This is completely unrelated to the Condcorde crash but I was wondering…
The Concorde only makes transatlantic flights cuz the sonic boom (apparently they don’t go supersonic until they’re over the ocean). But what would happen if they flew it from NY to LA? Would there just be one boom when they broke the sound barrier or would it boom all the way across the country?
I figure if there’s just one boom going supersonic and one coming back out it would be a small price to pay to get across the country at a fraction of the time.
Lots of booms from what I understand. The sound collects in front of the jet until it “spills over” causing the boom, afterwards more sound collects until it occurs again. I don’tknow how often it happens, but there’ll be a lot of noise over the Great Plains states.
To expand on tcburnett’s answer, the shockwave extends like a cone from the aircraft, in fact there are multiple shockwaves with at least two for nose and tail. The cone follows the aircraft like the bow wave of a boat. When the shockwave passes over the listener, then you hear the boom.
The Concorde is also quite loud subsonic because it has the largest pure turbojet engines made. Most modern jets are turbofans. Some get more thrust from the large fan than from the jet engine itself.
As others have said, it happens the whole way. I understand that the Concorde was originally supposed to fly across Europe, as well as across the Atlantic, but they had to curtail those routes because of protests over the noise. One story, which I believe I heard on a PBS documentary, goes that some French guy sued when he was ‘surprised’ by the sonic boom, causing him to impregnate his wife against his will.
No comment on jb’s post.
But I do think I recall (seeing as how there has been a lot of news coverage of the Concorde lately) hearing that it did (perhaps still does) fly from Miami to either DC or New York. The newscaster got to fly on an early flight and I think I remember him saying how they couldn’t go supersonic over the states, but once they took off from NYC or DC, they broke the barrier. I think.
I can understand why they don’t fly supersonic over land.
If you’ve heard one, there louder than Hell.
Visiting relatives in Flagstaff Arizona, I heard one. Couldn’t figure out what was going on. My grandfather laughed and mentioned Luke Air Force Base outside of Pheonix AZ. He said it happens from time to time.
In my opinion, hearing what I heard, you’d get pretty irritated pretty fast hearing that all the time.
in an earlier thread, someone mentioned hearing the booms before they had been banned. said that in school the occasional sonic boom would cause the windows to bow in. what the hell? they can really be that loud?
how loud was the concorde’s (in decibels, i guess) sonic boom? could you feel it as it first hit?
In my personal experience, standing outside minding my own buisness, I could literally feel it.
To make a comparison: It’s like standing very close to a fireworks show. When one of the good ones goes off, you see it and then are ‘hit’ with the sound. Except that the sonic boom is unexpected and there are two ‘booms’.
(heh, accidentally typed in boobs as opposed to booms. Corrected it but wonder what that means)
Like I said, alot like a standing right next to the launching area of a fireworks show. If you haven’t done it, I recommend it. Damn cool.
If you haven’t, remember that one lightning bolt that hit close to where you were standing? In my case, it was alot like that. And, since you don’t expect it, it seems even louder.
Can’t answer your decibel question, however, I wasn’t holding a meter at the time.
if there is no one to hear the Concorde, does it boom?
(this is why it flies over the Atlantic :))
anyway, the boom is a travelling shock wave that follows behind the supersonic plane
Sorry to show my ignorance but I don’t quite get it.
I thought that you heared the boom because when travelling at the SOS the plane kept on catching up the ‘old’ noise and adding ‘new’ noise to it. That way an observer (listener) got all the noise in one big BANG! (real scientific huh?)
If that were true (I am open to explanations of why it might not be) then travelling > SOS the plane would overtake the ‘old’ sound so the listener would hear the ‘new’ noise before the ‘old’, i.e. backwards, wouldn’t they?
Could it be that you hear the boom when the plane is travelling towards you at a relative speed = SOS?
no no. imagine the front of the plane like a snow plow. the air is getting all bunched up at the front, and is able to spill away to the sides. the sonic boom spreads in a cone-like shape away from the tip.
