In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound – or 925mph (1,488 km/h).

The aircraft, which stands at 99.7ft (30.4 metres) long and 29.5ft wide, has a thin, tapered nose that comprises nearly a third of the aircraft’s full length – a feature designed to disperse shock waves that would typically surround supersonic aircraft and result in sonic booms.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Huh? NASA is providing thought leadership to expand the possibilities of human travel, but has no interest in running a commercial airline.

Many technologies you use every day started as NASA research

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Why are tax dollars going to something that will only benefit a small percentage of people and will cause relatively bad environmental damage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you aware what NASA stands for?

I personally am happy some of my tax dollars go towards advancing science.

The reason we have issues in society...homeless people, lack of universal healthcare, etc is not because we find NASA, it's via mismanagement of the funds we have, and bad politics, etc. None of which are NASAs fault or purpose.

NASA does a huge amount of environmental research as well. But part of their team focuses on experimental flight, and this is a product of that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I'm happy to fund science too, but this isn't the time to develop even more fuel-intensive commercial travel options.

[–] Cocodapuf 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nasa is always researching supersonic/hypersonic travel, that's what a space agency does.

It would be hard to list ALL of the ways that research benefits you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but it doesn't usually research how to make commercials transportation way less fuel efficient.

"The New York Times looked at the same comparison in the late 1970s when rising fuel prices were causing major difficulties for Concorde. It concluded that Concorde used four times the amount of fuel of the 747, based on a New York to Paris flight. These comparisons are even worse when looking on a per passenger basis – Concorde, of course, only took 100 passengers, compared to well over 400 on the 747-400." source

Planes are already a bad source of pollution, this makes it 8 times worse. Awful.

[–] Cocodapuf 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's researching how to make "any" supersonic vehicle quieter... You know NASA does have a whole fleet of supersonic vehicles, but they can't operate them anywhere over land in the US. It's literally illegal to fly a supersonic vehicle over populated areas (most of the US).

You act like this technology is only applicable to commercial passenger liners, but it's literally all supersonic aircraft.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Nasa unveils quiet supersonic aircraft in effort to revive commercial flights"

Title of the article and this post.

[–] Cocodapuf 1 points 10 months ago

Ohh, does the headline changes all the facts in my statement?

These are advances in physics. Understanding the sound created by sonic booms is really understanding the nature of airflow and shockwaves in the supersonic regime. This is critical scientific development for NASA this could lead to more efficient rockets, and space planes as well as more efficient engines.

Did you know that the F1 engine that powered the Saturn V suffered from 1 major problem? Combustion instability, due to acoustic disturbances in the combustion chamber. Because of this they had to turn shut down at least 1 engine early in every launch. Understanding supersonic shockwaves is exactly the kind of thing that could have solved that problem.

A headline changes nothing.