Flying sucks. Think about it. You pay big money to deal with the TSA, schlep your stuff onto the plane because checking your bag is another 25 bucks, squeeze yourself into a seat two sizes too small, and pay a king's ransom for a lousy meal served in a box. As if that weren't hell enough, you also deal with the incessant drone of the engines for hours on end. BWARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

There isn't much to be done about the TSA, or those stupid luggage fees, or the torture devices the airlines call seats, but engineering can make your flight quieter.

A team of researchers from North Carolina State University and MIT have designed a lightweight membrane—in its current form, basically a 0.25 millimeter-thick sheet of latex—to cover one side of the lightweight honeycomb structure that is used to build airplanes and helicopters.

The sheet is stretched over one side of the honeycomb matrix like a drum. When low-frequency sound waves (like those from an aircraft engine, say) hit it, they bounce off, dramatically reducing the effect of the engines on passengers. "At low frequencies" [below 500 Hertz], says Yun Jing, lead author of the paper and a professor at NC State, "the honeycomb panel with the membrane blocks 100 to 1,000 times more sound energy than the panel without a membrane."

Their research shows low frequency sounds transmitted through the fuselage into the cabin can be reduced as much as 30dB1, a significant amount considering that decibels measure logarithmically, while increasing the weight of the honeycomb structure by approximately 6 percent—a key consideration, because airlines are fanatical about weight. The noise reduction benefits decrease significantly at higher frequencies, limiting its use to low frequency noise like engine drone.

Jing says the membranes could be installed in existing aircraft designs—they wouldn't need to be designed around a next-generation plane—and, with funding to continue the research, it could hit the market in five or six years. Here's to quieter flights.

1UPDATE: 09:20AM 04/30/15 This story was updated to correct the possible reduction in noise offered by the membrane.