In launch event on Friday, agency shared plans to test over US cities to see if it’s quiet enough by engaging ‘the people below’
Nasa has unveiled a one-of-a-kind quiet supersonic aircraft as part of the US space agency’s mission to make commercial supersonic flight possible.
In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound – or 925mph (1,488 km/h).
The aircraft, which stands at 99.7ft (30.4 metres) long and 29.5ft wide, has a thin, tapered nose that comprises nearly a third of the aircraft’s full length – a feature designed to disperse shock waves that would typically surround supersonic aircraft and result in sonic booms.
pretty neat that the image of the plane for the article is shot from so close that you can only see 1/3 of it, but to be fair it does include the screens of people’s phones as they take a picture of the thing. kind of like going to a concert.
Saudi Arabia is going to love this news.
https://theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/27/revealed-saudi-arabia-plan-poor-countries-oil
Old news now. The evil in the hearts of humans will be our collective undoing.
Yeah but with the pictures on the phones, we actually end up with more picture per picture with this method.
It’s proportions make it hard to frame it for an article headline picture. This is cropped to show a colorful array of the fun parts: cockpit, landing gear engine intake with a clear X-59. It’s like trying to make a cover picture feature a pencil.
This other article uses a dramatic background to fill the space. It’s from NASA though, so they’re not limited to the conference. They don’t have to have their own picture to say “I was there”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC3Fl7Bt4qQ
Nasa has a video up now
Please don’t. We need to be reducing air travel, not increasing it. Go invent a quiet supersonic train or something.
the transatlantic railway is feeling less and less like a funny absurdist joke by the hour
What is your plan for intercontinental travel? Increased ship travel, taking a week and burning massive amounts of crude fuel oil? Just cut off the Americas and Australia from Europe, Africa and Asia for non-commercial purposes? The supersonics have mostly been used for trans-atlantic and trans-pacific travel.
Less and more efficient airplanes. Supersonic aircraft will consume more fuel.
These kinds of comments only say it’s wrong; they never make a valid contribution to finding a solution.
The guy you’re replying to or the nonce suggesting we shelve all transportation technology and only use trains?
sailing and solar power exists, and i’m pretty dang certain we could get an ocean liner to cross the atlantic in less than a week with modern tech. Also probably still less emissions than air travel considering how absurly much fuel that uses.
There is a reason the tall masted rigged ships disappeared for regular travel; most people don’t want to take a month to cross the ocean in close quarters. Cruise ships are the closest analog to a long haul jet, and are no better to twice as CO2 producing than the airline travel, and the fuel they burn is the lowest grade fuel oil with the worst additional pollution. If you are moving across the ocean, or even just traveling, most people won’t be able to pilot their own sailing yacht and take 15-30 days to do it.
I’m trying to fight the downvoters, you were on -3 when I saw your comment.
That’s called a hyperloop, nobody liked the idea.
I think the next innovation will be slow electric powered lighter than air travel. Airships may be the future.
That and these new supersonic planes, they’re already happening. Boom supersonic is currently testing their demonstration plane based on this nasa project.
That’s called a hyperloop, nobody liked the idea.
I think the next innovation will be slow electric powered lighter than air travel. Airships may be the future.
That and these new supersonic planes, they’re already happening. Boom supersonic is currently testing their demonstration plane based on this nasa project. Their next step is to build a supersonic business class jet.
Now the fuel efficiency problem needs to be reckened with. The sonic boom was the main reason why supersonic planes were shelved but poor fuel efficiency was the other 800 pound gorilla in the room.
That’s what we really need right now. Faster air travel for fewer people.
Pierce said the X-59’s job would be to “collect data from the people below, determine if that sonic thump is acceptable and then turn the data over to US and international regulatory authorities in hopes to then lift that ban”.
Why can’t commercial airlines fund the project, then? Why is NASA investing public money to deregulate private industry?
Huh? NASA is providing thought leadership to expand the possibilities of human travel, but has no interest in running a commercial airline.
Many technologies you use every day started as NASA research
Why are tax dollars going to something that will only benefit a small percentage of people and will cause relatively bad environmental damage.
Are you aware what NASA stands for?
I personally am happy some of my tax dollars go towards advancing science.
The reason we have issues in society…homeless people, lack of universal healthcare, etc is not because we find NASA, it’s via mismanagement of the funds we have, and bad politics, etc. None of which are NASAs fault or purpose.
NASA does a huge amount of environmental research as well. But part of their team focuses on experimental flight, and this is a product of that.
Nasa is always researching supersonic/hypersonic travel, that’s what a space agency does.
It would be hard to list ALL of the ways that research benefits you.
This is literally how every expensive R&D project gets done. Private companies won’t dump this kind of money into good R&D, but the government will because they don’t care about ROI.
Deregulate is not the same as engineering a solution to solve the problem that was previously solved by regulations.
This is outsourced to Lockheed Martin so it’s basically just using Nasa to fund the military even more. There is nothing commercially interesting about this. It’s all military planes.
