Skunk Works is almost ready to start test flights of the X-59.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/quesst.html
It's main goal is to prove that super sonic flight can be achieved while avoiding major noise disruptions on the ground (target is 75 decibels)
If you've never heard it, this is what the Concorde's sonic boom sounded like from the ground:
?t=58
Are there any military applications for Quiet Supersonic Technology?
The technology seems to demand window-less wienerpits. The aircraft will have 4k cameras all around that will allow the pilot to navigate without having to physically look forward
What's the over-under on the project engineers calling it a COFFIN system internally?
They don't. Former mech on x-59. And the FVS emergency deployment system was a frickin nightmare.
Avionic tech here, tell me more.
I’ve always wondered why nobody at least experimented with a ‘coffin’ wienerpit for g resistance reasons. Essentially, with a pilot laying down, there would be a massive improvement in their ability to resist high Gs during turns. Pic rel figure from NASA D-337 technical note. I know that agility is not the number 1 focus in modern fighters but it’s not like it isn’t considered at all (especially for air superiority). Even if designing an airframe capable of resisting larger vertical acceleration doesn’t make sense, there still would be the benefit of a pilot being able to pull sustained let’s say 10g instead of ~7.5g.
Pic rel some old sketch of mine presenting utilization of such idea. What would normally be a 2-seater trained/light attack aircraft would get a 1-seater variant with a sliding curved display providing vision, so that pilot can be fully laying down. In case of a failure of the display system, they still could see front by raising their head or some mechanically deployed mirrors could be used (it should be enough to land).
F-22 and F-16 already have deeply reclined seats for the pilot.
At the end of the day pilot G-limits are not as important as people think, the airframe and kinematics are actually still a bigger limitation.
The navy is perfectly fine limiting their jets to 7.5G sustained for example, the range trade-off for the extra weight is not worth it, let alone the kind of insane thrust and aero design that would allow 9+ G sustained turns at 40,000ft
I think it's a combination of "cameras not being reliable enough" compared to human eyesight in terms of uptime (if a camera shuts off due to damage or such, what the frick do you do?) and it not being as necessary as it would've been in the early cold war.
BRO WE LITERALLY ACE COMBAT NOW????
souless
it's the future, old man
>the future is living underground with a TV as a window
grim
No, soulless is AI controlled drones
ACE COMBAT 3BROS
It was just too ahead of its time
>T-4
The 1.3M cheapass Valkyrie
It's strictly not windowless, just windshield-less. There are clearly windows in
, just along the sides.
The lack of a forward windshield is less likely to be a hard requirement and probably more about standardization in testing shapes - it's easier and simpler to fabricate and swap in a different nose panel if refinements to the shape are needed, rather than try to rework an entire canopy. After the principles and shapes are decided on, work on canopy fabrication and materials can be done.
>It's strictly not windowless, just windshield-less. There are clearly windows in
, just along the sides.
Spirit of St Louis bros... we won.
My spirit is now lifted Louis, thank you.
yeah lol nasa tried it already and concluded that a plane should be at least 65% conical
end of story
>plane needs to remove glass in order not to melt
>just place cameras around with glass surely that will work
>only glass can possibly let light through and bend it
>no other material on earth could possibly be used as a focusing lens than the material suitable for windshields
>not having to make it more impact resistant or a massive surface for air to heat up with friction couldn't POSSIBLY effect the degree to which it could be made heat resistant
gentlemen, your brain on /k/
no please give us an example of what can possibly replace glass as a mediator for you to have high resolution feedback in order to navigate
proper borosilicate glass made to withstand higher temps positioned such that it has a good angle and the airflow at supersonic speeds wont cause as much friction?
are you REALLY that fricking moronic?
you know what we used for the SR-71?
No you wouldn't because you are stupid enough to think "all camera is glass and can only be glass. glass is glass like minecraft"
Quartz, you fricking dipshit.
It melts at 1650 C.
Borosilicate glass, to continue my example, can withstand 3000 C before melting.
Decades of advancing the ability to tap at some keys and figure out the most BASIC b***h of info on material science and morons like you dribble on through regardless.
Quartz is based, they use it in thermocouples and shit.
it is. they also "ultrasonically fused" it to the titanium that made up the frame, which sounds really cool.
>Hey boss we screamed the window into hugging the frame better because you said not to melt anything.
its true however you missed one small detail
you cant place dome like glass on live imagining cameras for navigating
you should have known this before commenting
I don't care if its bait.
A fricking DOME?
lmfao
I'm a glassblower, and you're on mount stupid. You're technically right even, glasses as a material family can do the job, but borosilicate has an entire working range of melt and it starts at like ~1200 degrees, it doesn't go full liquid until about 3000 though, quartz has an entire working range as well and can even be blown by hand if your torch is big enough, or uses hydrogen/oxy mix, and that range starts at that 1600 or so figure, which is why it was chosen over boro.
there is always an expert ready to wail on your stupid mouth
There are different kinds of glass or translucent material in general.
And even with normal glass it's easier to loop a fuel line or other kinds of activ cooling around a pinhole camera ( low Delta p / has high internal pressure as well) than a whole window. Here you have a highly scientific test show that showsmaterial with low thermal resistance can endure with active liquid cooling.https://9gag.com/gag/anQLrmz
Just stop posting if you have no idea.
This relatively lows cost tech demonstrator made mostly with with equipment taken from existing aircraft. Engine from Super Hornet, landing gear from F-16, wienerpit from T-38 and so on. I honestly don't see this going anywhere. Supersonic air travel is still more expensive than subsonic, I doubt they can get economies of scale to work for supersonic airliner. Only reason Concorde was built because British and French governments paid for everything.
Previous attempt with Boom Overture died on the moment they had forkout cash to Rolls-Royce for actual engine development. I personally see RR doing feasibility studies for that engine out of their own pocket as massive mistake from their part, they should have had Boom pay for feasibility studies from the start.
Does it have military applications? Probably, but sound signature is probably way bellow heat signature for military priorities.
It's not about manned quiet supersonic flight, it's about unmanned flight. No sane person is ever going to design a manned flying machine that you have to eject from if your cameras go down; nobody wants RadioShack to have a kill count. So anything manned would have some way for the pilot to visually see out of the aircraft.
This tech is for the stealth cruise missiles. We have them, but they're limited to subsonic speeds partially for reasons of sound. If they could be silent on top of undetectable, you could theoretically have a cruise missile that can approach undetected and be supersonic by the time it can be visually acquired by say image recognition software, without giving the target a huge audio cue that it's about to get hit.
>It's not about manned quiet supersonic flight, it's about unmanned flight.
This tech demonstrator, that is literally manned, meant for possible commercial supersonic aircraft. Made for specific purpose of testing flight noise and sonic booms. Paid by NASA.
>This tech is for the stealth cruise missiles.
If the tech was for supersonic stealth cruise missiles, tech demonstrator would be likely pretty close to cruise missile sized and it wouldn't be public on any level until orders for actual production it would be close at hand. At that point some declassification would be in order to justify spending.
They don't need to make engines for supersonic airliner more efficient than for subsonic airliner, just competitive in value those engines provide. There is market for crossing ocean just couple or few hours faster, people willing to pay for it, but that market is very small. It is part of the reason why Concorde was retired, they lost like quarter of their frequent fliers in 9/11. Investment bankers flying between London and New York, occasionally via Paris. Concorde from New York to Paris and from Paris to London City airport with turboprop regional airliner was faster New York to London Heathrow.
The currently interesting development for engines for subsonic airliners is that unducted fans might be back on menu. Those might actually get slower, but much cheaper to operate. They might have solved the noise issues with unducted fans.
Unducted fans are kino as frick, compared to those soulless pods hanging from the wings of airliners right now.
CFM International says that CFM RISE will have 20% improvement in fuel burn rate over latest CFM LEAP. They are looking at starting flight tests in 2026 and introduction into service in early to mid 2030's. That will likely mean return of rear engine t-tail airliners, unless manufacturers are going on wild ride of new airliner configurations like all composite flying wings.
Look at this shape very carefully, and tell me that it is adequate for passenger transport. Heck, we can't even get BWB airliners because trying to widen the rows of seats to take advantage of all the extra cabin space would place a large number of passengers at such a distance from the centerline that a simple bank would make them nauseated (BWB would make for an excellent cargo or tanker design, but the USAF can't afford to take that kind of a design risk in those fleets right now, after multiple procurement disasters from Boeing).
As a design used for the UCAV component of NGAD, however, it makes a lot more sense. Quiet supersonic flight also means less draggy supersonic flight, which means it's easier to supercruise over long distances. Let a human test pilot--who can react to unpredictable situations far better than any computer--work the bugs out, and then let the coders go to work.
> we can't even get BWB airliners
Also because a lot of the airport infrastructure is geared towards tube-and-wing. And I bet weight and balance would be a motherfricker
Also, airport infrastructure is one of the reasons why electric commercial aircraft are almost certainly not going to happen for a very long time.
this is some schizo shit anon. subsonic cruise missiles like LRASM travel at like 0.9 mach and SOUND is not any part of how they are detected by the enemy yikes
You are such a fricking schizo luddite moron why the frick do people spout this fricking shit.
>No sane person is ever going to design a manned flying machine that you have to eject from if your cameras go down
WELCOME TO 40 FRICKING YEARS AGO moron. We've been running aircraft that are fundamentally aerodynamically unstable and thus will crash right away if the computer goes down since then. We've launched multi year, multi-DECADE missions through space to other fricking worlds. The Voyager 1 spacecraft launched in 1977 took and sent its final picture in 1990, 13 years and 3.7 billion miles later.
It's perfectly possible to make all of this stuff super, ultra reliable with multiple redundancies. On the scale of super sonic jet aircraft capital costs a formally verified rtOS system with redundant camera streams and panels is barely even a rounding error.
>eject from if your cameras go down
Do you by any chance not know that planes can land at night or in fog/snow? That pure Instrument no Vision flight is a very normal thing?
Or are like actually just tech illiterate?
A supersonic cruise missile would hit the target before the sound could be detected by the target on account of being faster than sound.
>manned flying machine that you have to eject from if your cameras go down
Why? Cat IIIc requires no runway visibility. Blind landings are not a problem.
>to eject from if your cameras go down
Most aircraft have triple redundancies and if you can't make a frigging camera work then you can't trust your stick.
As another anon said, flying at all require computer, no computer = no manual landing.
Also sound isn't useful for the kind of stealth such aircraft are for.
Since you are literally going Faster. Than. Sound. the sound will be lagging a bit behind you.
All my felicitation for acting arrogant when you don't understand shit, it make me hop you were baiting, have a pity (You).
This guy has the right to vote.
Debatable.
>a huge audio cue that it's about to get hit.
>supersonic
> Supersonic air travel is still more expensive than subsonic,
And unless they find some magical technology that makes the engines needed for supersonic travel more efficient than subsonic that also can’t be applied to subsonic engines, it always will be. There is just very little need for supersonic commercial travel beyond “Concorde was cool”
>There is just very little need for supersonic commercial travel beyond “Concorde was cool”
There is big demand for supersonic in private jets market. This market would pay premium price.
> Military implications?
> Stealth cruise missiles
What have we learned is very important from the Ukraine-Russian war? What is it that the USA blows everyone out of the water at?
Logistics.
Need to get supplies somewhere fast, but you will overfly civilians?
Are you suggesting a... supersonic, low altitude, heavy lift airframe? Like if a C-130 and a B-1 had a kid?
Is 50k ft low altitude?
This is brilliant.
Supersonic delivery of paratroops and parachute dropped supplies, vehicles, LRASMs... out the back via a ramp.
>Supersonic delivery of paratroops
>implying paratroopers will be jumping out the back at supersonic speeds
This is how we get drop pods, I'm calling it now.
I was going to ask if there was any paper on the science behind, but I then realized that Skunk Works isn't NASA.
Skunk Works is going to eventually fully hand over the test bed and research to NASA, and at that point the papers become public domain.
NASA has stated that they intend on releasing all lessons learned to the private sector (airlines and other aerospace companies) after they complete the program
That's nice. Thanks anon.
Aardvark II when?
>x-59
Oh thank god, I hadn't heard news in months. I thought they might have blown it up in a wind tunnel or something stupid
>are there any military applications for Quiet Supersonic Technology
Yes but military aircraft probably already pursue the anti-boom aircraft designs when they can
Super neat in a variety of ways. Really nice to see some of the good old X-plane spirit still kicking.
>Are there any military applications for Quiet Supersonic Technology?
It'd allow for way more and more varied training by more of NATO if nothing else. Where pilots can go super sonic is very limited in general in civvie airspace in times of peace. As another practical consideration, noise is one of the big local complaints in terms of placing aircraft like the F-35 at domestic bases. Quieter planes might be useful there.
In terms of combat it's harder to see practical applications, and it'd depend heavily on whether it was possible to combine quiet supersonic tech AND radar stealth. Obviously without regular stealth sound doesn't even enter the equation, can just see it on radar. But there have been some interesting napkin math around massive nationwide AI-analysed microphone networks that could help locate stealth aircraft into a few dozen square miles based on noise, which could still be useful in terms of firing solutions faster, like getting IR or visual seekers closer enough. I'm definitely making a stretch there, but sometimes it's hard to predict exactly what will become important so still neat.
I think the primary potential value would be civilian however.
I believe it was back in the 1950’s when the U.S. conducted a months long experiment about the effect of super sonic booms over a small city and what they found was that the booms literally start destroying infrastructure if they are persistent enough. Whatever wasn’t sturdy would start to crack eventually.
It also hurts animals/fauna in various ways. And people reported having headaches and such.
So minimizing the sound is finally going to allow for it to take place over the continental U.S. which is a huge deal. I could even imagine this allowing the military to expand their flight envelope and speed limits over the U.S. which I’m sure they would appreciate.
Yes, and that's the US, which at least has enormous fairly empty areas so practice can still be done. For European countries that want to train or react to something it's worse. So even if the plane had zero front line military application, having super sonic trainers and national guard type domestic interceptors that could be used much more aggressively would be a real boon.
A low stakes test bed for and prover for a virtual wienerpit is honestly interesting as well. The tech should be getting pretty close with how good 8k screens are getting. And if designers no longer had to worry about wienerpit location to give a pilot full visibility that'd be a major boon to all aspects of aircraft design including stealth.
> going to allow for it to take place over the continental U.S.
It will never fricking happen on a large scale. FAA is wayyyy too conservative
>I believe it was back in the 1950’s when the U.S. conducted a months long experiment about the effect of super sonic booms over a small city and what they found was that the booms literally start destroying infrastructure if they are persistent enough.
C'mon and SLAM
>Skunk Works is almost ready
Why exactly would Skunk make this and not NASA?
>NASA
>Make
Anon....
NASA literally makes all of the airfoil profiles that Lockheeb et al mix and match onto their shit. Yes, they make all kinds of stuff. There's no significant military application for this meme which is why I ask why the hell Skunk would make it and not NASA.
>make
>profile
So they don't make anything, they just publish the design for which gets made by someone else.
Just like this project.
Quiet supersonic is relevant for OVERLAND supersonic commercial transport and is the explicit mission goal of the program. The system will still create a sonic boom at the surface loud enough to be detectable by whatever observation system you can think of, so it's not relative there.
> The data will help NASA provide regulators with the information needed to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to lift the ban on commercial supersonic travel over land.
>Skunk Works
Coolest R&D bunch in the entire US.
This project is all about quiet sonic booms, however i suspect that it's actually about much more than that to the USAF.
The way that this aircraft acheives it's quiet booms is by having stupidly low wave drag and by reducing the formation of a large shock cone.
Obviously this would directly reduce supersonic drag which is very desirable for a multitude of roles, however i think even more importantly it should reduce the supersonic thermal signature of aircraft which is a very big deal now with stealth aircraft.
As aircraft go into the supersonic regime, they produce a shock cone of compressed and heated air around the aircraft; from the frontal aspect, this cone increases the thermal signature of the aircraft by up to 5 times. An aircraft moving at mach 1 can be detected at double the range of an aircraft moving at mach 0.8, by IRST and by IR missile seekers.
This makes supersonic speed a double egded sword for stealth aircraft, potentially diminishing their radar detection advantage if they travel at high speeds.
This is particularly a shame because between the 4th and 5th generation, aircraft have made leaps and bounds in terms of practical top speed and supercruise capability.
I would highly suspect that many of the aerodynamic techniques developed for this aircraft are also being integrated into NGAD, especially since all of the concepts we see appear to be very well optimised for high supersonic speed.
I would not be suprised for example if NGAD is able to acheive a mach 2+ supercruise capability.
forgot my accompanying image
The problem with your theory is that it requires a fuselage shape that’s specifically designed for the purpose of reducing drag. Which is fundamentally incompatible with a fuselage shape designed to reduce radar returns. And given the choice between countering radar which every country ever has, and countering IR which maybe possibly a handful have, they’re going to go with radar every time.
Stealth does not interfere with kinematics very much.
Which is why every modern stealth aircraft is shaped differently.
Oh, fricking wait.
That doesn't go against what he said at all.
The point is that you optimize for aerodynamic performance and stealth separately. Modern stealth fighters look the same because they're optimized to perform in similar flight envelopes, that of supersonic fighters. NGAD, supposedly being a high speed, long range missile truck, could end up looking more like a YF-12 with modern stealth geometry.
>Stealth does not interfere with kinematics very much
>The fastest aircraft in the world has stealth features.
>The F-22 has the best supercruise out of any fighter aircraft, it is VLO
>The B-2 is more or less the ideal shape for subsonic cruise efficiency
The idea that stealth shaping is somehow a massive compromise for aerodynamics is a relic of the 1970s, back before CFD and CAD were possible.
>The idea that stealth shaping is somehow a massive compromise for aerodynamics is a relic of the 1970s, back before CFD and CAD were possible.
NTA,
That's only because the F117 was so bad it was a miracle it flew.
Nowadays we put aerodynamics shape first, then streamline for stealth. Anytime you see airplane tails, you'll know they made a sacrifice over the perfection (which was the YF-23 yes).
Stealth still conflict with aerodynamics like for engine intake, the most efficient intake shape would not be good for stealth and a fighter capable of both supercruise and agile at small speed require sacrifice, stealth become a variable (from an hypothetical maximum).
I've also heard of thermal limit for their stealth paint, making stealth exhaust (radar speaking, not IR) will remain difficult.
The YF-23 used special active boundary layer control to act as a pseudo splitter/VRI, you can also design S-ducts in such a way to provide supersonic pressure recovery (F-22 does this), This is something that used to be a problem but they found pretty good solutions.
NGAD will likely use a combination of these two.
Never forget what they took from you
long girl
Yeah, a remote control tug makes sense
>looks like a Starfighter
>chromed body
Dare I say, space age ludokino is back on the menu
even if this all worked wouldn't the most expensive part of making another SST be the engines? Unless your airliner has much more expensive and better engines than any supersonic bomber in history then your project is dead in the water.
Concorde could supercruise at mach 2 I don't even think the SR-71 could go that fast using dry thrust.
Concorde used the same engines as the Avro Vulcan which wasn't even supersonic, and they were well before modern turbojet designs. There's plenty of engines that can match their performance at lower sizes and weights. The airflow into the engine needs to be subsonic, but that's a problem of inlet design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593
Don't forget that high-bypass turbofans on airlines are pretty fricking crazy pieces of work themselves and aren't cheap.
They're very cheap to operate which is the whole point. Engines for a supersonic transport will be more expensive to buy and far more expensive to operate.
its not the same engine as the Vulcan they just tested the engine using a Vulcan. It was designed for the TSR 2.
also if designing engines like this is so easy then why are the B1 and the Tu-160 so geriatric compared with Concorde?
The B-1B was redesigned (changed inlets) for low level flight, the B-1A could reach Mach 2+ So can the Tu-160.
but how long can they sustain mach 2? and can they supercruise at that speed?
I don't think they can supercruise at that speed, the problem is that they required a much higher takeoff weight for carrying bombs, and that necessitated the swing wing design with the horizontal stabiliser which is much draggier at high speed.
Not only does the center of pressure move back when the wings swing back, but as you go supersonic the center of pressure moves back as well.
This creates a lot of trim drag as the H-stab has to basically create negative lift to maintain level flight.
Building on this:
Another advantage of the swing wing for bombers, is improved efficiency at subsonic speeds generally, which improves subsonic range.
Bombers would only need to go supersonic as they dashed to the target, and would fly subsonic most of the time.
Unlike a supersonic passenger aircraft they did not need to fly supersonic the whole time.
How long until it reaches civilian markets and should I invest in properties next to airports?
Concorde could supercruise at Mach 2 because:
>It was large and sectionally dense
>It was very well optimized for wave drag with the high fineness and the very high sweep delta wing
>It had enormous variable geometry intake ramps with very high performance; at Mach 2 cruise the intake compressed the air by almost as much as the compressor.
>The engines were designed to operate at very high inlet pressure ratio, with a substantial part of the compressor made from special nickel alloy, the rest from titanium and parts of the compressor with active cooling.
The initial design for concord didn't have afterburners at all, it only got them after the weight increased during development and it was found they were needed to reduce the takeoff run.
They were actually planning an upgraded Olympus engine, with higher dry thrust, that would not have afterburner.
The Tu-144 (the 'Concordski') actually switched from an afterburning turbofan to non-afterburning Turbojets and saw an improvement in performance.