NASA is Showering One City With Sonic Booms and Hoping No One Notices (cnet.com) 95
Eric Mack, reporting for CNET: NASA has been deliberately creating sonic booms off the coast of Galveston, Texas, since Monday in the hope that residents on the barrier island community won't be too bothered by the sound of an F/A-18 aircraft briefly going supersonic. That's because the research jet is performing a dive maneuver designed to reduce the normally thunderous sonic boom to what NASA calls a "quiet thump," more like the sound of a car door slamming. The test flights are aimed at measuring the community response to the new, quieter booms and are part of NASA's larger effort to develop a new, more muted supersonic plane that might be able to fly over land. Current regulations prohibit flights over land that generate sonic booms.
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No, he said "cow" shit.
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No, he said "cow" shit.
And in Texas, all those cows have 'homes."
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How do you know?
Re: It's Texas, cow and pig shit capital of Earth (Score:1)
He meant the governor was lazy and uses a wheelchair to appear "FDR-ish" in photo-ops, bullets are flying everywhere both places of course, and it's COW AND PIG SHIT people are constantly stepping in, much less urbane.
Ahh, Texas. The last bastion of pretend cowboys complaining about California like jealous tumbleweed-chasing leatherfags in 10 gallon hats. Give em back to Mexico.
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Actually, FDR went to great lengths to conceal his disability and never let the press show him in a wheelchair.
Give em back to Mexico.
As opposed to California, which is already there.
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San Francisco people mostly stab each other. If you want shootings you should go to Berkeley.
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Volcanoes and earthquakes, dummy. If you're gonna try to be witty, at least think it through.
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Land that generates sonic booms? (Score:2)
Just what kind of land is it that generates sonic booms?
All well and good until (Score:3)
Re: All well and good until (Score:1)
Why are you going supersonic at only 1000ft AGL?
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I was watching a movie once in a theater, and the Blue Angels hit a sonic boom before they got over the ocean and the whole place shook, and the screen itself was also rocking back and forth after they passed. They tend to get in trouble for this sort of thing, there are strict rules about sonic booms. But you know how it is about fighter jocks and rules.
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JAXA (Japan's space agency) has been doing similar experiments for a few years now. The plan is to develop the technology using the dive technique and then extend it to work in level flight.
Diving also has another advantage for testing. It's easier to go supersonic in a dive thanks to gravity assist, and you don't have to worry so much about control surfaces and stability in the tricky transition region which frees you up to concentrate on reducing the sonic boom.
Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in SW Arizona and the air show that goes on here regularly includes F35's at low altitude, Raptors doing test runs and touchdowns for half the year, Marine air copters, A10's all training and providing a private air show at the Marine Air base, and the Yuma Proving grounds. Nothing beats a cold brew, and vaporizer and a great air show pool side in the evening. Last showing ends promptly at 22:00.
Come enjoy the show - Karn Evil (ELP)
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Funny)
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Part of the year Arizona is an awesome place to be. In the winter it is 80F and sunny almost all the time. Why do you think thousands of snow birds come here during the cool times to enjoy the wonderful climate. During July of course it is hell on earth, but everything, and I do mean everything is air conditioned here.
https://www.snowbirdadvisor.ca... [snowbirdadvisor.ca]
In the summer I go back to the SF bay area in California and enjoy the wonderful climate there.
Please no, Hell no... (Score:2, Interesting)
"quiet thump," more like the sound of a car door slamming
Please no.... Just because you want to fly your plane a little bit faster.
It's totally unjustifiable forcing me to be exposed to noise equivalent to a car door slamming at random: that's still an unfair violation of my right to seclusion and peaceful enjoyment of my property that is well aways from any city or other place subject to routine manmade noises, and also, especially if i'm trying to record audio of nature, etc --- An unwanted intrus
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Sensitive little snowflake that doesn't mind thunder that can crack windows
You're the melodramatic snowflake here --- there's no thunder that cracks windows, and the sound is natural.
Generally, when it thunders that occurs at predictable times and it's raining, and I go indoors when it's raining, anyways.
There's a difference between acts of god and manmade disturbances coming out of the blue.
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I don't think many people will have sympathy for your intolerance of a car door closing when they have to live with far worse constantly. Few people have the luxury of living in a secluded enough area to regularly enjoy purely natural sounds, let alone all the time without interruption.
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I don't think many people will have sympathy for your intolerance of a car door closing
It's NOT a car door closing -- its part a sonic boom that they Claim in their words to be similar in ordinary sounding in their hopes to a car door closing - they aren't supplying a maximum number of decibels on the ground --- they ask different people to rank the loudness, and some people say they hear a Medium-Loud, and others say they hear a Loud boom.....
Guess how loud it's going to sound to you outside, if you ar
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Re:Please no, Hell no... (Score:5, Funny)
I recommend that you train animals to make the sound of car doors slamming, so that in your recordings you will never know if it was a natural sound or a man-made one.
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They already have that in Texas, but it's weird, they make them wear these giant hats and high-heel boots!
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I recommend that you train animals to make the sound of car doors slamming
I was thinking of fitting helmets with attack lasers onto the heads of some birds and training them to home in on and take out anything that sounds like a door slamming.
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yeah they are going to be absolutely CIRCLING your house... A commercial supersonic aircraft isn't coming any time soon even once the sonic boom is addressed. On top of that, when it DOES happen, it will be a few planes on a few daily runs for a long time to come. Assuming you're still alive at that point, and still living where you currently do, it's pretty slim odds that you would ever hear one of these things.
when you hear a thump two or three times a day, just pretend it's a tree falling in the
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You do know a commercial supersonic plane came, for like 30 years, and went?
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A NEW commercial supersonic plane. Is that better? Point remains, if ticket prices are even half what Concorde's were, this will be a niche market, serving coast to coast travelers and international travelers. Your odds of being impacted by the noise are low. REGULAR airliners have to follow strict noise abatement procedures. No reason to think a supersonic plane would be any different near a major airport,
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...and it wasn't allowed to fly over land, which greatly limited its usefulness. This is about an effort to develop commercial supersonic aircraft that can fly over land without rattling windows, spooking livestock, etc.
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Even when I go 50 miles up into the mountains to pick wild mushrooms, there are still airplanes buzzing over.
But the US is a big place... maybe parts of north Alaska there wouldn't be anything flying low most of the year.
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Go near Area 51, no planes there except the ones coming from that base sometimes.
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"...right to seclusion and peaceful enjoyment of my property..."
I don't believe there is any such right.
If you want to live in absolute seclusion, go live in a country that has no meaningful airforce.
I'm sure you can find reasonably-priced, remote property in Zaire. No sonic booms at all. Enjoy.
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I don't believe there is any such right.
Of course there is... it's literally called a Landowner's Right to Quiet Enjoyment, and
interfering with that results in a legal tort for which one can be sued called Private Nuisance [thefreedictionary.com]
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Thanks, that was very informative!
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Where do you live that there's no air traffic? Seems like everywhere I go I'm hearing jet engines that are louder than a car door closing anyway. And I'm talking some pretty boondockish spots, there's just always some rich guys who can afford to fly into the area.
People's Lives Are Too Noisy (Score:2)
They have been doing this up and down the coast (Score:2)
In the Pre-Harvey days, you could hear the thump down here by Rockport. After the hurricane, we have yet to hear them again. I guess they quit doing it so that any weakened structures don't fall in or windows go ahead and fail. I don't hear the pops or thumps anyplace else, including Mustang Island.
I for one welcome the research (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes we know (Score:2)
"NASA is Showering One City With Sonic Booms "
Havana? I hate to break it to you, but you're doing it wrong. Friendly fire.
Dive Maneuver? (Score:2)
the research jet is performing a dive maneuver
I sure hope that they don't expect planes to go across the continent doing a dive maneuver. Might be tricky getting over the Rockies, especially heading west.
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The boom is only when crossing the sound barrier. Once they do that, they can continue to go fast without diving.
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It doesn't.
If that is what it was for, it would an airline doing it.
NASA is doing it, which means it is the US Air Force that wants it, which means it has nothing to do with cross-continent flight.
They don't mind if you hear something something after they already released the bomb and turned around to fly away.
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NASA is working on making a shape that mimics the flight maneuver. So the idea is if they design the plane correctly the sonic boom should have less of the crack crack sound and more of a curve to the booms making the sounds less obtrusive. NOVA had a documentary about the Concorde recently and this was covered in the end of it. Boeing is working on it too.
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Where I come from, the mountains are the same height flying over them either direction!
Canada is so silly!
Is this somehow related to why your upper jaw moves when you talk, instead of your lower jaw?
Sonic Booms (Score:3, Informative)
Galveston Resident here, and I'm part of the test as I'm reporting on the noise levels. The sound is still audible, but not anything like the booms normally sound.
I've heard several already and I'd liken the sound to a demo blast going off many miles away. A low rumble, or thump (several actually), not quite thunder.
Just make them sound similar to school shootings (Score:2)
They Did This In Oklahoma 50 Years Ago (Score:2)
Well, the FAA, not NASA. It was called Operation Bongo II [wikipedia.org]. Is this Operation Bongo III?
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Way to tip your hand, NASA (Score:2)
Jeez, you don't TELL people that's what you're doing until you've finished doing it and asked them if they noticed anything. Now every luddite in the area will bitch.
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Aliens. Definitely aliens.
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Jeez, you don't TELL people that's what you're doing until you've finished doing it and asked them if they noticed anything. Now every luddite in the area will bitch.
Galveston TX is a narrow island where most of the giant cruise ships dock. It is almost fully covered with structures. They have amusement parks instead of neighborhood parks, including ones on the beach that jut out into the ocean.
If they ever had Luddites, they moved to West Texas decades ago.
If you don't know what the place is, look at a picture for a laugh.