Illustration of NASA's Low-Boom Flight Demonstration aircraft as outlined during the project's preliminary design review in 2017.
Credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin
The Trump administration's fiscal year 2019 budget proposal for NASA includes full funding for an experimental supersonic airplane that could one day transport commercial-airline passengers faster than the speed of sound.
Known as the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD), this X-plane is scheduled to make its first test flight as early as 2021 and "would open a new market for U.S. companies to build faster commercial airliners, creating jobs and cutting cross-country flight times in half," the White House budget request states.
