press release 09 07

8/8/2019 Press Release 09 07

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major question facing ourindustry today is simply tobe or not to be supersonic.

Chuck Yeager broke through thesound barrier on Oct 14, 1947, yetcommercial aviation has essentiallybeen locked in a time warp for thepast 60 years. So why are we still

flying aircraft at 400500 kts?Yes, there was the ill-fated

Tupolev TU144 and the renownedBritish Aerospace/Sud AviationConcorde. Despite its incrediblespeed, the Concorde was doomedas a financial success partially dueto its tremendous sonic boom andits 1960s technology Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus turbojets,which produced an ear-shatteringtakeoff noise, and due to its after-burners that guzzled fuel at a timewhen petroleum embargos were in

vogue.Also, FAAs FAR 91.817 regula-

tion restricted the Concorde tosubsonic flight over populatedlandmasses. These regulations madeairlines rethink investing in thisrevolutionary 100-passenger super-sonic aircraft. Instead they chosenew, high-capacity widebody air-craft such as the Boeing 747. Only20 Concordes were built, of which14 entered commercial service.

However, the Concordes speedadvantage made it a favorite withpassengers, despite high ticketprices. Business travelers commut-ing regularly between New Yorkand London or Paris found the timesavings significantly advantageous.And while only British Airways and

Air France operated the Concordefor any time, the demand for fasttransportation across the Atlantickept it in service for an amazing27-year period. The Concorde wasan unequivocal operational suc-cess, a prime demonstration thatspeed sells and is still in highdemand. Numerous market studiesconfirm a demand for 300400quiet supersonic transport (QSST)-type aircraft over the next 20 years.

So, considering those figures,why hasnt any company commit-

ted the resources to actually builda new supersonic aircraft? Despitenumerous announcements over thepast 2 decades about proposedsupersonic business jets (SSBJs), thetruth is that the aviation industry isprimarily focused on near-termshareholder return. Thus, anylong-term project, such as anSSBJ, suffers.

Second, the market dictates thatany new supersonic aircraft must

have the Q of quiet design to bea success. And this undoubtedlyhas to come from a company withthe resources and critical superson-ic design expertise to accomplishthis featsomething only a fewcompanies in the world truly have.

Third, despite many complaints

among travelers about long over-seas flights, the truth is that every-one has become complacent withour subsonic transports. Therefore,no major airframe manufacturer isgoing to invest the capital andresources to accomplish thisformidable endeavor. To make achange we need aviators, businessand government leaders to demandthat the aviation industry providethe 21st-century traveler withsomething that is bold and newnot a repackaged derivative air-

craft from a past era. As long asthere is high demand for subsonicbusiness aircraft, the industry willstay with the status quo.

Time savings

From my days at Gulfstream, Iknow first-hand that there is a con-sensus among pilots and passengersthat being locked up in an aircraftfor anything over 8 hours is too

58 PROFESSIONAL PILOT / September 2007

SSBJ DEVELOPMENTS

Putting a Q into supersonic flightBy Michael PaulsonChairman & CEO, Supersonic Aerospace IntlPrivate/Inst.

A

SAI and the 4000-nm range SSBJa designthat combines speed, comfort and neighborliness.


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long. The new ultralong-range busi-ness aircraft are now capable of 14to 15-hour flightsway too long,no matter how comfortable the

accommodations may be. Whatsnext? A Mach 0.80 aircraft with 20-plus hours range? Lets hope not.Global transportation truly needs anew revolutionary quiet supersonicmode of transportation for theworlds leaders in business and gov-ernment.

My late father, Allen Paulson, for-mer owner and CEO of Gulfstream,made it his passion to find a paththat would lead the market to atruly revolutionary supersonic air-craft. From the late 1980s until hispassing in Jul 2000, he tirelesslyadvocated research to see if it waspossible to tame the sonic boom,with the goal of supersonic travelover continental land areas.

In his final years he began talkswith the design team at the famedLockheed Martin Skunk Works.My father taught me early on thatto achieve the best, you surroundyourself with the best. He lived bythis credo and chose to work with

theSkunkW o r k s

due to theirrenowned avi-ation engineer-ing expertise,especially withtheir 5 decades of workon revolutionary supersonic air-craft that included the amazingSR71 Blackbird, F104 Starfighter,and the F117 stealth fighter, tomention a few.

Answering the essential question

My father and I agreed that ini-tially it would be too complicatedand take too long for US govern-ment assistance. To make our questpossible, we needed an answer tothe essential question: Is there aquiet supersonic aircraft designthat could mitigate the sonic boomenough for high prospects ofreceiving governmental authorityto fly at supersonic speed over thecontinental US and global populat-

e dl a n dareas?

As my fathernoted in a Nov 1999article in Pro Pilot,Lockheed Martin had com-pleted some conceptual lowboom designs that they thoughthad some promisein theory.However, to determine if this waspossible, Skunk Works believedthere was a need to perform anextensive design feasibility study. Inearly 2000, we asked their designteam to give us a cost proposaltoward completing a Phase 1 feasi-bility design study to answer thatessential question.

PROFESSIONAL PILOT / September 2007 59

Patented design of Supersonic Aerospace Intl (SAI)s revo-lutionary quiet supersonic transport (QSST) takes the boomout of supersonic flight. With the prospect of flight beingallowed over continents, a 2.5-hr flight from New York toLos Angeles may be possible in the foreseeable future.

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We soon received their cost bud-get and, thanks to my fathers unwa-vering commitment to quiet super-sonic flight, he dedicated funds tocomplete this work knowing that hewould not see his vision fulfilled. Inone of our last conversations, Ipromised that I would make it my

mission to bring a revolutionaryquiet supersonic aircraft to market.

Quiet supersonic transport

This brings us to our QSST pro-gram. I continued to engage Lock-heed Martin on establishing a pro-gram and founded SupersonicAerospace Intl (SAI) to fulfill thisendeavor. In May 2001 we finalizedour contract with Lockheed Martinfor the critical Phase 1 study, whichused the Skunk Works facilities and

staff in Palmdale CA. During the ini-tial program, up to 40 of its topdesigners and engineers performedthe work, which was kept in secrecyuntil we announced the project atthe 2004 NBAA Convention in LasVegas NV.

Clay Lacy, a longtime familyfriend and renowned aviator, col-laborated with me and the designteam to establish the QSSTs thresh-old design goals. To answer the

essential question, foremost ofimportance was that the design hadto be exceptionally quiet, so theteam concluded that the maximumacceptable sonic overpressurecould not exceed .5 psf to achieve alow boom design.

Also, the aircraft had to meet the

latest FAA Stage 4 noise standards,as well as those of EPA, to makeQSST environmentally compatibleusing state-of-the-art airframe andengine technology. During Phase 1we engaged the 3 largest engine

manufacturersGE, Pratt & Whit-ney and Rolls-Royceand conclud-ed that a new turbofan enginedesign was achievable to meet thelatest FAA and EPA standards,including sustainable supersonicflight without the use of inefficientafterburners, known as super-

cruise.Next, the aircraft required a mini-

mum range with IFR reserves of4000 nm with a long-range cruisespeed of Mach 1.61.8, whichwould keep surface temperatures


Dimensions of SAIs sleek QSST design would ensure size compatibility with most of todays FBO and corporate hangars.

This QSST wind tunnel model is one of many low and high-speed models used by LockheedMartins Skunk Works to validate the aircrafts performance.


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moderate and retain the ability touse conventional composite andaluminum construction. We alsolooked at a design to fly nonstop

over 5000 nm, but the aircrafts sizegrew exponentially with range per-formance, which created otheraerodynamic and operational chal-lenges. So it was decided that thisminimum 4000-nm-range thresholdwas the desired design goal. To con-firm this decision, Lacy and I spentan afternoon plotting out the mostcommon transoceanic routes flown.We concluded that a 4000 to 4300-nm range would be ideal, as thiswould accomplish most commoncity pairs without a refueling stop,

as well as flying most of the longestglobal routes with one stop.

Third, the aircraft needed highdispatch reliability and no extraor-dinary operational characteristics sothat it would fit right into any flightdepartment. Lacys first-hand know-ledge of operating large FBOs assist-ed the design team in establishingacceptable operating characteris-tics, such as taxiway turning radiibeing compatible with regional air-ports used by business jets.

Lastly, the aircraft required a supe-

rior 21st-century cockpit plus theexceptional passenger comfort andamenities to which business travel-ers have become accustomed.Essentially, it required the attributesof current large cabin business jetssuch as the Gulfstream, to includestand-up headroom and adequatebaggage space for up to 12 passen-gers, with easy flight accessibility.

Before we achieved the finalQSST configuration, we studied

nearly 40 different designs in aneffort that took hundreds of thou-sands of engineering man-hours,including numerous supersonic and

subsonic wind tunnel tests. Also, aflight test of a modified Northrop F5fighter confirmed our nose designsability to substantially mitigate thesonic boom.

All our hard work doing the feasi-bility study proved a resoundingsuccess when the essential questionwas met, exceeding all of our origi-nal threshold design goals. TheQSST design was designated atSkunk Works as Model P422 inhonor of my fathers birth date.

Our 6-year work effort has result-

ed in over 20 US and foreign patentapplications. The most striking fea-ture is the inverted V-tail, whichgives the QSST its unique look andis essential to achieving a shapedsonic signature. This and other criti-cal aerodynamic features gives theaircraft an amazing 0.3 to 0.5-psfoverpressure in supersonic flight,thus putting the Q in our QSSTdesign, and making it over 100times quieter than the Concorde.

Speeding toward the futureThe Skunk Works team achieved

an amazing resultone that I havepersonally witnessed in LockheedMartins acoustic simulator wherethey can simulate the Concorde andQSST under various settings. Es-sentially, it shows that we have vir-tually eliminated the boom. In atypical everyday metropolitan noiseenvironment, the QSST has the abil-ity to fly at supersonic speed over-

head without even being detected.In the quietest settings, the simula-tor shows that the insignificantrumble directly below the QSSTis a mere second and much quieterthan a car driving by a home oroffice building.

I hope that this article will stimu-late action within the aviation com-munity to encourage the industry to

step forth to create a revolutionarysupersonic aircraft like the QSST. Asthe Wright brothers did last century,we need to be bold and committedto aviation progress in our secondcentury of flight. To get QSST tomarket within the next 7 yearsrequires a lot of resources that onlyan international consortium canaccomplish, preferably with anexisting OEM taking on the leadrole of the QSST project.

In closing, I thought it apropos tomention a great ladythe late

Moya Lear, wife of the legendaryBill Lear. In a May 2001 article forPro Pilot which appeared under hername, she spoke of supersonicflight. She stated, We need moreBill Learspeople with the visionand the commitment to stay thecourse because they believe insomething. Also, a mutual friendtold me that she stated, If Billcould come back today to see thatthere wasnt a supersonic business

jet built, he would be astonishedand very disappointed. Im sure if

my father could somehow return in2014, and saw that a QSST was noton any FBO ramp, he too would beastonished and disappointed.

Hopefully, we will see a QSSTsoon. Ill do my best to keep thepromise I made to my late father,in seeing that the QSST becomes areality. I hope that the business avi-ation community will do its vitalpart, too, and assist me in this wor-thy endeavor to revolutionize avia-tion in the 21st century. And I hopethat revolutionary aircraft is the

Quiet Supersonic Transport, ModelP422.

Michael Paulsonfounded SupersonicAerospace Intl in2000 to fulfill hispromise to create arevolutionary QSSTfor the 21st century.He is an experiencedprivate pilot.


SAIs QSST is designed to carry up to 12 passengers in large-cabin comfort, including morethan 6 ft of headroom, a galley and full lavatory, and access to baggage during flight.

press release 09 07

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