Lockheed Martin’s new plane could cut flight time in half. Here’s how it works
CORRECTION: NASA hopes new technology persuades the Federal Aviation Administration and international regulators to change a law regarding supersonic flights to focus on a noise standard rather a speed limit. The group seeking the change was incorrect in an earlier version of the story.
When it comes to improving airplane technology, for a long time, it’s been about how to soften the sonic boom.
Cathy Bahm of NASA has been studying the occurrence for years. She remembers testing sonic booms in the middle of the desert as an intern at Armstrong Flight Research Center during her time at Texas A&M.
Now, years later, the time has come to build a plane that tones down the noise.
On Dec. 31, that new plane, X-59 QueSST, rolled into Fort Worth and found itself in Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth for tests. The aerospace company built the plane, a NASA project, at its California-based Skunk Works plant, which specializes in secret projects. The project began in 2018.
“It’s a long time coming,” said Bahm, the deputy project manager. “It’s exciting.”
Though supersonic travel used to be a thing, Project Management Director for Skunk Works Eric Schrock said, federal law largely bans supersonic flight over land. The last commercial supersonic flight in the United States was in 2003, when the Concorde traveled from New York to London.
The X-59 is expected to create a “sonic thump” that sounds less like a boom and more like distant rolling thunder or the slamming of a car door from a ways away, Bahm said. NASA hopes that technology pursuades the Federal Aviation Administration and international regulators to change the law to focus on a noise standard rather a speed limit.
If it all goes to plan and the changes are made, the technology could revolutionize flights and cut them in half, according to a press release.
The seafoam green shell of a plane sat in a Lockheed hanger on Friday morning as a cluster of workers twiddled with its top and bottom. At 100-feet long with a 29-foot wingspan, it features a long nose cone with a flat tip and few, if any, juts. Engineers even nixed the canopy. Instead, the pilot will rely on a screen and cameras fastened to the top and bottom of the plane, Schrock said.
Schrock compared what they’re trying to do with the design to an Olympic diver: Just like divers lengthen their arms and point their toes to eliminate splash, the plane’s lack of contours will mitigate a sonic boom.
“We knew these phenomena for a long time,” Schrock said. “But until we got computers to be able to really be able to model this, the way these different shock waves interact, we’ve not been able to, you know, come up with a design like this.”
Proof testing has been successful, NASA project manager Craig Nickols said. The X-59 will head back to California next and head to the next phase of testing, which includes flight tests over four to six communities with different topographies and climates to test the community’s response to the noise. Bahm said they have not yet decided the locations.
From the time he began his career at Lockheed, Schrock said he knew supersonic flight could be a possibility as he’s seen opportunities unfold.
“Just about anything’s possible,” he said.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 2:21 PM.
