REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON THE NEW NASA X-59 QUIET SUPERSONIC TRANSPORT (QUESST)

Greetings to whom reading this. To begin this essay, I’d like to first introduce myself. My name is Siti Nuruljannah Mohamad Zamri, a third-year student from the School of Aerospace Engineering. I am writing this reflective essay to share with you my view on the new NASA X-59 Quiet Supersonic Transport.  

Isn’t it amazing if you could travel around the world in just a matter of second? Much to our disappointment, teleportation has not yet been implemented in the real world. However, we can still rely on aeroplanes or helicopters! Air transport is said to be the fastest method of transport. Commercial jets can reach speeds up to 955 kmph (593 mph). Let’s say you want to go to America to see Donald Trump, it would take you quite the whole day to reach there! The total flight duration from Malaysia to the United States is 19 hours 6 minutes but what if you can travel there in just about half of the duration? That would be cool right? 

Over the decades, NASA has done a lot of research about aircraft, especially in the supersonic area. They always aim to go faster and faster to break the sound barrier. For an aircraft to fly supersonically overland, it would produce a huge emission in energy, usually in the form of sound, which can be similar to an explosion or thunderclap. In order to overcome this problem, NASA came up with the idea to build an aircraft that can go supersonic but this time, without producing too much noise. Nothing good comes easy though. The biggest challenge faced by them is the capability to analyse how the aeroplane is going to act with the new aircraft design flying faster than the speed of sound. NASA’s latest project that is “The Low-Boom Flight Demonstration” is a NASA aeronautic mission, which includes the design, building, and testing of the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology. In this demonstration, their focused effort would be on the most critical problem in supersonic that is a sonic boom.  “As the aircraft flies at supersonic speed, the aerodynamic drag increased markedly, but the drag can be overcome by having enough power and high thrust engine”, said one of the engineers who is involved in the QueSST project. With their new aircraft design, X-59 will be able to fly at supersonic speeds but with only a soft ‘thump’ instead of a boom. With my knowledge in Flight Performance and High-Speed Aerodynamic, I understand that it is totally not an easy work to achieve a low boom with current aircraft’s design. Hence, NASA has to invent a new aircraft design that can fly at supersonic speed without producing unacceptable noise. 

Did you know about the first commercial aircraft to fly supersonic? Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 was the first supersonic transport, which had its first supersonic flight in December 1968 and the first supersonic commercial aeroplane was the Concorde. However, British Airways and Air France stopped flying the Concorde in 2003. Because of the sonic boom that is too loud and the possibility for its engine exhaust to harm the ozone layer, all overland commercial supersonic flight was banned. It saddens me to think that we'll never get to fly in a supersonic commercial aircraft again but I still hope that this project would be a success because George Washington Carver said that without hope, there will be no vision and with no vision, people will perish. 

In ESA368 High-Speed Aerodynamic course, I learned about shock waves and also sonic boom. Now, let me share a bit on what is a sonic boom and how it occurs. When an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound, it creates shock waves - a region of an abrupt change of pressure and density. Sonic booms may create a loud boom and damage to some structures. In addition, the sonic boom is a ceaseless sound which is released by the aircraft all the while it is travelling at a supersonic speed. The sonic boom may also lead to shaking similar to earthquakes and shattering of glass if the aircraft is flying at a low altitude. Certainly, we do not want that. What if there are multiple supersonic aircraft flying above the buildings again and again. How many dollars would be wasted just to fix the shattered glass? This is a serious issue as sonic booms put us at a disadvantage. 

That tells us the reason why NASA is so determined to build this X-59 Quiet Supersonic Transport. If they can resolve the sonic boom problem, we would have a great chance to get supersonic commercial aircraft back to work. NASA’s engineers work on the designing area to shape the new aeroplane such that it will not generate a loud sonic boom. From the research and data collected, they eventually came up with a very long and slender aeroplane. The design is a brilliant idea since it can shape the volume and lift distribution over the aeroplane thus the shock does not coalesce. From the video shared by NASA, I learned that the long and skinny body is developed to stretch the shock waves out to prevent them from merging into a very strong front and rear shock that produce a sonic boom.  X-59 is conceived to fly at higher altitude because the distance away from the ground reduces the noise from the sonic boom. Hypothetically, the higher and farther away from the ground, the quieter it will be. Also, to get a needed lift distribution at a certain angle of attack, they need to fly at an altitude of at least 55000 feet above the ground.  

NASA‘s primary objective is the data part and for regulatory change, there are also, they work on longer-term challenges for commercial flight. However, by having that long aircraft to move around airports, how practical that is? The design is to fly overland and not on the ground. With that being said, there is a probability that the commercial supersonic aircraft may not look like the demonstrator but the boom will be similar. In order to have a commercial aeroplane that flies supersonically, people from the airline's industry have to take into account this new design and how can they move around in airports flexibly.  

As a conclusion, I am looking forward to seeing “The Low-Boom Flight Demonstration” succeed. Building a supersonic aircraft might be improvident but NASA has considered this expected problem and try to make the new aircraft to be cost-effective as much as possible. By having a commercial aircraft that flies at supersonic speed, we could enjoy the reduction in flight time. The other pros of a recent supersonic commercial aircraft over the commercial subsonic aircraft are more passengers can be carried to travel abroad per day per flight. The commercial supersonic aircraft with the latest engineering technology together with the experience from the military supersonic aircraft will be much more competent for long-distance flights than subsonic aircraft in terms of fuel usage and carbon dioxide produced. Moreover, the total operating cost for the airlines should be less per passenger mile with the supersonic aircraft. 

Darn, it would be cool if we were able to fly in this someday 😍