After years of work, NASA expects the X59 to fly later this year.
DALLAS — To make a kid stressed, just say the word “test.”
Now just imagine the pressure if that “test” had the potential to alter human history.
“Not really pressure but just the excitement and seeing that light at the end of the tunnel is where we’re at,” said Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA’s X59 program.
When NASA entered that tunnel, it was taking a shot in the dark, hopeful it could do what had never been done.
“We’re trying to make a sonic boom into a sonic thump,” said test pilot Nils Larson.
“And fly a quiet supersonic flight,” said Bahm. “No one has ever done that aspect before.”
At least, not yet. After years of tweaking and testing, the X59 will finally fly this year.
“Hopefully we can get you across the country twice as fast to go see grandma,” Larson said.
“Ever since we turned the engines on it became real,” said Bahm. “She’s alive.”
This week, Bahm, Larson and other NASA officials talked to students at Dallas’ Frontiers of Flight Museum about the plane. They explained how the X59 will fly supersonic, faster than the speed of sound, which is nothing new.
“No, we’re not breaking the sound barrier for the first time,” Bahm said. “That was Chuck Yeager more than 75 years ago.
“The problem was it made a very loud sonic boom to go along with that fast speed,” said Larry Cliatt II, commercial supersonic technology sub-project manager.
Sonic booms had the power to break windows, damage eardrums, and terrify grandmas. For that reason, flying supersonic is illegal and has been for 50 years.
“That’s what we’re really trying to change,” Bahm said.
Seven years of work led to this engineering marvel. At supersonic speeds, the X59 will sound like a car door shutting in the distance.
Following a few more ground tests, it will fly over numerous cities around the country. NASA will ask people on the ground if the sound bothered them. If successful, restrictions may be lifted, allowing travelers to get where they’re going in half the time.
It may be decades before it’s available commercially, but when it is, we’ll know NASA engineered it and the next generation built it.
“We look at kids and we see eyes full of ambition, of passion, of ideas,” said Cindy Gallegos, a senior at Cristo Rey Dallas. “It just makes me even more excited to see what can I do better to leave off a place where [kids] can continue to [build] off of.”
In other words, invest in the future and you’ll get there faster.
