Whats the Silent Aircraft Initiative?
Back in 2002 and 2003, when air travel predicted to double in the coming decades, the government of the United Kingdom decided to initiate a study that would make life a lot less noisy for those living close to Heathrow Airport. Within that context, the Cambridge-MIT Institute began a research project designed to reduce aircraft noise for those on the ground. For the Silent Aircraft Initiative, an international team of graduate students, professors and commercial-airline engineers set out to design a plane that even people living under the departure and approach routes to major airports would hardly notice. In November 2006, armed with a sleek proof-of-concept model called SAX-40 and all of the computer-generated statistics to prove the viability of near-silence to a room full of scientists, industry representatives and generally important people, the Silent Aircraft Initiative finds itself in a world with a slightly shifted perspective. Under stiff political pressure to curb climate c
