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Nasa unveils quiet supersonic aircraft in effort to revive commercial flights (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In launch event on Friday, agency shared plans to test over US cities to see if it’s quiet enough by engaging ‘the people below’

Nasa has unveiled a one-of-a-kind quiet supersonic aircraft as part of the US space agency’s mission to make commercial supersonic flight possible.

In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound – or 925mph (1,488 km/h).

The aircraft, which stands at 99.7ft (30.4 metres) long and 29.5ft wide, has a thin, tapered nose that comprises nearly a third of the aircraft’s full length – a feature designed to disperse shock waves that would typically surround supersonic aircraft and result in sonic booms.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't look like it can hold a lot of people. What's the commercial application? Enabling the ultra wealthy to fly private at mach 1.4 from New York to California?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They are still in the prototype stage. If they can prove the physics on small planes, they can scale up for commercial ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

They can't scale up without scaling up their costs. Proving the physics is easy (because concorde already did some of the hard work). It's quite challenging to convince anyone that this is nothing but posterity for rich people.