The headline is misleading. It's quieter, but far from silent.
sonic booms quieter than a hairdryer
More like about one specific noise. Jet aircraft are generally pretty loud even outside of sonic booms.
Hairdryers are quite loud too. It's a stretch to describe even the sonic boom as "silent".
Aren't they fairly quiet to the passengers?
(the sound being behind the plane)
X doubt
Aerospace needs effiency not speed.
Given that this is being developed by COMAC which is a state owned company, I absolutely expect that it will see the light of day.
The problem is that the only way to do this is by using rocket engines which are extremely polluting. There would need to be new motor innovations which can be used for every field. Iike a small nuclear motor or the like.
I think we'll have to wait and see what they actually come up with here.
Scheduled to debut in 2049
Gonna be a long wait
China does tend to have a track record of finishing big engineering projects early. :)
The Chinese projects I admire is the non fancy stuff. Like building trains.
I personally like technological advancement in general. China has a good mix of practical and immediately useful tech, but they also do some moonshot projects like this. Even when these projects don't work out, something interesting is learned in the process.
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