How Lockheed Martin Designed the X-59, the World’s Weirdest, Quietest Supersonic Jet
upstart writes:
The Lockheed Martin X-59 is probably the strangest airplane ever designed. Its razor-sharp nose takes half of the airplane's length; there's no cockpit in sight; the wings are tiny compared to the entire fuselage; and its oversized tail engine looks like a weird hump about to fall off. Of course, there's a method to this madness. The design is the secret sauce that has produced a true unicorn: a supersonic jet that doesn't boom the hell out of people and buildings on the ground.
[...] The X-59's "quiet" supersonic boom isn't made possible by expensive magical materials or exotic engines, Richardson explains. "There is no radical technology in the airplane itself. It really is just the shape of the aircraft." And if the shape looks more like an anime alien spaceship than an actual vehicle created by human beings, that's because it was dreamed up in another dimension-by computers and humans-through special software created by the Bethesda, Maryland, company's engineers.
Many of the problems that plague supersonic flight can be traced back to the Concorde, the famous supersonic passenger jet that could travel from New York to London in a mere three and a half hours. When the Concorde first took flight in 1969, people were enthralled by the idea of super-fast air travel. It sounded like a technological marvel . . . until they heard the actual sound.
[...] The Concorde continued to fly until it was decommissioned in 2003, but most airlines couldn't justify the cost of operating the airplane if its supersonic abilities could be used only over water. "The real breakthrough for supersonic flight would be to be able to fly over land again so that you have those long routes where that supersonic flight is more advantageous," Richardson says. So that's exactly what Lockheed Martin set out to build.
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