A supersonic transport (SST) is a civilian supersonic aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. The only SSTs to see regular service to date have been Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144. The last passenger flight of the Tu-144 was in June 1978 with its last ever flight in 1999 (as utilized by NASA). Concorde's last commercial flight was in October 2003, with a November 26, 2003 ferry flight being the last ever airborne operation for the model. Following the permanent cessation of flying by Concorde, there are no SSTs in commercial service.

Supersonic airliners' greater speed and efficiency over their conventional counterparts have made them objects of numerous recent and ongoing design studies. Drawbacks and design challenges are excessive noise generation (due to sonic booms and at takeoff), high development costs, expensive construction materials, great weight, and an increased cost per seat over subsonic airliners. Despite these challenges, Concorde was operated profitably in a niche market for over 27 years.

The sound barrier, in aerodynamics, is the point at which an aircraft moves from transonic to supersonic speed. The term, which occasionally has other meanings, came into use during World War II, when a number of aircraft started to encounter the effects of compressibility, a collection of several unrelated aerodynamic effects that "struck" their planes like an impediment to further acceleration. By the 1950s, new aircraft designs routinely "broke" the sound barrier.

Some common whips such as the bullwhip or sparewhip are able to move faster than sound: the tip of the whip breaks the sound barrier and causes a sharp crack—literally a sonic boom.Firearms since the 19th century have generally had a supersonic muzzle velocity.

The sound barrier may have been first breached in nature some 150 million years ago. Some paleobiologists report that, based on computer models of their biomechanical capabilities, certain long-tailed dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus and Diplodocus may have possessed the ability to flick their tails at supersonic velocities, possibly used to generate an intimidating booming sound. This finding is theoretical and disputed by others in the field. Meteorites entering the Earth's atmosphere usually, if not always, descend faster than sound.

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American business magnate, engineer and inventor. He is best known for co-founding SpaceX, Tesla Motors and X.com, which later became Paypal after acquiring the service. He is currently the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. While at those companies, Musk co-designed the first viable electric car of the modern era, the Tesla Roadster, a private successor to the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9/Dragon, and the world's largest Internet payment system, PayPal.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian-American mother and a South African father. His maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model, appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and a Time Magazine supplement in 2010.

Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.