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Nasa unveils quiet supersonic aircraft in effort to revive commercial flights

https://lemmy.world/post/10656840

Nasa unveils quiet supersonic aircraft in effort to revive commercial flights - Lemmy.World

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.

Jan 13, 2024 at 11:13amWeb
Show threadSlopppyEngineerJan 13, 2024
I would be disappointed if the prototype isn’t nicknamed Pinocchio.
Show threadNESSI3Jan 13, 2024
It doesn’t look like it can hold a lot of people. What’s the commercial application? Enabling the ultra wealthy to fly private at mach 1.4 from New York to California?
Show threadKage520Jan 13, 2024
They are still in the prototype stage. If they can prove the physics on small planes, they can scale up for commercial ones.
Show threadeskimofryJan 14, 2024
They can’t scale up without scaling up their costs. Proving the physics is easy (because concorde already did some of the hard work). It’s quite challenging to convince anyone that this is nothing but posterity for rich people.
Show threadBen Hur Horse RaceJan 13, 2024
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.
Show threadQuokkaJan 13, 2024
Yeah but with the pictures on the phones, we actually end up with more picture per picture with this method.
Show threadconditional_soupJan 13, 2024
Yo dawg, I heard you like pictures
Show threadNuddingJan 13, 2024
Haha I wonder about the ungodly amount of fuel it burns.
Show threadcuriousPJJan 13, 2024
Saudi Arabia is going to love this news.
Show threadNuddingJan 13, 2024
Old news now. The evil in the hearts of humans will be our collective undoing.
Show threadgreedytacothiefJan 14, 2024
I’m not so sure it’s their hearts, those are full of blood. It’s more like a system that incentivises people to make immortal decisions for profit.
Show threadSteveJan 13, 2024
The website blasted me in the ass with ads, while simultaneously begging for donations
Show threadXeroxCoolJan 13, 2024
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
Show threadcuriousPJJan 13, 2024

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC3Fl7Bt4qQ

Nasa has a video up now

NASA’s Newly Unveiled X-59 Quiet Supersonic Plane Eyes First Flight (Trailer)

YouTube
Show threadNougatJan 13, 2024
This design may minimize the sonic boom, but that boom cannot be eliminated. "Artist's impression" image shows ... absolutely no room for passengers. This is a design test aircraft focused solely on minimizing shockwave noise. Any passenger plane based on this design is going to be very low capacity, and wholly unable to pull up to a jet bridge at any airport.
NASA to unveil X-59 supersonic plane that makes a 'sonic thump'

The experimental X-59 aircraft is designed to break the sound barrier without making the startling booms produced by current supersonic planes

New Scientist
Show threadJohnDClayJan 13, 2024
This is a technology demonstrator to understand the acoustics of sonic booms. Passenger versions would likely look very different, just incorporating the information gathered from this project.
Show threadNougatJan 13, 2024
Why, that is exactly what I said!
Show threadJohnDClayJan 13, 2024

Any passenger plane based on this design is going to be very low capacity, and wholly unable to pull up to a jet bridge at any airport.

I was addressing this, that passenger designs based on this design may not look anything like this airplane. So the constraints of the demonstrator won’t necessaraly carry over to the actual vehicles.

Show threadNougatJan 13, 2024

In order to minimize sonic booms, the design must feature an incredibly long, thin nose. That's what precludes such an aircraft from pulling up to a gate. There's just not enough room.

If such a passenger plane goes into production, it would need to be hand in hand with airport redesign, and the aircraft would still have a low passenger capacity. Any passenger aircraft with a reasonable capacity would need to be enormous. It's going to use more fuel to get to M1.4, which will still keep ticket prices high. That means these will be for wealthy people only, if they're even economically feasible at all.

Show threadLanternEverywhereJan 14, 2024
The concorde (or the knock off, i forget which) had a nose cone that moved, so something like that could be potentially designed for the new aircrafts design too
Show thread4amJan 13, 2024
No, you said it wouldn’t work as a passenger aircraft. You sound like a naysayer.
Show threadNougatJan 13, 2024

No, you said it wouldn’t work as a passenger aircraft.

I said no such thing. What I said was:

Any passenger plane based on this design is going to be very low capacity, and wholly unable to pull up to a jet bridge at any airport.

Show threadeskimofryJan 14, 2024
Actually, a lot of people including me would naysay even if it is viable. Because this stuff is for rich wankers who don’t need another excuse to burn down planet earth in their search for the next money making scheme.
Show thread4amJan 13, 2024
Please explain why you think that principles learned here cannot inform designs at scale. Do you think it’s the small size of the aircraft which reduces the sonic boom?
Show threadBiggestBulbJan 13, 2024
To be fair about the jet bridge thing, I've definitely been at some pretty major airports (read "SeaTac") and gone out onto the concrete to board a small plane. The jet bridge is not a deal breaker
Show threadCocodapufJan 15, 2024

Look at boom spersonic’s jet designs: boomsupersonic.com

They’ve already sold future planes to several airlines. It’s happening.

Boom - The Future is Supersonic

Making the World Dramatically More Accessible

Boom
Show threadblazeraJan 13, 2024
Looks to me like a climate change accelerator for rich people. Fewer people per flight, spending more fuel to go faster.
Show thread4amJan 13, 2024
Pleas explain why you think either of those things are true.
Show threadSomeonelolJan 13, 2024

I’m no expert but I’ll take a stab at it. The faster you go the more drag you get on the fuselage that would need to be compensated for with more fuel (unless some neat mechanic helps to mitigate that). Take a look at a conventional jet airplane and you’ll notice it’s capable of holding passengers from nose cone to tail reasonably well due to its cylindrical shape. The X-59’s design has some very interesting geometric features that would give less internal volume for passengers (unless it can be modified to improve for this).

If that’s not reasonable enough then just look at the kinetic energy equation, KE=1/2mv^2. Compared to a velocity of a jet airliner going at 900km/hr versus this plane’s Mach 1.4 (roughly 1500 km/hr) it takes roughly 2.78 times more energy to move a vehicle at that speed (not accounting for drag, energy efficiency, etc.). Is it worth spending roughly 2.78 times more fuel to get to a place 1.67 times faster?

Show threadLibertyLizardJan 13, 2024

Supersonic jets already exist and use dramatically more fuel to carry fewer passengers. Making them not work this way would be an amazing breakthrough that would have merited some mention in the article.

Because of the high fuel use and limited space, this technology will be only used by the ultra-wealthy and will considerably accelerate climate change. It is an absolutely disastrous use of public funds.

Show threadblazeraJan 13, 2024
the coefficient of drag goes up exponentially the faster you go. As for fewer people, I used my eyes to see that there's not a lot of room for passengers.
Show threadsoggy_kittyJan 14, 2024
Please explain why you don’t think either of those things are true.
Show threadeskimofryJan 14, 2024

Not OP:

The more you try to fly faster through any fluid (like earth’s atmosphere) the more drag you face. Hence you need a lot more energy (orders of magnitude more, possibly exponentially more). This equates to more fuel burn.

Also since you are going supersonic… you really cannot build big. Also, these things are quite expensive to build, maintain and run. Hence only the top 1% of folk could afford to fly in these things.

Show threadSwedneckJan 14, 2024
well, that’s 5 answers and no reply from you, i assume you’re busy campaigning to ban short-haul flights?
Show threadAbouBenAdhemJan 13, 2024

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?

Show threadSteveJan 13, 2024
Deregulate is not the same as engineering a solution to solve the problem that was previously solved by regulations.
Show threadPsychedSyJan 14, 2024

The assumption that all regulations are good now, and in perpetuity, is the issue here. Deregulation of shite or outdated regs is a good thing ffs.

It’s insane to me that the word seems so opaque to people.

Show threadDistractedDevJan 13, 2024
The first A in NASA is aeronautics. They just do the science. I would say deregulation is a fairly strong word here. It’s more like they’d be updating the laws to reflect modern tech.
Show threadArtyomJan 13, 2024
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.
Show threadYou999Jan 13, 2024
Except this ignores the existence of bell labs, you know the private R&D lab with ten Nobel prizes and a laundry list of inventions that quite literally shaped our modern world.
Show threadpossibly a catJan 13, 2024

Using taxes to subsidize for-profit companies that will only enrich an exceedingly small percentage of the population?

That’s not how all R&D works. It is how Bayer and friends operated for awhile, though.

Show threadLinkerbaanJan 13, 2024
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.
Show threadPsychedSyJan 14, 2024
Well, this might be missile research.
Show threadGBU_28Jan 13, 2024

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

Show threadawwwyissssJan 14, 2024
Why are tax dollars going to something that will only benefit a small percentage of people and will cause relatively bad environmental damage.
Show threadGBU_28Jan 14, 2024

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.

Show threadawwwyissssJan 14, 2024
I’m happy to fund science too, but this isn’t the time to develop even more fuel-intensive commercial travel options.
Show threadCocodapufJan 15, 2024

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.

Show threadawwwyissssJan 15, 2024

Yeah but it doesn’t usually research how to make commercials transportation way less fuel efficient.

“The New York Times looked at the same comparison in the late 1970s when rising fuel prices were causing major difficulties for Concorde. It concluded that Concorde used four times the amount of fuel of the 747, based on a New York to Paris flight. These comparisons are even worse when looking on a per passenger basis – Concorde, of course, only took 100 passengers, compared to well over 400 on the 747-400.” source

Planes are already a bad source of pollution, this makes it 8 times worse. Awful.

Show threadCocodapufJan 15, 2024

It’s researching how to make “any” supersonic vehicle quieter… You know NASA does have a whole fleet of supersonic vehicles, but they can’t operate them anywhere over land in the US. It’s literally illegal to fly a supersonic vehicle over populated areas (most of the US).

You act like this technology is only applicable to commercial passenger liners, but it’s literally all supersonic aircraft.

Show threadawwwyissssJan 16, 2024

“Nasa unveils quiet supersonic aircraft in effort to revive commercial flights”

Title of the article and this post.

Show threadCocodapufJan 16, 2024

Ohh, does the headline changes all the facts in my statement?

These are advances in physics. Understanding the sound created by sonic booms is really understanding the nature of airflow and shockwaves in the supersonic regime. This is critical scientific development for NASA this could lead to more efficient rockets, and space planes as well as more efficient engines.

Did you know that the F1 engine that powered the Saturn V suffered from 1 major problem? Combustion instability, due to acoustic disturbances in the combustion chamber. Because of this they had to turn shut down at least 1 engine early in every launch. Understanding supersonic shockwaves is exactly the kind of thing that could have solved that problem.

A headline changes nothing.

Show threadPsychedSyJan 14, 2024
This is probably defense spending, tbh.
Show threadAceticonJan 15, 2024
American is a Socialist country for those wealthy enough.
Show threadBruceTwarzenJan 13, 2024
That's what we really need right now. Faster air travel for fewer people.
Show threadLibertyLizardJan 13, 2024
But how else will the wealthy jet over to their summer homes in new Zealand when wet bulb temperatures exceed human survival in the Northern Hemisphere?
Show threadAwkwardLookMonkeyPuppetJan 14, 2024
This is pretty amazing! This thing could take people from Los Angeles to NYC in 2 hours. The science behind it is really cool.
Show threadxkforceJan 14, 2024
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.
Show threadLandsharkgunJan 14, 2024
Please don’t. We need to be reducing air travel, not increasing it. Go invent a quiet supersonic train or something.
Show threadgaaelJan 14, 2024
That is not said often enough, thank you !