In July, Lockheed Martin completed the build of NASA’s X-59 test aircraft, which is designed to turn sonic booms into mere thumps, in the hope of making overland supersonic flight a possibility. Ground tests and a first test flight are planned for later in the year. NASA aims to have enough data to hand over to US regulators in 2027.
america will do anything but invest in public transport huh
How about bitch about the actual wasteful military spending instead of scientific research into physics and understanding the dynamics of sonic booms. Nasa has like .1% of the military budget ffs.
US defense budget was 752.9B for 2022, whereas NASA’s was 24.8B
So NASA’s funding amounts to 3.29% of the Defense budget (about 1/30)
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy2022_budget_summary.pdf
I agree with you, but it’s nice to nail down the numbers
Or it’s own people. Which is stupid, because the brain drain will catch up technology wise.
By investing into research of this airplane, the bulk of the costs are going to be manhours.
How is paying engineers going to cause brain drain?
We can tell it’s already effecting you by trying to suggest nasa is a waste, when we spend 100 times it’s budget on wasted military contracts or the fact we do have a tax bracket that allows someone to even become a billionaire instead of taking back excessive wealth stolen from workers in predatory labor markets. There are other areas we should be getting this money for the public and it sure as hell shouldn’t be from aeronautic or space research ffs.
that’s actually a very good point
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We need bullet trains, not more passenger jets.
Actually just regular passenger trains that have priority over freight trains would be a great step forward
You don’t want that unless you want the cost of virtually everything to increase.
Don’t fuck with the infrastructure that keeps every corner of a country running on a day to day basis.
Sounds like you’ve never participated in civil disobedience. Shame.
The railroads should be nationalized and new ones built over highways.
Ok, come back when you aren’t living in a fantasy land.
It’s amazing how out of touch with reality so many people on this platform are. It honestly feels like there are a lot more kids on Lemmy than there were on Reddit. They’re smart kids, but kids lack real world experience, and it shows.
The freight railroads aren’t good at what they do. It would be much easier to run passenger services (and improve their own operations) if they ran trains that actually fit within their own passing loops, but they desperately want to reduce the number of people they have to pay to run their trains. Both would also benefit from better maintained infrastructure with upgrades such as electrification and more double tracking, but the railroads don’t want to spend any more money than absolutely necessary to keep their (mostly) running.
In North America.
For the EU the biggest issue is all of the national operators being insane in different ways that makes it harder and more expensive than it should be to cross borders by rail a lot of the time.
Well you still need to figure out the sonic boom too, ffs you anti science people are fucking morons.
Price per km of track goes up exponentialy the faster you want to go, which means they will either have expensive tickets or will be unprofitable.
The rail network should be a service not a for profit organisation
Still, someone has to finance it. In the worst case you have a high speed rail network with high operationg costs that nobody uses, but taxpayers still need to maintain.
I swear if firefighting wasn’t currently publicly funded, you’d argue against making it publicly funded because it might not be profitable
If it’s there (and not terrible), people will use it. Will it break even on the costs? Maybe. Maybe not. Still worth it, however.
Just move some defence budget into the rail network.
Whose going to be able to afford this? Air fare is already expensive.
Also, why is NASA doing this with tax dollars?
Is this stupid or am I stupid and missing something obvious?
People fly first class, people fly businees class. Some have the money.
Also, for some, the time saved is worth much more than what the ticket costs, especially in business (expensive consultants?).
why is NASA doing this with tax dollars
The resulting aircraft/technology can be sold to commercial aviation and/or be used for military purposes
something obvious
NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, so it’s kinda in scope
Concorde wasn’t profitable in the long run. Nowadays with video conferencing, even less people need to show up to a transatlantic business meeting.
Unlikely this makes financial sense.
Great it’s cool research though and should continue, if you want to bitch about wasted taxes go comment on military threads and comment there where billions are wasted on shit contracts that never materialize due to incompetent base mangers who can’t distinguish vapor ware proposals from real tech. Don’t bitch about scientific research that’s just fucking dumb.
A commercial passenger plane should not be the subject of government research.
The science behind minimizing a sonic boom is not just applicable to commercial planes, ffs stop trying to kill science and research fucking idoits.
Chill mate I’m not even from the US. There still is no practical use for this.
Yeah but that was decades ago.
Without the boom, these planes can fly possibly more profitable routes, for example, drawing parallels is hard with such a time-distance
.
The resulting aircraft/technology can be sold to commercial aviation and/or be used for military purposes
That is what companies like Boeing and Lockheed are for.
NASA has no business making airplanes for rich passengers.
Sold at a loss?
taxpayer money is free, no there’s no loss to begin with
Huh? What kinda question is that?
I imagine the same was asked when jet planes were first invented, now look at where we are.
NASA is likely doing this with tax dollars because private industry has little reason to push forward research that does not yield an immediate ROI. Not yielding an immediate ROI is a very myopic driver of priorities.
In the west, jet engines were developed to kill fascists and communists. The ROI was good.
I don’t see the parallel
Are you claiming that the idea of the jet engine, prototyping, and finalization of the jet engine was entirely sparked by what you’re referring to? I would argue that there’s a long line of research leading up to what you’re referring to that would’ve resulted in the questions you’re asking.
Yes, I am. Although the concept of a jet engine was known about for a long time it was only prototyped and finalized for the war effort. Since the Germans knew they were going to war first, they had a head start and finished first.
Everyone else launched reactionary programs. The goal of America’s program was to kill fascists, but they didn’t finish before the war’s end. Afterwards they pivoted to communists.
And what of the folks who developed the concept of a jet engine?
The Egyptians? What of them?
Nevermind the increasingly feasible steps between the Egyptians and the folks of WW2, I imagine even the Egyptians had some naysayers commenting on the lack of practicality for the little spinning ball. Where was the ROI there?
What would’ve happened if whoever invented precursors, at any stage, of modern jets listened to naysayers whose main argument was “the common man cannot afford this”?
Weren’t jet engines developed by the Germans to kill the Allies?
They were in development in various countries simultaneously, Spain would have likely gotten there first if not for Franco. Germany did manage the first jet fighter and bomber though, with Britain not long after
Everyone was developing them, more or less. The thing is, the enemy doesn’t usually share their tech with you so you’ve got to develop programs independently.
This is not for regulars doing 9-5 jobs. Its for the elite class , not for peasants.
Back to work peasant!
NEVER!
We definitely can’t afford this.
Thus will only further drive the climate catastrophe
This is the only way to remain competitive when the US’ largest rivals are able to tap state funding for research.
You don’t see the military applications of large-scale supersonic flight?
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Flying used to be a “luxury boondoggle for the rich” same with a lot of things that we view as common today.
how about we focus on decarbonizing air travel for the commoners? Fuck supersonic flight
No fuck you peasant, we gonna have the rich flying in supersonic flightrs and there’s nothing you can do about it
Wait, I’ve seen this one
I’m interested to see how this plane performs compared to the Concord. It’ll be interesting to find out how bad the maintenance will be.
Also the criticism and the “whatabout other important things” people commenting here should know that more than one type of research can be performed at the same time. This is an aerodynamics problem. The other problems related pollution from engines, fuel sources, and environmental impact are also being worked in parallel. A planet of 8 billion people is able to work on many problems and ideas in parallel without having one be a detriment over another. It’s not like an aeronautical engineer can be repurposed to be a fuel chemist!
Just call FFS, we don’t need this.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter.
But now, the thought of supersonic travel has been mooted again – by none other than NASA, which reckons that New York-London flight could take as little as 90 minutes in the future.
The space agency has confirmed in a blog post about its “high-speed strategy” that it has recently studied whether commercial flights at up to Mach 4 – over 3,000 miles per hour – could take off in the future.
In the same way, she added, the new studies will “refresh those looks at technology roadmaps and identify additional research needs for a broader high-speed range.”
The next phase will also consider “safety, efficiency, economic and societal considerations,” said Mary Jo Long-Davis, manager of NASA’s Hypersonic Technology Project, adding that “It’s important to innovate responsibly.”
In July, Lockheed Martin completed the build of NASA’s X-59 test aircraft, which is designed to turn sonic booms into mere thumps, in the hope of making overland supersonic flight a possibility.
The original article contains 536 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
JFC, can we have a carbon tax already?
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