Sitting Out Lean Times, Aerion Keeps the SSBJ Flame Alive
This spring Aerion has been testing an 80- by 40-inch airfoil section mounted to the belly of a NASA F-15B. The flights are intended to investigate the real-world robustness and stability of supersonic boundary layers in the presence of surface imperfections introduced by manufacturing tolerances or other contamination. (Courtesy: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center)
This spring Aerion has been testing an 80- by 40-inch airfoil section mounted to the belly of a NASA F-15B. The flights are intended to investigate the real-world robustness and stability of supersonic boundary layers in the presence of surface imperfections introduced by manufacturing tolerances or other contamination. (Courtesy: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center)

Aerion, which has been defining and refining its design for a supersonic business jet (SSBJ) for the past 11 years, is here at EBACE (Booth 7030) still quietly confident that it will someday be able to add the word “producer” to its résumé. To that end, a NASA F-15 has been flying this spring from Dryden Flight Research Center in California with an 80- by 40-inch section of Aerion airfoil attached to its belly. This second phase of flight-testing is intended to validate Aerion’s most crucial theory and measure “the real-world robustness of supersonic natural laminar flow.”