Word: sonics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Beyond the sound barrier, the main obstacle to commercial supersonic flight is the miles-wide swath of broken windows, cracked plaster, frazzled nerves and aching eardrums that might be left behind by sonic boom. Resigned to it, airlines are planning either routes over water and desert or subsonic speeds over populated areas. Either solution could cut deeply into the time-distance economies that could otherwise be gained by flying huge planes faster than the speed of sound...
...listen! In TIME Letters [Dec. 22] are the following people: a farmer who resents not being allowed to go on relief like his city cousins; a blast at sonic booms; a "misunderstood" college student who smokes pot, drinks, and makes out on dates because her parents committed the unforgivable sin of loving, "not listening"; and another college student lamenting the state of the world...
...would be hard-pressed to find a competent acoustician, heart specialist or surgeon who would find the startle of the sonic boom acceptable to society. Air routes that avoid populated areas and economists who agree with the FAA are equally rare...
Though the Federal Government has already spent upwards of $3,000,000 on research, it has still not decided what strength of sonic boom-if any-will be "acceptable" in populated areas. After the FAA bombarded Oklahoma City with eight booms a day for six months in 1964, three out of four inhabitants said they could tolerate it-but one out of four said he could...
...single SST flying supersonic across the U.S., believes Shurcliff, would trail behind it a bang zone 50 miles wide that could destroy the peace of 20 million Americans. He also argues that competition from cheaper, larger "jumbo jets"-which will produce no sonic boom-could turn the SST venture into "a gigantic boomdoggle" with the taxpayers absorbing most of the loss. "We all believe in progress," he says for his group, "but some things just aren't progress. Aviation should be the servant of man, not his scourge...