Sonic boom heard over Washington is a rare sound with a rich history

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The air actually rushing over the surfaces of the aircraft will cause a sonic boom.” “When the Space Shuttle orbiter was coming back into the Earth’s atmosphere, you would typically get to sonic booms,” Brickhouse said. “The SpaceX Dragon capsule created sonic booms.” Brickhouse said the F-16 flying over Washington on Sunday was “probably trying to go as fast it could to catch up” with the wayward Cessna airplane. In 1947, test pilot Charles “Chuck” Yeager became the first person to fly faster than sound in an orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane. In 1973, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibited supersonic flights over land, “based on the expectation that such flights would cause a sonic boom to reach the ground,” the Congressional Research Service wrote.