LOOK. New supersonic aircraft must break through the sound barrier without causing inconvenience | Abroad

The aircraft, 30 meters long and with a wingspan of 10 meters, was presented on Friday at a Lockheed Martin site in Palmdale, California. The X-59 could reach 1.4 times the speed of sound, or almost 1,500 kilometers per hour. When the so-called sound barrier is broken, it would happen almost in silence (the sound would be comparable to the slamming of a car door), and not with loud bangs as with other supersonic aircraft.

Another striking feature of the aircraft is that the cockpit is located approximately halfway down the fuselage and that the pilot cannot see ahead. The pilot does receive images of what is happening in front of the aircraft thanks to a series of cameras.

The X-59 is central to the NASA mission ‘Quesst’ (Quiet SuperSonic Technology). He will look for technology to fly silently through the sound barrier. Supersonic flights over land are currently banned in the United States, among others, precisely because of the inconvenience that people on the ground experience from the loud booms of supersonic aircraft.

The first test flight is planned for 2024. After the first series of test flights, the plane will fly over several US cities to collect information about exactly how much noise it makes and how people perceive that noise. The intention is that the technology can later be used in commercial aviation.

The last supersonic regular passenger flights took place twenty years ago, with the Concorde between Paris, London and New York. After a crash near Paris in 2000, with more than a hundred deaths, and due to continued losses, the last Concorde flight took place at the end of 2003.

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