He handed me a hard hat and took me underneath the body of the plane to show the sensors that will feed data back to the XVS. Richardson, who has hitherto worked on highly-classified projects for Lockheed, was my guide for the day, showing me around the scaffolding at the top of the plane to point out the electronics being installed by the engineering crew. The aircraft looks more like a giant dart than a plane, with those swept-back wings and the nose that stretches out for yards and yards. Visiting the hangar of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, I got a sense of the scale of the X-59 build. Getting up close to the build of the X-59 at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. "You don't just see this demand from high-end consumers, you see this from everybody - everybody would like to 'get there' faster," he said. According to Lockheed Martin's David Richardson, flights for the general public could come as soon as 2035. The X-59 could pave the way for private companies and airlines to reintroduce supersonic flights to everyday passengers, all across the world. But if NASA can prove that supersonic planes can fly without the boom, it could open up supersonic travel to a new generation. That limited Concorde to trans-Atlantic flights and ultimately sounded the death knell for the company. NASA will then submit its data to regulators with the goal of changing the restrictions around supersonic flight.Īfter all, back in the '70s when the Concorde started flying and the FAA introduced its ban on commercial supersonic flight over land, noise was the problem. In the acoustic testing phase, NASA will set up an array of microphones across a 30-mile-long stretch of the Mojave Desert in California to measure the sonic thump and make sure it's as quiet as intended.Īfter the X-59's big sound check comes the third stage of testing in 2025, when the aircraft will be flown over a handful of cities and towns across the United States to gauge the community response. NASAīut the big decider will be the sound on the ground. Schlieren images like this one can capture the shockwaves coming off supersonic aircraft midflight. It's like threading a needle to get that gorgeous image." ![]() "The X-59 has to eclipse the sun because we use the sun as a backdrop," said Cliatt, the acoustic testing lead. Photographing a plane moving faster than the speed of sound is no easy feat. ![]() And perhaps most impressive of all, NASA will capture images of the shockwaves - a process that's known as schlieren photography. NASA will send the X-59 up with an F-15 fighter jet that will act as a chase plane, measuring the shockwaves being produced by the aircraft midflight. That happens in 2023 when in what's known as the "acoustic validation" phase, when NASA will fly the X-59 to ensure the sonic boom has been satisfactorily scaled back to a sonic thump. Throughout 2022, Lockheed and NASA have been conducting initial checks on the X-59, but the real test of the aircraft comes with the first flight. Waveriders, Hypersonics, Aircraft design.A Lockheed Martin technician works on a 11.5% scale model of the X-59's forebody during wind tunnel testing. Based upon the data collected in this analysis, the development of an actual waverider aircraft using the NPS/NASA Ames waverider design as a baseline is a plausible endeavor. ![]() However, flow visualization showed that vortex bursting occurred at a dynamic pressure of 12.llbf at +/-15 degrees angle of attack. The design also compares favorably with both subsonic thin airfoil theory and the results of the delta wing and subsonic waverider analysis done by Vanhoy. The results of the experiments show that waverider exhibits high lift characteristics at positive angles of attack. Flow visualization using tufts was also done. Coefficients of lift, drag and pitch were calculated from the data and compared to theory and existing waverider subsonic aerodynamic performance data. Force and moment data were then collected using a six-degree-of-freedom sting balance. The tests consisted of performing Alpha and Beta sweeps, at different dynamic pressures, with a 15 inch aluminum waverider model in the NPS low-speed wind tunnel. These tests are part of the continuing waverider research being conducted by the Naval Postgraduate School and the NASA Ames Research Center. Low-speed wind tunnel tests were conducted to determine the subsonic aerodynamic characteristics of an optimized supersonic (Mach 6) conical-flow waverider designed for a deck-launched intercept mission. Low-Speed Wind Tunnel Testing of the NPS/NASA Ames Mach 6 Optimized Waverider.
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