Page 28 - AAA March / April 2024 Digital Magazine | GBP
P. 28
doesn’t disturb those on the scientists. and their potential benefits.
ground.
“Rescale on AWS streamlined “Nasa will share the data and
The US Air Force Presidential our aircraft simulations unlike technology we generate from
and Executive Airlift Directorate our on-premises infrastructure,” this one-of-a-kind mission with
is also looking at the project with said MacDonald. regulators and with industry. By
keen interest. demonstrating the possibility of
“This allows engineers to sim- quiet commercial supersonic
ulate airflow angles around the travel over land, we seek to
Tim MacDonald, Chief aircraft, thereby determining open new commercial markets
Technology Officer, its performance during takeoff, for U.S. companies and bene-
Exosonic: landing, and missions. The goal fit travellers around the world,”
even extends to noise reduction,
sculpting the aircraft’s shape Pearce added.
“We are inte- to mitigate shockwave-related Vik Kachoria, President & CEO
noise on supersonic flights,” he
of Spike Aerospace, said that the
grating ‘boom added. next chapter of supersonic and
softening’ tech- Exosonic aircraft are designed hypersonic high-speed travel
has been in the works for some
with sonic boom shaping tech-
niques into nology to mute the sonic boom time now, pushing towards the
reintroduction of supersonic
our supersonic and avoid the disruptive booms flight — low-boom, low-emis-
of the past. By the time the sonic
aircraft. The fea- boom reaches the ground, the sions and environmentally
responsible.
sonic boom will be softer, “no
tures aim to turn louder than a car door closing “We aren’t going to go back-
down the street”.
loud sonic booms This shaping design means that wards or be stuck forever at
the same air speed we’ve been
into a series of typical city traffic will drown out flying at for the past 60 years
softer thumps.” the sound of the sonic boom, (Mach 0.85, 652mph, 1,050kph).
Numerous ventures are promis-
according to MacDonald.
ing a resurgence of supersonic,
In addition to their work with hypersonic and point-to-point/
the Air Force under the Phase
The architectural blueprint of II Small Business contract, orbital travel – just the next
Exosonic’s aircraft necessitates Exosonic had also closed its chapter of air travel, not the final
intricate and computationally seed round, securing over one (think “beam me up” and
intensive engineering simu- US$4M in capital to continue its “warp drives”). They all envision
lations, which the company mission to provide supersonic a future where everyone can
executes on a robust high-per- flight everywhere. explore the world and eventually,
formance computing (HPC) the stars above.
platform housed within a data These breakthroughs will help
center. open the door to an entirely new Yes, environmental concerns, cli-
global market for aircraft manu- mate change, noise and equality
Recognizing the cloud’s facturers, enabling passengers issues all have to be addressed.
potential for scalability and to travel anywhere in the world in We cannot advance technology
flexibility, Exosonic partnered half the time it takes today. to the detriment of the our com-
with Rescale, an AWS Partner, munities, neighbors, wildlife and
to create a turnkey HPC plat- Like Bob Pearce, associate the planet. Those challenges,
form on Amazon Web Services administrator for aeronautics along with the usual engineering,
(AWS), offering an arsenal of research at Nasa Headquarters finance, business, regulatory
over 1,000 commercial and in Washington said, it’s thrilling considerations are mere bumps
open-source simulation appli- to consider the level of ambition in the road towards the future,”
cations for engineers and behind projects such as Quesst Kachoria added.•
28 | MARCH - APRIL 2024 WWW.GBP.COM.SG/AAA
