SASSII is a mobile audio booth designed and equipped to demonstrate the “Gulfstream whisper”, the aerospace company’s latest effort to dampen sonic boom. The Gulfstream whisper is the sound a person on the ground would hear if a supersonic aircraft fitted with the company’s spike for controlling and reducing sonic boom flew overhead at Mach 1.8 – roughly twice the speed of today’s subsonic civil jets.

Company tests indicate that the Gulfstream whisper is so indistinct that most people on the ground would not even realize a supersonic aircraft had passed overhead. Compared with Concorde, which produces a traditional jagged sonic boom pressure wave, resulting in a loud, jarring double boom on the ground as it passes by, Gulfstream technology transforms the boom into a smooth and more rounded pressure wave, resulting in a softer sound that is quieter than Concorde by a factor of 10,000.