Ten years ago, Boeing was trying to figure out whether the next step in air travel was increased speed or increased efficiency. The 787 Dreamliner should clue you in to what the decision was, but the increased speed option is not entirely off the table, and a new patent filed just last month might mean that Boeing's "Sonic Cruiser" is still alive and kicking.
The (potentially) exciting thing about this new patent is that it contains substantial design changes from the original Sonic Cruiser model unveiled back in 2003 (and pictured above). This means that Boeing has had somebody seriously working on the concept, at least a little bit, since then. Here's an image showing the differences between the original 2002 patent (at the top) and the new 2012 one (at the bottom).
It looks like the focus of the design changes has been to reduce engine noise, which is a big problem when you get high speed aircraft operating out of urban airports. To that end, the 2012 patent has engines mounted on nacelles above the aircraft's fuselage, and uses outboard vertical stabilizers and the long flat tail surface to make a sort of a box to keep engine noise from blasting directly at the ground.
Otherwise, there are some aerodynamic changes, but that video game shape (with the front fins and stuff) is still definitely there. The Sonic Cruiser isn't super sonic, being designed to fly at just 0.98 Mach, but that's enough to shave about 20% off of travel time without (Boeing says) using any more fuel than a conventional twin-engine airliner.
Just because Boeing has filed a new patent doesn't mean that it's thinking of making one of these anytime soon, but on the other hand, if Boeing was thinking of making one of these anytime soon, filing a patent would probably be one of the first steps.
FlightGlobal, via Gizmodo
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