The one thing I really love about flying is it's the freedom that you kind of feel.

Flowing through the air, you can feel it somewhat when you're in a swimming pool or if you're a scuba diver or something like that.

There's just something else about that kind of freedom you feel.

The research side of stuff makes it really cool that, you know, for me, it can be the most boring flight I've ever flown,

but at the same time it can be exciting because I know what we're getting from this. The scientific

discovery part of what I get to do as a research pilot can be just as exciting as getting

into the airplane and flying it. This is NASA's curious universe.

Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

I'm your host, Patty Boyd,

and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

NASA's research pilots and scientists are hard at work,

solving a pretty tricky problem.

Right now, planes have the capacity to fly incredibly fast,

getting passengers and cargo to their destinations quickly. However, once planes reach a certain speed, they cause what's called a sonic

boom, a burst of energy that can be heard and felt by the people below.

So flying passengers quickly, also called supersonicly,

has been, for the most part, banned for causing quite a ruckus.

But what if we could change that?

What we once thought of as a fact of physics is now being reworked.

NASA and Lockheed Martin are creating and testing an experimental airplane

that lessens that loud sonic boom, making it into more of a sonic thump.

In this episode, we're going to explore that exciting and strange-looking research airplane

...