It is weird to think in a world where while other transportation methods get faster, the fastest one becomes stagnant. In reality, commercial flights could be much faster and have been in the past due to supersonic transport, moving at speeds above the speed of sound. However, this caused sonic booms that disturbed the people and wildlife on the ground. This led to the ban of ultra-fast civilian flights in many countries, and that’s been more than 50 years. While there have been attempts during the ’60s and ’70s, it’s only now that the end of the quest to find that technology is almost over. NASA has been trying to develop boom-free supersonic flights, which is now starting to bear fruit with Quesst.
According to Quesst Mission Integration Manager Peter Coen, the 1973 USA ban was based on a fair assessment at the time. In association with Lockheed Martin, NASA wants to demonstrate how their X-59 aircraft can achieve supersonic flight without generating a sonic boom.
The mission and impact
Quesst is a three-phase project. The first phase was the aircraft development, which we have already covered. It included the basic construction of a design that could be boom-free. The second phase was about acoustic validation. With the aid of supercomputers and data from the first phase, they could predict the noise this design would bring. We are now entering the third and final phase, community response testing.
The aircraft was presented at a big event on January 12 in California, with more than 285 locations in 21 countries hosting watch parties. Later this year, the aircraft will fly above various populated locations. Data will be gathered about its effect on the people below. If enough of these testimonies say that these new thumps don’t bother them or are barely noticed, NASA hopes the ruling can be changed from a simple ban on speed to a ban on sonic boom domestically and internationally.
The potential impact of the ruling is huge. Commercial flights at supersonic speed can open up many possibilities in the modern world, dramatically reducing flight time. After all, it is strange how these flights have existed all this time; we just haven’t been able to use them. Technology progress is sometimes chained, like in this case, but hopefully, NASA will succeed in its “Quesst.”
YouTube: How NASA’s X-59 May Change the Future of High-Speed Flight
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Photo credits: All images shown are owned by NASA and Lockheed Martin, with permission to be used by news outlets.
Source: NASA
