NASA and Lockheed Martin’s coveted Skunk Works division have teamed up to develop the X-59 QueSST – an X-plane that will employ low-boom technology, designed to replace the famous sonic boom with a quiet thump.
The X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) – NASA’s first manned supersonic X-plane in decades – is a one-off single-seat demonstrator that has been specifically-designed to undertake the administration’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) mission. The LBFD has some unique and exciting goals: to prove that sounds generated from supersonic flight can be made quiet enough to allow regulators to change the rules surrounding overland supersonic flight.
NASA will use the X-59 to prove its low-boom theory, which, if successful, could open the door to a new generation of supersonic-capable commercial aircraft that are able to fly faster than sound overland – something that the famed Concorde could never do.
Wind-tunnel testing and advances in CFD tools have enabled researchers and designers to put low-boom supersonic theories, which originated as early as the late-1960s, into physical practice.
This is one of the reasons why the X-59 is being built now rather than 20/30 years ago, as Michael Buonanno, the lead engineer fo…
