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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2023
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Supersonic jets like the Concorde face concerns over safety, high carbon output, and cost. They also make loud sonic booms so loud that only transoceanic flights are legal. Now one NASA program is trying to make a quiet supersonic plane that could fly over land.
Hosted by: Stefan Chin (he/him)
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Sources:
Special thanks to Mark Mangelsdorf, NASA’s Deputy Chief Engineer on the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (part of the Quesst project)
simpleflying.com/concorde-new...
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Image Sources:
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www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...
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I would prefer high speed trains for the land part.
But to cross oceans and places where trains can’t go it could be fun.
I just really want more trains tho.
The way you wrote that sounds kind of autistic 😂 but I agree more land based public transit is probably #1 transport priority esp in the usa
building a supersonic train is going to be extremely hard , keeping it from flying off the tracks might not be possible and the turning radius will be huge requiring lots of land
Trains are reaaaaally expensive to build and not a solution for a significant portion of the world. Either because of the costs or because of the impact to local fauna.
Planes are just simpler and will continue to be faster.
The future is high speed trains and (hopefully) low boom supersonic planes
In Orillia ON 10 years ago during a airshow a pilot was given quite a stern talking to after accidentally building up a sonic boom over lake Simcoe causing people to drop in the streets thinking a bomb went off. I was a young lad then and the sound was debilitating, like nothing else
Oh hey, I work on software for testing the X59, pretty cool to see it come up randomly from a source I follow normally
I live in Florida very close to rocket launches and quite often I hear sonic booms from rocket boosters land on land! It's awesome to hear and very cool! I'm so close to the launches I can see them clearly from my front porch!
This is the solution, we just LIKE the boom waves .) When will there be more ? I need them every day now ^^
This is fascinating! ✨ So impressed that you reached out to NASA for this!
Nasser
That was fascinating. Almost makes me regret not taking higher level fluids courses.
If you really want, you can take a higher level fluids course by goin to the top of your local skyscraper and taking a tinkle!
@@sewpungyow5154 LOL
As a small child in San Diego, CA (big military town) in the mid 50s, I used to love the ba-boom that the jets made. ✈😆
I have done too many long haul flights in the past but would actually not mind them taking a bit longer if the emissions were less.
This is what night trains are for. Even at relatively modest speeds they can go very far. 8 hours for sleeping, plus a few hours before and after can let you travel for 12 to 14 hours without having it be a chore. At a modest average speed of 150km/h (achievable on relatively normal rail, if well maintained), you can go 2100km in a night with relative ease. With some achievable upgrades 200km/h should be possible. Near transcontinental journeys can be covered this way.
@@placeholdername0000Unfortunately trains are a joke in North America. Meanwhile in Europe...
@@e.matthews Can be fixed
@@placeholdername0000Here's hoping! In Canada at least there's no political drive at all to make transportation better. The only progress has been in budget airlines.
I wish better luck to our neighbours
Most passenger planes still run on leaded fuel.
Your thumbnail is showing a shock wave but it doesn't mean it's from breaking the sound barrier, it just a sudden pressure change. Look up "vapor cone" for more information.
Your animation of the sound waves becoming a boom as the plane speeds up is the best explanation of the phenomenon that I've seen. Thanks!
Things have only gotten worse for both the climate and the economy since 2003. The business case for supersonic passenger transport is going to be a lot harder to make, even if you can fly over land.
That aside, it's still an interesting project and hopefully the scientists and engineers learn lots of new things that have applications elsewhere, even if this particular idea doesn't work out.
What makes you say things have gotten worse for the climate?
@@AmazingAwesomeAlaskaliterally just look around you, higher average temperatures, wider temperature fluctuations, worse storms and so much more.
And aside from direct observation, there is also a huge plethora of studies showing how much worse the climate is becoming, SciShow itself has covered so many of those studies, they have a lot of videos talking about climate change.
Or I'm dumb and you are being sarcastic 😂, if so then oops
@@AmazingAwesomeAlaska Lets see; the massive heat waves globally, Australia, Canada, California, and Maui were on fire, cyclones happening in places that don't normally get cyclones, glaciers are shrinking, 100-year floods happening year on year- And my city hasn't seen snow in well over a decade.
The evidence is there, the science is there. Just look at it.
The image shown with the cloudy cone forming at the jets tail is not a sonic boom. It's a common misconception.
No one said it was. That's like commenting on a picture of lightning and saying "that's actually not an image of thunder".
@@TheRealSkeletor You are dense. They literally put the words "Sonic Boom" over the image.
@@stuartshaffer6619 Not as dense as that condensation!
The caption over the picture is literally 'sonic boom'@@TheRealSkeletor
@@TheRealSkeletor the difference is, that thunder and lightning happen together, while the image shown has nothing to do with super Sonic speed
I remember in the 60's, I used to here sonic booms regularly, living in Texas in the Flight path from Dallas to Houston....but much closer to Dallas...used to rattle the walls at my grandmothers house.
The Concorde also had a huge fuel consumption issue. I wonder if they are taking this into account already or if it'll come later.
I can still break the sound barrier. All it takes is a whip.
Nice quiet walk,, THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP all day long on the flight paths. NO sound pollution.
My first thought when seeing the plane was shinkansen (japanese high speed trains). They had the same problem when exiting tunnels and inspired by the kingfisher beak, they made the nose longer and got rid of the boom.
5:36 beautiful picture
Next video... shockwave photography
So seeing the test design I'm guessing we are a few decades away from having a solution that will hold 300 passengers.
I'm not sure this will ever be for flying peasants 😅 the Concorde before it was only for the cream of the crop, the running costs of fuel and maintenance were enormous. This is private jet territory
@@DefnitelyNotFred seems to be more of a private yacht territory to me
It doesn't look like it could hold ten people.
The research will benefit all air transport, including military. The potential inherent efficiency gains will be valuable for fighters, bomber & commercial aircraft. Also, imagine a stealth bomber that can fly in at supersonic speeds within enemy territory without being heard.
@@skunclep1938 umm, so are we supposed to be excited about new murder devices possibilities?
I would have tried add a dynamic skin that would try to change in real time to disrupt the pressure wave.
Thanks, Stefan, now I have Aladdin in my head, 😂
I was out at Dryden when they were testing no-boom low-boom...it's a weird sound. That was 20 years ago.
Like Devo, I always thought an accessible way to break the sound barrier is to,
"Crack that whip!"
Good point the crack of a whip is a sonic boom
0:37 Science channel talks about sonic boom aka breaking the sound barrier, but shows a photo of a vapor cone.
I think an era of widely available supersonic commercial flight will happen within my lifetime. It'll be a huge step forward if this really does fix the problem with supersonic booms. The issues with fuel efficient, passenger capacity, and cost will still need to be worked out. And I think because of the infamous Concorde crash it'll take extra effort to convince people that it's safe.
Im pretty sure it's just going to be limited to private jets if this comes to market... at least for a long time.
Hmmm the BA Concord made 50,000 flight and flew more than 2.5m passengers. It has one crash. Aeroplane incidents (crashes) have been over 11500 and 83733 people have been killed. But we are fly all the time still. I flew yesterday and didn’t think once about crashing. Tbh, I believe if you are going to get rid of something then there must be something better to replace it. There isn’t. Flight are slow and boring. Uk to JFK 7 hours 30 mins!!! Used to be 3 hours with a tail wind
In the far southwest of the UK we'd have Concorde's booms twin a day and all the area's pheasants would call out- great for all hunters and poachers😏
Nice
I had no idea that wind tunnels could archive speeds above the speed of sound. Amazing
Sonic booms are very useful when you need to terrorize some people without explosives. Israel Air Force uses it on Gaza. Maybe instead of making it quieter they can also work on making it lauder so that they can terrorize more people.
I'm sure they're working on it.
Man, I remember hearing a podcast about a town where they tested some supersonic airplane, maybe the concorde, just can't recall what podcast it was.
The Picture of the plane with the cone of cloud and the caption "Sonic boom" over it ....
....is a picture of a plane going sub-sonic with a vapour cone - this cannot happen when a plane is going the speed of sound or greater, only when it is going less than the speed of sound
look on the bright side the sonic boom will shatter every window boom!!!! ding lit ding lit!!
I'm old enough to remember sonic booms happening fairly often. 🧑🦳
I can break the sound barrier with a towel. lol
Who tf said sonic booms are annoying it’s incredible. Damn prudes
What about making non-supersonic planes quieter? I am in Brussels and the sound of the incoming planes sometimes is really bothersome.
A really great question!
You get used to it and it's fine. I guarantee the cars and motorcycles make more noise.
The year is 2026. Scientists managed to change the sonic boom into a sonic fart. Back to the drawing table.
Why? I want sonic farts!
Here in 2023 we still have sonic sharts
Sonic brap
I HAD NO IDEA SONIC BOOMS WERE CONTINUOUS 😮
Me either ?? I thought they approached a peak and ‘boomed’ I can’t imagine what a continuous one would sound like!
"It is predicted to be quieter than a car door closing..." from what range? How hard of a car door close? What not give an estimation in Decibels from ground at sea level to craft? This metric sounds more and more absurd the more you think about it, so it must be a 'don't think about it' kind of answer from Lockheed Martin.
I would imagine that the new sound would make a high pitched hissing as well?? the pressure wave would push air around our ears like a fast wind sound.
Nice Disney's Aladdin reference at the end there.
The X-59 or anything shaped like that will never be commercially viable. It has no cargo capacity and it's actually fairly draggy. An SST has to be huge to perform well.
I like the science going into this and I'm sure it will have its uses, but this should not become widespread and thus a barrier in the way of good rail and maritime transport.
Go Go Sci Show!
Used to have raf planes flying supersonic over my house
The sonic boom was terrifying as a child
Y'all, that's a vapor cone in the thumbnail, not a shock.
We need to ask the UAP's how to do this
The snoot would droop
I have a visceral negative reaction to the word "unprecedented".
Skunk Works also made the SR-71 for the CIA so you can imagine their interest in the technology
> Skunkworks
I hope it won't smell too bad though...
The snoot droop
Droop snoot?
The snoot droops
You forgot that bullets cause sonic booms. With the exception of subsonic ammunition. But the bullets are so small all it really is a sonic crack than a boom.
Common myth, even in this video, is that Concorde wasn't cost effective. Concorde was actual always profitable, and became even more profitable in later years after they lowered prices (weirdly and counterintuitively, but true). It cancelled for other reasons.
I'm a child of the 50s and 60s, You didn't mention that there is a boom and then a BOOM.
The higher the aircraft the quieter the boom by the time it gets to the ground - this is the other solution to quieter supersonic craft
You can break the sound barrier at home with a bull whip.
My dad can do this with his belt😢
Or a wet towel😅
You can also break the sound barrier by eating a tortilla chip, or breaking a stick.
Even then it will take a long time to get to/from Australia
I think theyll figure out suborbital/single-orbital commuter flights before they figure out how to take a commercial aircraft and make it supersonic again
I want to hear it so bad.
Wonder how well some of these ideas could apply to ballistics.
Well our fastest going artillery are intercontinental missiles, but they go out of the atmosphere, so no Boom. The boom is after they land.
I don't think noise complaints are a priority during war. If a combat aircraft is trying to be stealthy or (relatively) fuel efficient, it will be flying subsonic.
Another question that will need to be answered is how it scales. This prototype does not appear to be able to hold more than a couple people. Will the length of the nose need to be doubled to double the passenger area, or quadrupled. To carry 16 people will there be a 1/2 KM long nose cone?
This design will never be scaled. It's a silly design for a passenger jet. It's more of a validation of their simulation methods which would go on to design a passenger jet.
You mispelled stealth BOMBERS with planes
I had a curious thought while watching this. Has any aircraft moving at supersonic speeds through the atmosphere even been observed by satellites or astronauts or other geo-monitoring equipment that might be in Earth orbit?
the thumbnail of the video is not a sonic boom...it is a water vapor condensation
No windows and only cameras for the pilots to see out of seems like a disaster waiting to happen imo. What if the camera cuts out during flight??
Ok correct me if I'm wrong. I thought Sonic Boom was used to sound that happens when plane breaches the sound speed? I mean plane travelling faster than speed of sound is very loud of course, but that's not exactly what sonic boom is, right?
Forget the sonic booms, cost per mile or KM must be competitive with other planes.
If people are willing to pay the price, there will be a market for those
I still don't understand why it would be more cost effective than the Concorde?
Fly them higher. That's the answer.
maybe we should just take a nap
Well then take a nap.
And zen fire ze missiles!
But I am le tired.
You first I’m raiding the cookie jar as soon as you’re asleep x
@@tomarmadiyer2698bout that time ey chaps?
Right-oh!
I think America would simmer down if we all took a nap 😴
In the hypothetical that faster than light travel is possible, what would be the equivalent of a sonic boom?.
All i know is that the object would become invisible for a while and then it would be visible, but would it have a beaming shine when that happens or a light explosion (light as in lux not weight)
You know that glow that nuclear fuel rods give off in a cooling tank? That is the equivalent and is called Cherenkov radiation
We need to bring supersonic passenger aircraft back, New York to London in three hours would have saved me 5 hours of a bad flight
I can't believe we no longer have commercial access to supersonic flight. The fact that there were faster commercial flights in the 70's is mind boggling.
The craft isn't as much the ongoing problem as much as a solution for something that works with exisiting civilian airports. Civ airports that exist cannot adapt to possible "faster" designs of civ jets.
We need a stock of newer engineers working with the old stock, in my opinion. Otherwise we will not get this produce reasonably soon.
A craft that can do it, with existing airports, would be worth it's weight in gold and more.
Looks like a sturgeon to me...
Why do we need this?
Low cloud layers tend to reflect sound back towards the ground. This can channel sounds from outdoor concerts and runways to areas that never hear them unless it's overcast or rainy.
Operating at high altitudes is ideal, but I'd like them to test how low a cloud cover can be and still have a supersonic jet flying below. Must supersonic flight always take place above a cloud layer?
Excellent consideration. I believe you'd only go supersonic as you approach cruising altitude!
Yes. Disregarding noise entirely, supersonic low altitude flight is terrible for fuel burn. The air is like 5 times thicker than it would be at 60,000 ft which is where the concorde flew.
If we could ignore safety regulations we ought to do sdt st 90,000 ft like the SR-71. Peak shock pressure scales as e^-kh/h^3.
@@appa609 excellent and useful mathematical consideration!
keep them on the ground, get a couple of donkeys to pull it around the runway and the pilot can make the flying noises
Concorde was actually cost effective- it flew for almost thirty years, and was not subsidized for most of it.
NASA is fully subsidized by our $24 billion dollar taxes. Lockheed Martin is a top military contractor, enjoying the highest profits in history. Our government buys every weapon Lockheed can make with our tax dollars. Circle of life. (Death)
I guess they mean the cost of flying as a passenger in the plane?
@@clemente_01 They had plenty of customers. The markup they could sustain was insane.
ok, whatever you say. Airlines love killing profitable businesses...
@@justayoutuber1906 Airbus which held the air worthiness license for Concorde essentially forced its retirement by hugely increasing its maintenance costs in early 2003 to the point of making it uneconomical for Air France especially to keep flying it, presumably because they decided it was uneconomical for them to keep supporting such a small fleet.
They then refused to grant a license to any other company such as Virgin Atlantic that wanted buy the planes from BA and Air-France and keep it flying.
I wonder how much of this could apply to bullets. Subsonic rounds naturally have much shorter range in exchange for a lower sound signature. Maybe something could be done to change that in the future.
👍
How about sending a contra-soundwave from the plane that cancels out the boom wave ? ^^ Well ok, carrying a large noise-speaker is not appropriated hehe. But maybe it can be ultrasonic some kind with different waves from a spectrum you dont hear, ok not :-) What if you "jump" the point when reaching ultrasonic by far, so acceleration up to the point as normal, than suddenly increase accel bei 500% wide into the area of ultrasonic so the surrounding air "forgets" about whats happening ? ok Im not a good engeneer :-)
A us fighter Pilot used a sonic boom to save British troops in Iraqi.
Would'nt it also be fuel-efficient since less drag on the air means less force used to fly
Possibly, but not necessarily, a lot of the sonic boom mitigation is in blocking or directing the shockwave away from the ground. For example blocking the shockwave of the tail using the wings. That being said if you don't have such a sharp pressure build up it'll likely make the transonic transition from subsonic to supersonic flight smoother, and be more fuel efficient as its breaking the sound barrier, as the most fuel-intensive part is normally right around mach 1, before drag then actually drops off a little past mach 1.
Would a quieter supersonic jet also be more fuel efficient than a normal supersonic jet?
This one is not, but it mostly comes down to engine choice. Anything that needs to afterburn is going to chug fuel.
Why did they take the I out? With it, it would be Quiesst
“Newly developed” old schlieren optics
I’m disappointed I was hoping they’d go deep into the physics of the design and how it transforms the sonic boom
Long nose go BRRR
It would be cool to see a more technical breakdown of what's going on though, I agree 👍
I think haduken is more quiet..
Make the plain like a golf ball meaning the indents on the ball,it makes the ball break the air better and travel farther.
no
This is definitely cool, but I just keep asking myself, why don't they just make planes that can fly higher? I'm sure there's probably a reason like not enough air or something. I'm no fluid dynamics expert, but things do move faster in lower density mediums right?
Armstrong limit. The idea is that in the event of an emergency decompression the airplane must be able to descend to a human survivable altitude before the pilot passes out. It's why USAF flights above fl600 nedd space suits.
Who needs transparent metal for strong windows when you only use cameras and a screen?
It just doesn't look like it can fit many passengers, maybe that's just me
Theirs a military base in the rural town i live in. They are testing them ALL the time. Its gotten pretty annoying, the windows shaking, the anxiety attack that ensues, my dogs completely losing their marbles. They dont tell us crap.
Given that carbon emissions go down as you slow down, and that planes are the biggest contributor to those emissions in general (so we'd rather reduce their use as much as possible), I wonder what the chances are for the X-59 to come to fruition and become commercially viable. It's kind of the opposite path to brining back airships like Veritasium recently suggested.
It's likely only viable for a emergency "gotta get there now" flights. And maybe bragging rights, who knows.
An extremely high flying supersonic craft would have less emissions due to the rarefied atmosphere causing far less drag - but would only be worth it for very long journeys
HEY! American! You live where miles per hour is the rule, use the local terminology we understand, gallons, pounds, feet.
LOL. Engineers and others in STEM fields use metric all the time (even in the U.S.). Also, this content is created for viewers all over the world, not just you.
Americans like all of us here where he lives. Dont metric indoctrinate me with discrimination.@@TheDannyHamilton I have BA in Industrial Arts so I get the we use it daily in science, but many are just people raised in their native measurements.
Okay, but is the FAA gonna pay the tested communities, like they did when they first tried supersonic flight?
Put me at a station running professional software, for 5 hours, and I would cut 9 years of your total development time.