We all desire commercial supersonic travel, let’s be honest. Long-haul trips may be soul-crushing, and flying just a few hours to spend the weekend on the other side of the planet would permanently revolutionize travel. While the Concorde provided a glimpse into the future of travel, it was quickly snatched away as manufacturers grappled with the massive downsides of supersonic flying. Particularly challenging is the issue of sonic booms.
After months of ground testing, Lockheed Martin and NASA’s response to the ever-present sonic boom issue, a new supersonic jet design known as the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology aircraft, has come home, and the prognosis is favorable. NASA has announced that the phase of testing whether the aircraft could withstand the extreme stress it would face at supersonic speeds is now complete, and that just a few more tests are needed before it can take its inaugural flight, bringing us one step closer to commercial supersonic travel.
A sonic boom is the consequence of compressed pressure waves at the front and back of an airplane combining into a single shockwave when they can no longer get out of the way of each other before reaching the ground as it passes through the sound barrier. Many people assume that a sonic boom occurs only when an aircraft reaches Mach 1 (over 767 miles per hour or 1,235 kilometers per hour, the speed of sound), however this is incorrect; the shockwaves are heard by everyone the aircraft passes over.
A bullet’s crack has the same impact as a sonic boom, albeit on a much smaller scale. This noise is loud enough to induce hearing loss in veterans, but if the shockwave is larger – say, the size of a plane – it may inflict structural damage as well as noise levels of up to 120 dB. As a result, commercial airliners flying above that regularly break windows in their route are not feasible, and supersonic flight above land is forbidden.
Engineers must thus quieten the boom in order to develop an airplane that can blaze across the globe at speeds above Mach 1. The X-59 was a concept plane that computer models indicated would create a substantially lower sonic boom, or “sonic thump,” as NASA describes it. While not perfect, the design greatly minimizes sonic boom noise and possible damage, allowing Lockheed Martin and NASA to hope that the restriction on overland supersonic commercial flights would be removed.
According to NASA, if the testing go well, the X-59 might start flying above cities as early as 2024. They therefore believe that the X-59, as well as the sound measurement technologies that went into its development, would open the road for supersonic flying over land.
In an earlier statement, John Wolter, principal researcher on the X-59 sonic boom wind tunnel test, said, “With the X-59, we intend to demonstrate that we can decrease the irritating sonic booms to something far quieter, referred to as’sonic thumps.” “The idea is to supply regulators with noise and community reaction data, which might lead to new guidelines allowing supersonic flying over land.” The test demonstrated that we not only had quieter aircraft designs, but also the correct technologies needed to estimate future aircraft noise.”
