The QueSST produces a sonic thump, rather than a boom

Sunday, July 9th, 2023

Lockheed Martin’s experimental X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft, or QueSST, built by the company‘s Skunk Works for NASA, provides no traditional forward visibility to its pilot:

Ultimately, it’s planned that the X-59 will achieve supersonic speeds over land that create no more than a sonic ‘thump’ — rather than the ‘boom’ associated with previous supersonic transports. That could convince U.S. and international regulators to change the laws governing supersonic commercial aviation.

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This is all part of an overall design that’s specifically intended to reduce the kinds of sonic booms that have long been an obstacle in the way of commercial supersonic flight over land. With such a long snout ahead of them, the X-59’s pilot instead relies upon the eXternal Vision System (XVS) and an array of forward-facing high-resolution cameras. An aperture for the 4K camera used in the XVS can be seen in these new photos, located atop the nose, broadly above where the canard foreplanes are located.

Comments

  1. Jim says:

    You can do away with windows entirely if you use Apple Vision Pro.

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