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New Group to Unveil Skunk Works Supersonic
Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI) will announce plans today to develop a Quiet Small Supersonic Transport (QSST) based on technology developed by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. New-start SAI is headed by Las Vegas resident and investor Michael Paulson, son of late Gulfstream Aerospace chairman Allen Paulson.
Lockheed Martin developed key features of the QSST design under a $20 million contract from Paulson, signed in 2001. The announcement ends long speculation about the identity of the sponsor behind the company's low-boom work (see page 29). Artists' concepts show a 12-passenger, 150,000-pound airplane with a canard layout, a high-mounted gull wing, and an inverted V-tail bracing the wing and underwing engine nacelles to the rear fuselage. It is claimed to have a 4000-nmi range at Mach 1.8 and weighs 150,000 pounds for takeoff.
Unlike Aerion, which announced plans for a lighter and simpler airplane here on Monday, SAI is aiming for a low-boom design that will be able to operate at supersonic speeds over land.
Paulson told the Wall Street Journal that he is pursuing the project to fulfill the last wishes of his father, who died in 2000. In 1991, when Allen Paulson was still chairman of Gulfstream, he announced a joint project with Russia's Sukhoi company to develop a supersonic business jet, but it never progressed beyond the paper study stage because of sonic boom concerns and the cost of developing a suitable engine.
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