A supersonic jet designed to make very little noise made its first flight this week, flying over the Southern California desert just after sunrise, in what could be the first step toward much faster commercial travel, according to NASA.
NASA and American aerospace and weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin On Tuesday, it successfully tested a jet capable of traveling at supersonic speeds.
Airplanes have been able to fly at supersonic speeds since the 1940s. The problem is that high-speed jets are banned for commercial travel on the ground, because they create an explosive — and terrifying — “sonic boom” that disturbs the public.
The supersonic Concorde, operated by British Airways and Air France, made transatlantic flights beginning in the 1970s. But these services were discontinued in 2003 after a fatal accident three years ago led to a decline in demand for the expensive service.
If NASA and Lockheed Martin can successfully downsize, the new planes could cut travel time between places like New York City and Los Angeles by nearly half, opening up an entirely new air travel industry.
The X-59 is capable of traveling faster than the speed of sound with what Lockheed Martin described as only a “light stroke.” Tuesday’s test flight was slower than the speed of sound and was primarily intended to test the plane’s structural integrity. However, it has been celebrated as an important step towards the widespread use of supersonic travel.
The small, 100-foot (30 m) plane was launched from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, about 60 miles (100 km) north of Los Angeles, and headed over the desert and landed near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center about 40 miles (64 km) away.
The first plane to travel faster than the speed of sound — or 767 miles per hour (1,235 kilometers per hour) — took off nearly 80 years ago in 1947, according to NASA. But flights at such speeds over land were soon banned in the United States in response to opinion polls. Residents complained that the noise reverberated through major cities, rattling windows and startling the public.
NASA and Lockheed Martin have been working for years on a solution that would circumvent the noise and lead to regulatory change, largely to make commercial supersonic travel within the United States possible.