back to article What's silent but violent and costs $250m? Yes, it's Lockheed Martin's super-quiet, supersonic X-plane for NASA

Supersonic air travel over land has been stymied since the 1960s due to the rather annoying sonic booms generated by speedy airplanes. Now, NASA, having given it some thought, has ordered a new airframe that could reduce the noise levels down to those of standard street traffic. If successful, Uncle Sam's boffins want to …

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  1. Dr_N
    Go

    SIG!

    Is that Destiny Angel in the cockpit?

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: SIG!

      Beat me to it... it does look like something out of a Gerry Anderson production with all those little fins, doesn't it.

    2. Sam Therapy
      Pint

      Re: SIG!

      Well spotted. Have a beer.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: SIG!

        Wasn't the SIG hypersonic? It's been a long time since I watched Thunderbirds/stingray/Joe 90 etc.

        I also thought a lot of the fuss around Concorde and the subsequent restrictions were US sour grapes that they couldn't get it working. I'm not saying the sonic boom wasn't loud, I heard it a couple of times as a kid but that on its own wasn't enough to make Concorde a lost cause.

        It still seems a little sad to me that it no longer flies and hasn't been replaced by something better. Even is this new one takes off (I don't often make jokes but that one was rather good) it'll still be slower than Concorde.

        1. Steve Todd

          Re: SIG!

          The US government basically turned their public against supersonic flight by deliberately flying military aircraft at supersonic speed, multiple times per day, across high population areas to see if they would object.

          At the kind of level that Concorde cruised (around 55,000 feet) the noise wasn't too bad. While it was subsonic and in/outbound from an airport the noise was much worse (the Olympus turbojet, especially running with reheat, was in no way designed to be quiet).

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: SIG!

            Yes and no.

            They did turn the public off by running fighters supersonic over high population areas but they also did a bucket load of research over more isolated areas (mostly Edwards AFB) using the XB70 Valkerie - which was a particularly loud aircraft due to the waverider configuration but useful for data gathering.

            It was clear that 1960s tech would result in unacceptably loud booms even at cruising altitude and the fact that Concorde had to go subsonic over Arabia following a shit load of complaints from desert dwellers underscores that point.

            What really killed Concorde was its lack of range. Being able to reach london/Paris to Seattle/SFO/LAX or go transpacific in one hop LAX to Tokyo would have resulted in more sales.

            The fuel tank vulnerability was already well known and should have been addressed long before the Paris crash. There's video footage from the 1980s of emergency services at Harewood (Christchurch NZ) responding to a multithousand litre incident caused by the underwing being hit by a ladder during and overnight stay.

            That same vulnerability is believed to have downeed at least one concordski and that's despite the soviets attempting wheel/undercarriage design tweaks from the outset to prevent blown tyres flinging crap or runway FOD into the underside of the aircraft.

            1. not.known@this.address

              Re: SIG!

              "The fuel tank vulnerability was already well known and should have been addressed long before the Paris crash."

              What, by fitting rubber mats as spall liners inside the tanks like British Airways did, even though it added a significant amount of weight and therefore increased fuels costs? Apparently a few BA Concordes suffered wing strikes but the liners did their jobs and the aircraft survived. Unlike Air France who decided the bottom line was more important.

              Not quite sure which part of Arabia was crossed when flying across the Atlantic between Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle and John F Kennedy airports though...

              1. ChrisC Silver badge

                Re: SIG!

                "What, by fitting rubber mats as spall liners inside the tanks like British Airways did, even though it added a significant amount of weight and therefore increased fuels costs? Apparently a few BA Concordes suffered wing strikes but the liners did their jobs and the aircraft survived. Unlike Air France who decided the bottom line was more important."

                Umm, are you quite sure you've got your timelines the right way around here? BA fitted tank liners as a direct response to the AF crash.

                "Not quite sure which part of Arabia was crossed when flying across the Atlantic between Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle and John F Kennedy airports though..."

                Probably that bit of Arabia either crossed whilst flying into Bahrain, or whilst transiting through the area en route to Singapore... The history of Concorde operations is far more interesting than it merely being a rather fast transatlantic business shuttle.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: SIG!

              'What really killed Concorde was its lack of range. Being able to reach london/Paris to Seattle/SFO/LAX or go transpacific in one hop LAX to Tokyo would have resulted in more sales.'

              Surely it was the 1973-74 recession and the spike in oil prices that killed Concorde's sales? The plane was launched with a long line of customers signing on the dotted line between 1963 and 1967 including Pan Am, Continental, United, TWA, Qantas, Air India, JAL, Air Canada and Lufthansa. There were more than 100 orders for the plane, all cancelled within months of one another during 1973.

              1. Roland6 Silver badge

                Re: SIG!

                > There were more than 100 orders for the plane, all cancelled within months of one another during 1973.

                Probably attributable to political pressure (from the US) and the Export Import Bank's decision not to provide finance for European aircraft...

                Those, combined with the flight restrictions, would have been sufficient for Pan Am, Continental, United, TWA and Air Canada to cancel their orders...

        2. netminder

          Re: SIG!

          One problem with the sour grapes theory is that the US also outlawed military craft from generating booms over the US. I heard them as a kid and they would shake houses, you would not want 50 of those a day going overhead.

          What killed Concord was that it ate fuel it was oxygen so tickets had to be pretty expensive. Very few people were willing to pay the premium just to get there a couple hours earlier. If half this thing is going to be nose economic viability is in doubt.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: SIG!

            "What killed Concord"

            ... another thing was technology in the form of laptops. Part of the rationale for Concorde (moving business executives between London and New York as fast as possible to minimize non-productive travel time) was undermined if the business executive could travel in conisderably more comfort in first class on a 747 and be able to work on a laptop during the additional travel time.

        3. Floydian Slip
          Coat

          Re: SIG!

          SIG = Spectrum is Green, meaning all is OK and the aircraft were called "Angels" which is why the pilots were called Angels too.

          IMO Captain Scarlett was the first PC children's cartoon - female fighter pilots, disabled commander (Col. White), bi-racial communications office(Lt Green)

          Yes, I still enjoy Capt. Scarlet as a middle aged "adult. I'll get my coat - it's the one with an SPV in the pocket.

        4. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: SIG!

          >I also thought a lot of the fuss around Concorde and the subsequent restrictions were US sour grapes that they couldn't get it working.

          No it was much more about protectionism: how dare those Europeans build a civilian aeronautic industry and then add insult to injury by building such an iconic aircraft and wanting not only to fly it into US airports, but sell it to Boeing's customers (the Export Import Bank - Eximbank, which many airlines depended upon, refused to give out loans to airlines who wished to purchase European aircraft).

          The issues around ground noise from supersonic flight were simply a convenient stick to beat the Europeans with. Boeing being a "true American company" had no truck with this newfangled supersonic flight thing. The (sweet) irony was that the anti-supersonic flight lobby were so successful, Congress refused to create a loophole to allow US manufacturers to develop supersonic aircraft - forcing Boeing to stop their own development...

          >It still seems a little sad to me that it no longer flies and hasn't been replaced by something better.

          It is interesting that whilst there is still a market for the Concorde class of service, no airline or manufacturer are interested in addressing this market. Probably in part because of the huge upfront capital investment required compared to the slightly less risky mass market commercial aircraft that both Boeing and Airbus currently produce. Plus the noise issue isn't going to go away in a hurry.

  2. LisaJK

    Typo... shouldn't "unusually long noise assembly" be an "unusually long nose assembly"?

    However if the long nose stretches the sonic boom then long noise may be appropriate!!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Perhaps the solution is merely to remove the noise assembly. This isn't rocket science.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      My favorite conspiracy: George H Bush, while VP under Reagan, flew to Iran in a blackbird to conspire with the Mullahs. The Clinton justice department actually interviewed a con man in the Mussouri state prison who concocted this story. One hopes they made the trip solely for the entertainment value.

      1. asdf

        Plenty of shady stuff in George H Bush past besides grabbing asses though even if this one was nothing. US weapons were sold to Mullahs after all.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          "US weapons were sold to Mullahs after all"

          Funded by the sale of hundreds of tons of cocaine imported into the USA on CIA aircraft and kickstarting the crack epidemic.

          Resulting in Ronnie announcing the gearing up of the 'war on drugs' whilst simultaneously being one of the largest suppliers of said recreational chemicals.

          Not a conspiracy theory. This came out in court as proven during the Iran-contra trials.

          Saint Ronald of the republicans. The greatest narcobaron of all time. It's little wonder Escobar and friends were so fearless.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            >Saint Ronald of the republicans. The greatest narcobaron of all time.

            Wasn't Ronnie that took care of the Noriega loose lips problem. I dare say his VP who also happen to head the CIA in the 70s might have had him beat and been the hand up the senile puppet's butt in these matters.

          2. Alistair
            Windows

            @Alan Brown:

            Saint Ronald of the republicans. The greatest narcobaron of all time. It's little wonder Escobar and friends were so fearless.

            I rather prefer Saint Ronald of the trees. I just wish I could find an audio copy of the "Its the trees you idiot" line.

        2. Alistair

          Plenty of shady stuff in George H Bush past besides grabbing asses though even if this one was nothing. US weapons were sold to Mullahsanyone that would buy them after all.

          Cleaned that up for ya.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hmm... a lengthened and very slim nose may stretch out the duration of the initial boom, but not by very much in real terms - the nose on the aircraft in the headline pic looks to be ~10m, so if the a/c is flying at 940 mph...

      940 mph = 420.2 m/s, so with a nose length of 10m, the initial boom could potentially be stretched to 10m / 420.2 m/s = 0.02349 seconds = 1/42th of a second.

      However, I don't think it will be possible to design a nose that will work at different supersonic speeds - it'll have to be designed for one speed only, and the a/c will have to stick to that speed pretty closely.

      I can't see anything that they may do to the rest of the airframe making much difference to the boom because the 'boom' comes from the two ends of the a/c - the nose and tail. The main purpose of the canards in the design shown in the headline pic will be to generate vortices over the wing to reduce take-off and landing speeds; the ogi wing in Concorde effectively gave it very long leading edge extensions, which did the same thing, but the TU 144, which had a very similar planiform to the a/c in the pic, had to use canards too.

      No idea why they need that little wing on the tip of the fin though - maybe artistic license - won't be surprised if it's omitted on the actual a/c.

      The only certain way to reduce the loudness of sonic booms is to move their source further away = fly higher. Ok for cruise, but still noisy while climbing and gaining speed.

      Never heard Concorde supersonic but by crikey, those military spec engines, derived from the TSR-2 project, were bloody loud - I attended quite a few IT (it was DP back then, of course) training courses at a certain establishment in Windsor and when a Concorde was climbing out to the West, and passed over at ~2k ft, trying to talk and be heard was impossible - if the trainer was talking they'd simply have to stop for about ten seconds or so, but everyone got used to it pretty quickly.

      But despite the shattering noise, it was still a beautifully elegant thing to see.

      1. Mark 65

        I remember when I stayed a my Gran's house as a kid I used to go outside around 5-6pm (vaguely from memory) to watch Concord fly over. Never tired of hearing the noise and seeing something so different to all the other aircraft.

        1. dvd

          I remember seeing Concorde flying overhead in the early '80s and being almost unable to hear it at all. Dunno what all the fuss was about.

          Mind you I was at the Reading rock festival at the time.

        2. Jan 0 Silver badge

          Oooh look, there goes concorde again!

          NH

      2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Never heard Concorde supersonic

        The initial test flights ran up & down the Irish sea, I remember going outside to listen for the double boom. It was very distinctive, but didn't seem loud enough to be a problem. There were a few complains about cracked greenhouses, though.

        when a Concorde was climbing out to the West, and passed over at ~2k ft,

        It was even better on the perimeter road at the end of the runway, when the reheat was still active. Made the world shake.

        1. David Knapman

          I remember it from a few air shows I went to back in the 90s. It was a joyous noise to experience - the sheer loud growl as it went past and shook the ground, followed by the simultaneous setting off of all of the car alarms in the car park.

        2. Natalie Gritpants

          In Weston-super-Mare used to hear the thump-thump around 5pm every day, sounded like distant thunder but then it generated when Concorde was over the Atlantic (ocean, not hotel)

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          The boom caused by the Air France flight from JFK used to rattle the window frames about 9pm each night when I was growing up in Cornwall. It was one of those comforting noises that said everything was okay and the future would be faster and Gerry Andersonesque.

        4. Dazed and Confused

          > It was even better on the perimeter road at the end of the runway, when the reheat was still active. Made the world shake.

          It was a lot of fun when you were queued up behind one at Heathrow in something little like the smaller versions of an A320.

        5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "The initial test flights ran up & down the Irish sea... It was very distinctive, but didn't seem loud enough to be a problem."

          Agreed. I remember Shorts testing SkyVans at the more or less the same time. Ugly but if unladen I got the impression they'd be quite good at aerobatics.

          "It was even better on the perimeter road at the end of the runway, when the reheat was still active. Made the world shake."

          And if you were queued up behind one at take-off.

      3. Alan Brown Silver badge

        NASA boom mitigation

        They've been working on this with modified fighters (F15s) for 25 years.

        You can't remove the boom but you can both spread it and direct it. What NASA found was that a basin shaped bottom and a sharp edge to the top half and a very long snout resulted in a much broader and quieter boom pattern underneath.

        The program culminated in the Quiet Spike research but goes back further.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: NASA boom mitigation

          Somehow posting on the mobe ate half what I sent.

          Yes, the US Gov pissed off the public by running fighters low over cities, but they also did useful research with the cancelled XB-70 before retiring it, flying it on a large range of flight profiles and heights over Edwards for months and measuring the boom patterns as well as similar tests in the midwest.

          The Valkerie was huge plane and a spectacularly loud boomer (much louder than it should have been for its size) thanks to the Waverider layout. It gave a lot of valuable data and showed that 1950s-60s designs were simply too loud to be tolerable even at 50-60,000 feet over land - which was quickly proven on those Concorde flights into Bahrain/Singapore.

          If Boeing hadn't been set a target by the US Government of building something significantly faster than Concorde they might have succeeded. Bigger and more range was relatively easy but the extra speed meant the thing got so hot that it needed new materials which simply weren't available.

          Even Concorde was pushing normal materials limits and you can't build a civil transport that leaks fuel like a plastic bag full of nails when it's on the tarmac like the SR71s did (not to mention the fun they had acquiring Soviet titanium). No matter for Boeing, as the entire enterprise was funded by Uncle Sam and the backstop program turned into a roaring commercial success. If the SST had succeeded, we may have never seen low cost mass transport from the 747 (which at its core is a 707 scaled up 50% for freight work, with an elevated flight deck to both protect the pilots from shifting cargo and allow a nose door to be fitted without disconnecting/reconnecting/recalibrating all the flight controls every time it's opened. Everything else is evolution)

          Without some magic way of reducing friction, supersonic doesn't gain much for your money unless you're going at least 6-9 hours conventionally and then you really want hypersonic or skipping, else fuel will be 90% of your MTOW. Reaction Engines might still have their day for 4 hour London-Sydney vomit rides.

          As for booms - there's no way the public will put up with more than a even a couple of quiet booms a day - particularly in quieter areas. Making them unnoticable in urban areas isn't as important as making them unnoticeable when people are in the suburbs or rural locations. (In a quiet location you can hear a 747-400 flying past at 35,000 feet, as the daily transpolar flights to Argentina did over my parents place when I was in my 20s. It can't be any louder than that). I heard Concorde boom once. You could put up with that once a day on a predictable pattern but every other flight at effectively random intervals would trigger murderous rampages in a lot of people (chinese water torture...)

    4. PhillW

      Or just "unusually long assembly time" costing the US Govt $millions per year, forever..........

  3. LeahroyNake

    Potential

    awarded a $247.5m contract by NASA to build a potentially successor:

    My reading comprehension fail again.

    Potentially build a successor. Or a potential successor?

    1. Ian Michael Gumby

      Re: Potential

      Well, forget Concorde. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, makers of the iconic SR-71 Blackbird, was today awarded a $247.5m contract by NASA to build a potential successor: the Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) X-plane by 2022. The 94ft-long airframe has a wingspan of 29.5ft and is designed to fly at Mach 1.4, or 940 mph, at an altitude of 55,000 feet.

      That should clear up your reading ... you should get your eyes checked...

      That said... how is this a successor to a spy plane that flew many times faster?

      1. MrDamage Silver badge

        Re: Potential

        If the pair of you read the paragraph in relation to the rest of the articles it makes sense.

        If you insist on reading the paragraph as a standalone block of text, then reading comprehension failure can be expected.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Best thing, the Skunkworks is back in business. Here's to hoping they can channel a bit of Kelly Johnson and get us something that makes sense for use. But I want to fly in a giant version of an SR-71. Now that would be impressive on the runway!

    1. MercenaryGman

      If you think the Skunkworks isn't already working on the 'next thing', you're kidding yourself.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm lots of US government money seems to going into that, don't think Boeing will be bleating if they get the benefits.

    What do you think Airbus ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What Do You Think Airbus

      I think Airbus should ask the Chinese for the plans once it becomes a reality.

      1. naive

        Re: What Do You Think Airbus

        Yeah, the Chinese are a free backup utility for the plans and designs of Western companies.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: What Do You Think Airbus

        "I think Airbus should ask the Chinese for the plans once it becomes a reality."

        Maybe the Chinese will be fed fake plans as the Russians were for Concorde - allegedly.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Hmmm lots of US government money seems to going into that, don't think Boeing will be bleating if they get the benefits.

      Seeing as Lockheed has got the contract, how will Boeing benefit? Anyway, this is from NASA's tiny budget. The real money flows from DARPA's conveniently non-discretionary teat.

  6. ITnoob

    "Almost imperceptible"....

    So quieter than our LG dishwasher then.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Only Mach 1.4?

    Hardly worth it except on very long flights. Since the boom is just where it transitions, can't they shoot for Mach 2.5 so it can make a real dent in flight times for the sort of flights most of us regularly take?

    Though I suppose given the hassle of getting to the airport, then all the TSA groping, even if the flight took three seconds it would still take hours to get anywhere!

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: Only Mach 1.4?

      This is test design to work out the design not a production design. It needs to go comfortably supersonic to test the design. Many of the Skunkwork's projects are test/prototype designs intended to figure out how to solve a problem for a later full scale design.

    2. hugo tyson

      Re: Only Mach 1.4?

      Pretty sure the boom is anywhere the craft passes at faster than mach 1, not just at transition.

    3. Steve Todd

      Re: Only Mach 1.4?

      Compared to a normal cruise of Mach 0.88? That's a 6 hour flight taking only 4, or a 10 hour taking 6:20

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