Unfortunately its configuration, even if successful, is wholly impractical to scale up to a commercial aircraft. Being able to generate a softer thump with a n

Unfortunately its configuration, even if successful, is wholly impractical to scale up to a commercial aircraft. Being able to generate a softer thump with a needle-like aircraft is technically interesting but practically irrelevant. The SSBD program had more potential, playing around with more capacious configurations that could possibly have been expanded upon: https://www.airliners.net/photo/NASA/Northrop-Grumman-F-5E-SSBD/1148586 https://www.airliners.net/photo/NASA/Northrop-Grumman-F-5E-S...