New Experimental Lockheed Supersonic Jet Starts Production (wtop.com) 88
Lockheed Martin's X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft is officially in "the manufacturing phase," bringing the company "one step closer to enabling supersonic travel for passengers around the world." The experimental jet was awarded a contract from NASA earlier this year as it is capable of flying at supersonic speeds without creating loud supersonic booms. Currently, commercial supersonic aircraft are banned from flying over land because of the noise and potential damage the booms may cause. WTOP reports: "The long, slender design of the aircraft is the key to achieving a low sonic boom," said Peter Iosifidis, Low Boom Flight Demonstrator program manager at Lockheed Martin. "As we enter into the manufacturing phase, the aircraft structure begins to take shape, bringing us one step closer to enabling supersonic travel for passengers around the world," he said.
Lockheed expects to conduct its first flight in 2021 and gather community response data on the acceptability of the "quiet sonic boom" the plane creates. NASA will use that information to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to overturn current regulations banning supersonic travel over land. The X-59 will cruise at a speed of about 940 mph and an altitude of 55,000 feet. Lockheed says it will create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, instead of a deafening sonic boom.
Lockheed expects to conduct its first flight in 2021 and gather community response data on the acceptability of the "quiet sonic boom" the plane creates. NASA will use that information to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to overturn current regulations banning supersonic travel over land. The X-59 will cruise at a speed of about 940 mph and an altitude of 55,000 feet. Lockheed says it will create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, instead of a deafening sonic boom.
Re:NASA (Score:5, Informative)
Furthering the bounds or aeronautics research is what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration does, and has been doing since it was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, back in 1915.
Or didn't you ever wonder what the "A" in NASA stands for?
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I figured it had something to do with "budget-minded" A-holes in the anti-science anti-governance Obstructican Party?
When was the last time you saw a creationist filing suit against a reactor or lying down in front of an earthmover? The anti-science people who actually obstruct science are in the Obstructicrat Party.
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Or didn't you ever wonder what the "A" in NASA stands for?
I thought it was "Administration".
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Because they have the wind tunnels, supercomputers and software to model and supersonic flight airframe designs?
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May not have been NASA, but it was a Government agency that paid for it.
The program used the Bell Aircraft-built XS-1 rocket engine powered aircraft, with Yeager serving as lead pilot for the Air Force and Hoover for the NACA.
What came of that knowledge I wonder?
The research techniques used for the X-1 program became the pattern for all subsequent X-craft projects, including the X-15 experimental aircraft for hypersonic flight research bu
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Re: NASA (Score:2)
Money? NASA? They run ancient setups and antequated code because that's all they can afford. They have no money and get less each year in real terms.
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that was kinda my point, i guess i forgot the tag :)
it seems like boing needed a hand out and it got routed through NASA for a commercial application of a project benefiting a corporation.
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Well, to be fair, since Congress shut down NASA's work with Boeing on the blended wing body, no civilian aircraft manufacturer has taken the work further.
In other words, some research that is arguably essential just can't be done privately.
Now, I could see a case for LaRC doing the work independently and then providing it to everyone, but if I remember rightly from my time there, they're not allowed. They're only allowed to do joint ventures with private companies. That's all LaRC is, these days, a R&D
The purpose of NASA (Score:2)
why is NASA subsidizing a commercial project..
You don't have any clue what NASA does do you? Research is their primary mission, specifically including public/private research partnerships. This is how NASA's research activities benefit the US. NASA research eventually gets turned over to the private sector and we all benefit from it - the term for this is technology transfer. This is exactly the sort of "subsidy" you want because no private company could justify the risk for such an exotic and unproven technology.
Also you do realize NASA doesn't bu
Still noisy (Score:1)
"A low sonic boom" is still a noise event that may exceed urban noise limits, and should be restricted to airports that have runways that end at the sea in an industrial/commercial zone, not near residential population.
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They don't boom during takeoff/landing, they boom during flight
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Exactly my point.
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What? You talked about airport restrictions, except the noise is not anywhere near the airport it takes off or lands at. What zoned property is near the airport has nothing to do what area will be near where the sonic boom is made, as that will be considerable distance away.
"Let's mandate noise absorption barriers around suburban driveways, because of the road noise of cars at highway speeds." "But cars don't drive highway speeds in drive ways." "Exactly my point"
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Technically, I live next to a highway, SR-99. So do a lot of people.
A plane taking off over the ocean from a runway creates noise over the ocean, not over populated land. This is why there were so many SST restrictions.
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Read what I said
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Sonic booms don't happen anywhere near the runway, so why would that matter? You don't think they approach at supersonic speed, do you? This would be to enable cross-country flights at supersonic speeds. And if indeed the noise is like "a car door closing" then calling it a noise event is a bit exaggerated. Maybe somewhere over North Dakota it would add a tiny bit of noise, but not really more than the call of a horny elk would...
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So does my muscle car. Learn to like it.
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Electric cars have great torque.
You'll get to hear the tire noise, even louder. Traction control is easy to disable.
You will be enjoying smokey burnouts for your lifetime!
Re: Still noisy (Score:2)
Nobody worships nature, silly! That would annoy Thor.
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That's silly. If you can build a supersonic plane that makes a "boom" that's no louder than a car door closing, why put restrictions on where it can fly? We don't put restrictions on where you can close your car door.
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You've never heard me slam a car door.
I have a neighbor who rides a noisy motorcycle that sets off all the car alarms on the block when he rides by.
A plane that does the same thing is not something that should fly over cities.
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Sure. But airplanes that make sonic booms that sound like the soothing whispers of a breeze blowing through soft moss should be encouraged.
Pretty much as relevant as your neighbour's motorcycle.
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Round where I live, it's the learner drivers with their two stroke mopeds that make the noise. The larger more powerful ones are quiet.
Re: Still noisy (Score:1)
those expensive glorified vibrators called Harleys are quiet?
Don't care (Score:2)
"A low sonic boom" is still a noise event that may exceed urban noise limits
I'll buy that argument when urban areas start actively banning Harley Davidson motorcycles and other more mundane sources of unnecessary noise pollution.
In any case if this aircraft [wikipedia.org] does what they hope then it will be FAR quieter than any noise restrictions in most communities at around 75dB perceived.
"Loud supersonic booms" (Score:3, Funny)
If the booms were supersonic, nobody would even complain.
Alas, the booms are indeed sonic.
I know you paid a quarter for that word, but my advice: Ask for change.
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NASA does lots of important stuff, but you probably don't know about it because most of it is for the benefit of the US Air Force.
News flash: US Special Forces flying around in their space planes don't really give a rats ass if you call them a video game. They might as well be Iron Man from your perspective.
Long and slender (Score:5, Insightful)
"The long and slender design..."
Probably means fewer passengers and a really crappy fuel economy per passenger compared with the wider and slower jets in service.
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That's exactly what I thought. There would have to be some tilt up nose to allow it to carry an economical number of passengers.
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"The long and slender design..."
Probably means fewer passengers and a really crappy fuel economy per passenger compared with the wider and slower jets in service.
Yes. It probably won't have an economy class.
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Probably means fewer passengers and a really crappy fuel economy per passenger compared with the wider and slower jets in service.
Obviously, but first class/premium business is also vastly less efficient than cattle class. If it becomes a choice between 4 hours in a normal seat or 8 hours with extra comfort/space I'd go for the shorter one every time.
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Re: Long and slender (Score:2)
That doesn't impact the 777 relative to the A380.
Re: 940 mph? Boring... a .357 flies that fast (Score:2)
You can do mach 5 using a hydrogen-powered ramjet on a waverider airfoil, according to theory.
The design would seat a lot of passengers.
The Scottish Rocketry Society produced a waverider before NASA had even been satisfied the theory would work.
Nobody has come close to producing a commercially viable waverider of the necessary design.
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/de... [aerospaceweb.org]
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/de... [aerospaceweb.org]
If you look at the mock up pictures in the article (Score:2)
Re: If you look at the mock up pictures in the art (Score:2)
I still think they are out to correct the complaints about the old SST(Cost per flirght, noise)
If that existing shape is the only way to achieve [sub-optimal] quiet supersonic flight, they'll have to scale it up to rather large airframes or this'll remain a boutique tech for a small handful of impatient ultra-rich.
As an aside, seems to me 'quiet overland nach1+' is all well and good unless it means utterly-unviable designs capacity/economy-wise...
Metric (Score:1)
That's 1513 km/h (or 420 m/s) and 16.8 km.
According to NASA's mach speed calculator [nasa.gov], that's Mach 1.42.
High emissions (Score:2, Insightful)
With nothing less than civilization at stake, it's a wonder that these projects are being embraced by the organizations that understand implications of climate change.
The Concorde burnt 2 tonnes of fuel just taxiing the runways. 16L/100km per passenger in the air, or half the efficiency of the average car. I'm sure there will be relative improvements. But supersonic jets are a luxury few of us can afford monetarily, and none of us can afford in terms of emissions.
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few of us can afford monetarily,
I can.
and none of us can afford in terms of emissions.
I've saved up a few carbon credits.
Re:High emissions (Score:5, Informative)
The Concorde burnt 2 tonnes of fuel just taxiing the runways.
That's not really an indictment of the Concorde's overall efficiency though. It was always a huge fuel hog (by design) on the runway, much more so than in the air. It was always designed as an efficient aircraft.
16L/100km per passenger in the air, or half the efficiency of the average car. I'm sure there will be relative improvements. But supersonic jets are a luxury
The concorde was designed successfully as a high efficiecy aircraft. What everyone forgets is that it was on the drawing board at the same time as the boeing 747.
At that time the path to high efficiency wasn't clear. There are two ways of upping the efficiency of the engines, higher pressure ratios and higher bypass. The concorde went the former route and has a pressure ratio still unmatched by any other commercial jet engines, but it had to fly at Mach 2.2 at high altitude to do that.
The 747 went for high bypass engines with rather worse efficiency in the core but much greater overall efficiency. Not needing to fly high and fast, they had much more flexibility on the airframe and could put a lot more people on, getting further gains.
Turns out the 747 strategy was the clear winner, but that was not obvious before.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that "bypass" is a concept that doesn't really apply to a jet engine that has to operate supersonically. And, as time has gone on subsonic, high-bypass ratio engines have seen drastically more efficiency improvements than supersonic jet engines.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that "bypass" is a concept that doesn't really apply to a jet engine that has to operate supersonically.
Technically you can, but yes it doesn't work that well.
And, as time has gone on subsonic, high-bypass ratio engines have seen drastically more efficiency improvements than supersonic jet engines.
Yes, part of that is it being clear that supersonic engines weren't the best strategy so they've had little investment. Fundamentally though it seems that the larger su
Concorde all over again! (Score:2)
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Pretty well, actually. They didn't have any trouble filling up flights.
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Just have a look how well supersonic flights sold when Concorde was still active...
Really well, even with the high ticket price. The bigger problem for the Concorde was that it couldn't service transpacific as it didn't have the required range, and it couldn't serve transcontinental USA due to not being allowed to fly over land. These new planes aim to solve both those problems.
The last problem is a high ticket price. On select routes there's no shortage of people willing to pay extra. A Concorde flight cost more than a first class of another flight and yet offered no more luxuries than a
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If you watch those videos of fighter jets flying at low altitude over beaches, you can see the shock wave cause water to condense. What they plan on doing is creating two shock waves from different parts of the aircraft and have them cancel out.
Re: It still has a sonic boom (Score:2)
This means that you rip through the air, and what's behind you, is a vacuum, that collapses. That's what the sonic boom is.
No, that's not right at all. A sonic boom is air pressure waves "piling up" to form a larger shockwave. Has nothing to do with "vacuum collapsing".
There's no way to eliminate it.
Not completely, but there certainly are ways to minimize it.
In principle (Score:4, Informative)
A waverider should generate little sonic boom because of where the shockwave is placed. We also know how to build them and they should be capable of passenger loads comparable to - or better than - the high-end Airbusses.
I assume they're not the design used because they're a bugger to make stable and NASA had some accidents, but that would seem a better way to go.
Commercial? I think not. (Score:1)
Production? (Score:2)
Wait up! (Score:2)
Will this be the same "... gather community response data ..." that they didn't offer pilots for the F-35 piece of shit that ran over schedule and over budget?
Does Lockheed Martin have fucking pictures of prominent politicians with goddam donkeys?