NASA Langley's new project is an "X-plane" resistant to the sound boom that could revolutionize the way we travel | Scientific technology

HAMPTON

Imagine that you are in your living room, maybe sitting on the couch with a cold drink after a long day of work, when you hear an amazing boom – something like an explosion that shakes your house the Windows. Now imagine that you live near an airport and that happens dozens of times a day.

These sound booms are one of the biggest obstacles to commercial supersonic flight. The air around planes that move faster than the speed of sound expands and compresses quickly, creating shock waves that produce the sound of the boom crackling on the ground.

NASA plans to overcome this problem. A team from the agency's Langley Research Center is leading a $ 500 million project to calm sound booms and convince authorities that supersonic airlift is achievable in the next decade

"Long-range commercial flights Couriers are not so comfortable – smaller and service is less and less, "said Craig Nickol, one of the project managers." All we can do to shorten the time, to get to our destination. more quickly is a good thing … The goal of NASA is to allow this kind of future. "

Think New York to Los Angeles in Less Than Three Hours.

In April, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth nearly $ 250 million – about half of the total project budget – to build an experimental aircraft that will mitigate the noise boom and produce a much quieter noise. a long, narrow nose and a back T-tail. Last week he was dubbed the X-59 QueSST. The appointment was "a big deal" for those in the line of work, Nickol said.

Although Lockheed built the aircraft in California, Langley led the Low-Boom flight demonstration team.

David Richwine, the mission of NASA officials have been studying the supersonic for nearly seven decades, but they "trample water for 30 or 40 years because of regulatory changes and the ban on supersonic flight over land because of the boom ".

The Federal Aviation Administration implemented this ban in 1973.

The planes have long been able to fly supernaturally at over 767 mph. The first in 1947. The famous Concorde, a British airliner, flew over the Atlantic at twice that speed before being retired in 2003 due to the low number of passengers and the concerns of fuel consumption.

team in the mid-1990s to design a Concorde replacement, said Steve Williams of the agency. The technology developed at the time to give drivers a better view, without the heavy "slumped nose" of the Concorde, was invaluable for the X-59. This is what is called the external vision system, or XVS.

"We had the knowledge," said Williams, the technical manager of the XVS. It made sense that Langley leads the "Low Boom" team because we were already doing that.

The external vision system is necessary because of the shape of the new aircraft. At just under 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, the aircraft has a very long thin nose to prevent shock waves from forming.

The problem? It is so narrow that it eliminates a central window in the cockpit, preventing the pilot from seeing to the front.

NASA's high-tech solution aligns two cameras – one on the front of the plane, one on a pop-out below – serving as a replacement for the human eye. On the X-59, a driver looks at a computer screen instead of a window. Managers use an algorithm to automatically align images from both camera streams.

The system is one of NASA's major innovations for the project, but Williams says it was just about merging existing hardware and algorithms.

Langley also tested the dynamics of supersonic noise in an effects room "- a model living room surrounded by 104 speakers The X-59 is expected to produce a decibel level of 75, well below 100 more than one F / A-18

The plane should be completed and take off for a test flight in 2021, cruising to 55,000 "

Some were wary of the trips supersonic commercial, said Richwine, despite the attractiveness of flight times cut in half.The market would likely start with small private jets.

"Part of the resistance we've had in the past is that the People commented, "It's for the 1%, it's for the rich." However, the market would end up adapting and developing, he said, as in n & # 39; Any first industry like automobiles.Faster flights could also help in speed sensitive situations such as organ transplants.

"If the United States can stay in the vanguard, having control of this supersonic market would be huge," Richwine said. "You really have to think about the economic benefits of the people who work on these planes."

Beginning in 2023, several communities still to come will have a taste of how the new plane sounds.

] The X-59 will fly over a handful of regions and collect residents' comments on their level of annoyance with the "deaf blow". NASA officials said they would not be "surprised" if Hampton Roads was one.

In November, NASA officials plan to fly over Galveston, Texas, and practice the community technique. Although the X plane will not be ready, a pilot in an F / A-18 about 5 miles offshore will dive and fly in an oval pattern to produce a boom that will calm down as it reaches the coastal community. A typical sound boom can reach 25 miles on either side of the flight path of an airplane.

In the end, NASA will hand over all this data to the FAA, in the hope that the agency will lift its ban and set standards for supersonic air travel. Americans could buy plane tickets by the end of the next decade.

Nickol said it was a unique project for NASA due to purely civilian use – the military did not prioritize or provide funding for this supersonic research.

"I've always been a plane nut," Nickol said. "Build and fly a new plane, an X-plane … it's not much better than that in our business."