NASA’s X-59 completes first no-boom supersonic flight, more than a year after a private company did it
NASA yesterday made a big deal about the first successful supersonic test flight of its X-59 test plane, built by Lockheed Martin for $247.5 million to demonstrate quiet no-boom supersonic flight.
And as usual, our uneducated propaganda press played along, touting the wonders of this new NASA achievement. A few examples:
- Scientific American: NASA’s X-59 plane goes supersonic for the first time
- Aerospace America: NASA’s X-59 breaks sound barrier in first supersonic flight
- Fox News: NASA’s ‘quiet’ supersonic jet completes first flight in potential breakthrough for commercial air travel
- Space.com: Going supersonic! NASA’s X-59 jet breaks sound barrier for the 1st time
Poppycock. Not one of these news articles made mention of the fact that the private commercial company Boom Supersonic accomplished the same feat eighteen months earlier, its XB-1 supersonic airplane breaking the sound barrier with no boom three separate times. And it did so using private funds for significantly less and getting the job done faster and in a manner that it can quickly convert into its planned commercial supersonic planes.
The X-59 is a typical NASA test project, designed to test a technology in a manner that is generally too specific and expensive for commercial use. Without doubt the engineering and the data from these flights will be helpful to companies like Boom, but to use it will require major changes and revisions to bring the cost down. It is for this reason Boom did its own engineering and test.
That I appear to be the only news outlet aware of this important background information — that puts a significantly different light on this government project — illustrates the bankruptcy of our modern media. They don’t know anything, and can only rewrite press releases.
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From the media, then, Deafening Silence on the COMPLETE sonic boom story.
In many ways, X has become a better news medium than the traditional media. They’ve become so used to being propaganda mouthpieces that real reporting is rare.
I like Boom. They and Hermeus (and a few other companies, such as Astro Mechanica) are trying to push the state of the art forward in aviation again, after a long stagnation and minor improvements in design or fuel efficiency and the like. I hope they all succeed; supersonic/hypersonic planes that are appropriately priced and more convenient are probably one of the few paths to dethroning the Boeing/Airbus duopoly.
And why is this this being researched? By NASA especially. Could it be a way to funnel money to their favorite company?
NASA has long done aviation research-that’s what the first A is all about. But the way the NACA did it was better, in my opinion.
I agree with Nate P. My two cents on this is that NASA’s research is public knowledge while Booms research is proprietary knowledge.
This is a NACA type program…latest in a long line of X-planes…but I get it…orange rocket bad, NASA bad, fire bad….sigh.
We grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, when California was Reagan Country. Our Air Force pilot dad worked out of several bases over the years. Hamilton, Moffit, and, of course, Travis Air Force Base. We grew up with sonic booms, and loooved them. We knew dad was not in that jet, but he was up there.
The current Drive-By Media cannot celebrate private enterprise, unless it is fully woke and pushing a Left agenda. Private, free people breaking the sound barrier doesn’t fit their hive-mind, big government mindset.
Robert wrote: “”…..illustrates the bankruptcy of our modern media. They don’t know anything, and can only rewrite press releases.””
Reminds me of another of Reagan’s favorite quotes:
“”The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.””
These days, the media’s combination of ignorance, bias, laziness, the “know so much that isn’t so” is why the alternative media is flourishing. I look forward to the day when the label “Alternative Media” will apply to, and be the remnants of ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-MSLSD, ETC.
Fuel efficiency and minor improvements are about all you can expect
Boring twin-jets are about as locked in as are shark streamlining.
The Sonic Cruiser was the last cool design Boeing had, and the tyranny of the stockholder equation killed that.
Nothing will come of either Boom or NASA’s pointy nose designs, apart from (perhaps) faster Learjet replacements.
Starship–the Beech Starship–was a real looker….and they actively tried to kill it off.
Buffet was probably right, I’m sorry to say.
Why? What is the justification for this claim?
What relevance does this have to Boom, Hermeus, and Astro Mechanica?
Again, why? What drives this belief?
Who tried to kill it? What relevance does this have to Boom? What was Buffet right about?
At SPF, someone revealed the quote about Buffet wishing Orville Wright had been shot out of the sky, remember? How airlines lost thirty-seven billion dollars.
For every Elon-type futurist, there are many more dullards like Buffett.
We could have had an SST years ago—but no luck
Delta did buy their own refinery last I heard—so there is that.
Blended Wing Body craft won’t have many window seats, and if USAF doesn’t fund it, we may never live to see it fly…and one could make a better economic case for it than supersonic craft.
No. I’m not this mysterious person you evidently think I am. That said, Buffet’s complaint is really about investors being unable to keep much of the money airlines earn (and he changed his mind around 2016, when Berkshire Hathaway invested heavily in airlines), not about aviation being unprofitable in general.
And we’ll have one, perhaps more, within a decade. The new crop of aviation companies isn’t held back by what stopped the previous generation.
Why do you think military funding is required? JetZero, which is who I suspect you’re talking about, has had success in raising money from private investors, including future customers, and they’re planning a full-scale flight next year. Whether or not it’s a better business case depends on the target market–for low-cost travel, it’s very possible, but there are millions of people flying transatlantic and transpacific flights, and cutting travel times in half would stimulate substantial demand; faster aircraft will be competitive for passenger transport on longer routes.
“Blended Wing Body craft won’t have many window seats, and if USAF doesn’t fund it, we may never live to see it fly…and one could make a better economic case for it than supersonic craft.”
You sure can, and I’ve seen blended-wing designs since the 1970’s. But, people like to see out. The business case for those aircraft is strong, but the business case is only as strong as demand. No one is demanding to spend 12 hours in a windowless room breathing stale air in an uncomfortable seat.
Modern screen and sensor tech could go a ways toward making the experience more Human-friendly. A little surprised the airlines haven’t done more, here. Something along the lines of Otto Aerospace. .
I haven’t heard anything much about Starship PTP recently, I don’t know if that’s a dead concept, or just lower priority and not making public noise at the moment. I should go read the SpaceX prospectus and see if there’s any mention of it there. But if that happens, then that chops the top end off Supersonic airflight. A quick napkin calculation puts a Starship ticket at around $3000 or so. Expensive, but worth it for international travel in less than 90 minutes. And nobody is going to want to spend close to, much less more than that, for a flight that takes 4 hours or more. At least if the experience is tolerable, not an astronaut level joyride/workout.
But point to point requires a Starship launch capability at the other end. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the likes of the UK or France to permit the establishment a Starship compatible spaceport…
Ballonmann wrote:
“”But point to point requires a Starship launch capability at the other end. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the likes of the UK or France to permit the establishment a Starship compatible spaceport…””
Just like the development of the American Railroad system. Countries that accept and embrace the Starship point to point commerce will grow, live long, and prosper.
For passengers HTOHL is likely a must—and Elon doesn’t do wings.
I’d love to see 30 Merlins on a winged SH.
Kerosene frees up passenger space and can be used by turbo-ramjets. Big canard up front, cranked arrow delta in the back.
Nate mentions X, and it has to be said that unlike legacy media, a handful of savvier regular users there have noted what Boom Supersonic has already done. Nate is right: we are at the point where X is basically a necessary stop for getting a full story on developments like this – I mean, aside from our host. Legacy media is more science and tech illiterate than they’ve ever been.
Some peeps there (like Scott Manley) have, in fairness, made a couple distinctions between the Boom XB-1 and the X-59: 1) Boom’s vehicle is limited to lower speeds than the X-59; 2) Boom, unlike NASA and the LM Skunk Works, used no new technology in their demonstration; the XB-1 exploited Mach cutoff physics, whereas the X-59 uses a fundamentally new airframe shape to achieve its results.
But it’s also true that Boom did what they did a while lot faster and spent less money (Blake Scholl says the XB-1 cost $190 million), and obviously are in a position to deploy it commercially for use in an airliner. They gotta close a business case. NASA never does. And media outlets are still remiss for not discussing Boom in their coverage.
That’s why I adore Scott Manley, in that he sees the two vehicles represent different goals
(2nd try at posting this, got a “403 Forbidden” that was likely more “we hate your VPN” the first try.)
“Elon doesn’t do wings… I’d love to see 30 Merlins on a winged SH.”
It’s remarkably easy to argue that the reason “Elon” doesn’t “do wings” on Space-X spacecraft to date, is because they don’t need them. ‘Body lift’ is indeed a thing; and they clearly do use it, from the Falcon 9 to the Super Heavy and Starship prototypes in late descent.
Look at that odd-seeming Version 3 design of 4 equally spaced grid fins, only with one missing. Now imagine the non-symmetrical airflow around a Super Heavy at a non-zero and significant angle of attack — and you’ll see why 3 could be better than 4. The “missing” grid fin would be in a (possibly turbulent) “wake” region, while its (missing) drag could help maintain that high angle of attack. (Do remember the Super Heavy Version 2 that blew up on engine re-light, because its fuel “downcomer” literally broke due to high off-axis forces… and the hugely beefed-up equivalent of that on a Version 3.)
Those paying attention to the more recent Starship test flights will have noticed, especially given independent analysis from others, that the last few minutes feature a ‘curlicue’ on the end of the ground track — this is pretty clearly designed to avoid populated areas around Boca Chica (to start with) as a Starship comes in for tower catch, with the vehicle just falling onto cleared areas or into the sea (on a tangent to its ideal ground track) if it fails in flight here. It turns its velocity through quite a large angle in this maneuver.
All done with body lift.
See also the later parts of first-stage burn on a Falcon 9, when the rocket’s overall plume has expanded enough for this to be obvious, and it’s quite visibly not symmetrical — and about the only sensible explanation is aerodynamic forces. Once again, body lift; though it’s not outright clear how much of a contribution this makes next to the engines.
Wings on a Starship/SH would be like tail fins on a Buick; stylish, or else not, but in either case blatantly surplus to function.
So whats the fuel economy, speed from NY to Tokyo non stop, seat price.
Or its just a military project to make a new bomber or fighter.
But prepositioning drones closer to all targets would be cheaper.
Faster missiles now have to outrun lasers.
Now its down to just fuel efficiency and speed.
I am all for it if its not funded by the government.
In the end will the next aircraft going that fast deliver more people faster and cheaper at long distances.
No, like the last SST aircraft, only the very rich will travel on it no matter how uncomfortable it is.
Just take the big wide body and travel in class and comfort for a cheaper price.