NASA’s X-59 aircraft aims to reduce the sonic boom to a high level.
Ah, the glory days of travel, when places were bigger, the food was better, and you could cross the Atlantic in less than three hours.
Since Concorde’s voyage ended in 2003, crossing the Atlantic Ocean has quickly become a thing of the past. Flights between London and New York take about eight hours, or approximately seven hours in the opposite direction. Currently, the record stands at just under five hours between New York and London, driven by favorable airflow.
But now, the idea of supersonic travel is being discussed again – by NASA, which suggests that a flight between New York and London could take just 90 minutes in the future.
The space agency, in a blog post about its “High-Speed Strategy,” confirmed that it recently studied whether commercial flights reaching speeds of Mach 4 – about 4,900 kilometers per hour – could take off in the future.
The study by NASA’s Glenn Research Center indicates that there are already “potential passenger markets…on about 50 identified routes.” These routes were limited to transoceanic routes, including across the North Atlantic and the Pacific, because countries, including the United States, prohibited supersonic flight over land.
However, NASA is developing a “quiet” supersonic aircraft, called the X-59, as part of the Quest mission. The agency hopes that the new plane will eventually lead to changes in these rules, as the planes fly between Mach 2 and Mach 4 (2,450 – 4,900 kilometers per hour). The Concorde’s top speed was Mach 2.04. An airplane traveling at Mach 4 could potentially cross the Atlantic Ocean in just 90 minutes.
Following the studies, NASA’s Advanced Aerial Vehicle (AAV) program will now move to the next phase of research into high-speed travel, hiring companies to develop projects and “explore the possibilities of air travel, identify risks and challenges and define technologies.” The agency said there was a need to make travel at Mach 2 or more a reality. There will be two teams working on the research: one led by Boeing and the other by Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. All of them will present aircraft projects capable of maintaining hypersonic speeds.
A fast-moving future
NASA’s X-59 aircraft has already been built and is ready for testing. Lockheed Martin
Studies similar to the current one, conducted a decade ago, helped shape the development of the X-59, according to Lori Ozoroski, director of NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology Project. Likewise, the new studies “will update the outlook on technology roadmaps and identify additional research needs for a broader range of high-speed,” he added.
The next phase will also take into account “safety, efficiency, economic and societal considerations,” said Mary Jo Long Davis, NASA’s Hypersonics Project Manager, adding that “it is important to innovate responsibly.”
In July, Lockheed Martin completed construction of NASA’s X-59 test plane, designed to turn sonic booms into mere pops, with the hope of making supersonic land flight possible. Ground tests and the first test flight are scheduled for the end of the year. NASA aims to have enough data to hand over to US regulators in 2027.
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