NASA and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works have teamed up to develop the X-59 QueSST – an X-plane that uses low-boom technology designed to replace the famous sonic boom with a quiet thump, as Khalem Chapman explains
Supersonic passenger flight could make a quiet return if NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) successfully revives capabilities that were lost with Concorde’s retirement 17 years ago.
The X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) – a specifically designed, one-off demonstrator – is currently being manufactured by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. It will be NASA’s first manned supersonic X-plane in decades, reminiscent of the famed Bell X-1 exploits, but with a very different mission to its bullet-like forerunner.
Peter Coen, mission manager of the LBFD at NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, outlined the ambitious undertaking: “We’re trying to use [the X-59] to prove that the sounds from supersonic flight can be made quiet enough for overland supersonic flight, to make them acceptable to the public and the international regulatory community.”
