OUT WITH THE BOOM

Aviation Week begins Sunday in honor of Orville Wright’s birthday on Aug. 19. Today we look at NASA’S pursuit of supersonic flights without sonic booms.

Its design research speed will be Mach 1.42, or 940 mph, flying at 55,000 feet, and it will have no boom but more of a sonic thump. Initial flight tests start in 2022.

In 2023, NASA will fly the X-59 over the test range at the agency's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California to prove it is safe to operate in the National Airspace System. More than 175 ground recording systems will measure the sound coming from the X-59.

In 2024, NASA will fly the X-59 over several communities around the nation to gauge people's response to the sonic thump sound produced by the aircraft – if they hear anything at all. The data collected will be given to the Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization for their consideration in changing the existing bans on supersonic flights over land.

That ban on overland supersonic flights went into effect in 1973 and has plagued commercial supersonic ventures ever since, restricting faster-than-sound travel only to flights over the ocean.

If rules change because of NASA'S data, a new fleet of commercial supersonic aircraft could become viable, allowing passengers to hop on a plane and arrive from distant destinations in half the time. A flight from Los Angeles to New York could be about three hours.

Though the single-piloted X-59 will never carry passengers, aircraft manufacturers may choose to incorporate its technology into their own designs.

Renderings of the QUESST proportional to the Overture supersonic commercial aircraft.