Boom Supersonic plans to build the world’s fastest airliner, Overture, and this week announced a breakthrough in the development process. The post Boom Supersonic announces breakthrough in travel at the speed of sound appeared first on The Manual.

During the second supersonic flight of the XB-1 technology demonstrator today, the jet exceeded Mach 1 three times without a boom being detected by microphones on the desert floor below.

When the experimental XB-1 aircraft achieved supersonic speeds on a test flight, it did not create a disruptive sonic boom – thanks to a physics phenomenon called the Mach cutoff

If you've been keeping tabs on aviation news as of late, you saw that Boom Supersonic just recently broke the sound barrier with its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft. Oddly enough, no one on the ground heard a thing during its "boomless" cruise.

The scaled-down prototype, nicknamed the "Baby Boom", broke the sound barrier for the first time during a test flight over the Mojave Desert in California in late January. The small jet, officially called XB-1, reached an altitude of 35,000 feet before accelerating to Mach 1.1 (844mph) – "10% faster than the speed of sound", said Sky News.

Boom Supersonic now says Overture can avoid sonic booms, potentially opening up overland flights even at Mach 1 or higher. This could be a big deal.

A Colorado-based company said it broke the sound barrier three times without generating a sonic boom that reached the ground.

Boom CEO Blake Scholl confirmed that on January 28, the XB-1 successfully broke the sound barrier three times without creating an audible sonic boom. “We broke the sound barrier