SUPERSONIC TRAVEL WITHOUT THE SONIC BOOM

Imagine flying faster than the speed of sound. With its X-59, NASA could re-open the door to supersonic travel, this time without the explosive boom. For decades, flying faster than the speed of sound has meant speeding across the skies in an aircraft that creates a powerful sonic boom, a significant noise that travels down to the ground below like a crack of thunder

NASA wants to make this dream a reality. At the Armstrong Flight Research Center, just outside of Lancaster, California, the space agency is working on the X-59 QueSST (short for Quiet SuperSonic Technology) airplane, a demonstrator aircraft designed to fly faster than the speed of sound generating nothing more than a ‘sonic thump’. Traditional supersonic aircraft can create a sonic boom in excess of 100 decibels during flight, a problem that led the US Federal Aviation Administration to ban commercial supersonic flight over land in 1973.

The X-59 has been shaped to minimise the shock waves that cause a sonic boom mid-flight, reducing its sound at ground level to 75 decibels. According to NASA, that is about as loud as a car door slamming down the street. To design this ‘low-boom’ aircraft, NASA and Lockheed Martin returned to the basic principles of aerodynamics. The result is an airplane that is both incredibly advanced and elegantly simple.

In a windowless hangar in the California high desert, workers have been assembling the X-59 and putting it through the paces for its first test flight.