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Research to Develop Supersonic Corporate Jets ($4.7 Million)
Lockheed Martin will receive a total of more than $21 million in federal money—with $4.7 million funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to advance research for supersonic jet travel.27 High ticket costs, fuel-guzzling and the infamous sonic ―boom‖ helped doom commercial supersonic travel in the past; the last Concorde jet flew in 2003.
The benefits of NASA‘s current research, experts say, will likely go first to business executives, who can afford one of the handful of personal supersonic jets that companies hope to roll out in several years, with a price tags in the tens of millions of dollars.28 Lockheed itself is assisting a private bid to develop a supersonic corporate jet.29 ―Spend a cold morning in Aspen [Colorado]. Make your afternoon meeting in Paris. And be back in Chicago for dinner,‖ says an online ad for the QSST aircraft,30 which is expected to be able to fly at speeds approaching 1,200 miles an hour, presumably carrying whomever has $80 million to buy one.31
The benefit to most Americans of Lockheed‘s research is far off, if it even exists: while an impressive feat, commercial supersonic travel is expected to remain prohibitively expensive for decades. ―The economics of commercial… supersonic jet transport are just cruelly grim,‖ one expert recently told a reporter.32
One of NASA‘s lead scientists on the project rejects that, however. ―We have brilliant people . . . that have come up with solutions that are going to make it economically viable. We're going to fly supersonically over the U.S.,‖ said Louis Povinelli, a senior NASA scientist. ―Eventually.‖33
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