How quiet tech and human insights could revive supersonic flight
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How do you design an aircraft that can fly faster than the speed of sound, but quietly? This challenge has grounded supersonic flights over land for five decades.
But NASA recently performed the first successful test flight of the X-59 experimental jet, aiming to revive supersonic flight by solving two problems: technological and human. Often, what seems like an obvious technology problem ultimately isn’t. It’s a human problem. In this case, the tech problem is a big challenge: Creating a plane that can cut flight times in half without disturbing the public led to radical design choices, including an extremely long nose and no forward-facing window for the pilot.
Earlier this year, President Trump lifted restrictions on supersonic flights above populated areas based on speed but restrictions are still in place globally. Once an aircraft hits the speed of sound, the booms reverberate through the entire duration of the supersonic flight. The goal of this test is to fly at twice the speed with just a light thump heard on the ground.
At SXSW this year, I met part of the team working on this project. Cathy Bahm, project manager for the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project as the X-59 is formally known, told me the end goal isn’t the plane itself. What matters is changing the regulations from a speed limit to a sound limit (you can fly as fast as you want, but you must do so quietly). For decades, the Concorde flew supersonic, but was only able to do so over the ocean. This shift will enable a new generation of supersonic commercial aviation.
But to start shifting the regulation, NASA must prove that people (and their pets!) aren’t impacted by the noise.
That is the human problem. All the tech solutions in the world won’t make a difference if NASA can’t prove that it has little or no impact on the people being flown over. As test flights continue, consumer surveys can begin to understand whether and which noise levels are acceptable.
Aerospace engineer Larry J. Cliatt II, NASA’s “sonic boom guy,” highlighted the challenge: “My entire career has been math and science, ones and zeros, yes and no. Now we're dealing with human responses, and humans are just all over the place.”
The X-59 test pilot Nils Larson told me that he was inspired by “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe’s book about Project Mercury. A teacher gave him the book, which details the U.S.’s first human space flight program and the X-1 test program in which Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier. Larson was hooked and set himself a course for a lengthy career in the Air Force and NASA, eventually becoming NASA’s chief test pilot. As the X-59 project took shape, his boss, the director of flight operations, told him he couldn’t be the pilot on the X-59 project and the chief pilot at the same time. Larson chose the X-59 role.
Despite all of the challenges of building and flying a plane to do something no plane has ever done, Larson thinks the survey aspect is the toughest part.
We're designing the whole airplane and all that stuff, but when you get down to the research side in the end, that's not easy,” he told me. “I'm the test pilot, but to the guys writing the survey, good luck. You actually have the hardest job.”
The future implications for this project are more important for the private sector. Being able to travel coast-to-coast or from New York to New Delhi in a fraction of the time really starts to open the world. Project manager Bahm noted interest in the private sector from Boeing to Gulf Stream, in building supersonic commercial aircraft if this test succeeds. “Getting the regulation overturned is the enabler for them to fully invest in that future,” she said.
But as we see with AI, or the metaverse, or other emerging technologies, having the tech is one thing. Getting people to trust it, use it, and react well to it is a whole different challenge.