Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Operation Bongo II


In 1964, a joint FAA-NASA-Air Force program intentionally caused 1,253 sonic booms of increasing frequency and intensity over Oklahoma City in experiment to study the social effects of supersonic air travel. You can read more about the program here:
Oklahoma City Sonic Boom Testing

The thrust of the experiment was to see how annoying and disruptive repetitive airplane-generated shock waves would be on the general population. For context, it's important to remember that the mid-1960s was a time when environmental concerns were just starting to become a major consideration in the choices made by engineers and large organizations, and nobody knew how bad was too bad in terms of noise pollution. In theory, the maximum overpressures generated (about 2 pounds per square foot) were too weak to shatter glass, but it soon became clear that glass was in fact shattering, often, and that hazardous work like surgery and construction was being seriously disrupted. Oklahoma City was chosen because it was thought that the city's population would be more amicable to testing than others, dependent as their economy was on a major FAA center and Air Force base. The booms were unacceptable there, the experiment said, and by extrapolation anywhere else on land.

In the end it was the drag caused by pressure waves, not their noise, that doomed the economics of supersonic transports. Still, Bongo II certainly didn't help the case Boeing and NASA attempted to make that flight faster than sound was the way of the future for the masses. Only the Concorde would fly passengers regularly in significant numbers, and only for a time, as a prestige project for the French and British governments. Time will tell if this is an idea whose time may come again, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

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