NASA unveils the X-59 Quesst 'quiet' supersonic jet | Hacker News Reader

NASA unveils the X-59 Quesst 'quiet' supersonic jet

space.com

14 pointskloch11 comments

I don't really get it it. Making it quiet relies on making the fuselage thinner. Thus making it even less appareling for commercial aviation. Supersonics already have a small cabin and high fuel use.

For military jets this doesn't matter that much. And I don't really see what it changes for commercial.

Seems like cool tech, but I don't get why this plane has received so much attention and funding and the research on electric airplanes has been mostly dropped.

> Supersonics already have a small cabin and high fuel use.

Well, supersonics don't fly anymore. But if we are talking about the Concorde, it had an excellent fuel economy when cruising. It had a horrible fuel economy when taking off, which resulted in overall bad fuel economy. But 6 decades have passed since Concorde was designed, there is no law of nature that says aerospace engineers can't improve the takeoff fuel economy of a supersonic jet with the computer power available in 2024.

Yes, but in those 60 years subsonic performance also improved by a gigantic margin. And yes, there are real physics problems that make it hard for a plane to be excellent at everything, a wing can't be optimized for everything, and neither can an engine.

And if you are using the methods used in this experimental plane. You gone have to drop out even more seats making the per seat efficiency even worse.

The Boom Supersonic plane is a new design and even their outright fantasy future projections (that are unlikely ever to be true) don't make the plain as efficient as subsonic travel.

Yes, it seems like all the sonic boom shaping demonstrators so far have required quite long aspect ratio designs. However that's not really incompatible with private jet class aircraft.

Shooting from the hip (I have not looked up the stats), but I suspect one major difference now from when Concorde was being developed and flown is just how developed the private (and chartered) jet market is. Oh, and obviously a government subsidized SST project like Concorde cannot possibly be a private jet. It has to be an airliner for optics sake.

While the the bulk of the commercial market is in a race to the bottom, it's clear that there's a significant appetite for premium - look both to first class suites in typical airliners, and the size of the private jet market itself.

I think supersonic private jets actually have a reasonable value proposition, if one assumes that a reasonable amount of private jets use is motivated by minimizing the transit time of high value individuals.

There are reasonably successful private jets (with hundreds of sales per model) that can only carry 4-10 passengers. I think that shows that private jet usage can scale down to the level which isn't such a huge leap in a scale from the current demonstrators.

I have no idea how big of an market supersonic private jets would actually be, but it does seem like there's plausibly something there.

i feel like the value proposition for most private jet legs is "getting to an airport the airlines either don't serve or don't serve directly, and leaving whenever the passengers want". That's a lot of cases in the Continental US and a fair amount in Europe. Transoceanic travel by private jet is far less common than the 1-2 hour legs within a continent. Most private jets have fewer amenities than a 777/787/A330+

Buying an entire private jet primarily for trans-oceanic travel seems like something where I'd probably rather just suck it up and fly on one of the majors in first class suites.

I'd agree with your characterization for "most", but the fact that something like the G650 series exists (~20 passengers, Mach 0.95, 10k+ km range) and sells implies that long range, high speed is also a viable niche.

That, plus the Global Express, BBJ, and others exist (and Falcon 10X is coming next year).

Those are also very usable within the US plus on inter-continental trips. If a supersonic-capable jet can only operate subsonic over the US, a lot of the utility drops off (and the compromises required to permit it would become annoying).

Right, the entire point of the X-59 is to support enabling commercial supersonic flight over land.

Call me crazy, but I think government shouldn't waste a huge amount of money so rich people can have even better private jets, specially private jets that are even more disruptive and even energy inefficient.

And at the same time drop electric planes that have actual practical utility.

A better plan for private jets would be to raise fuel prices for them by 10x.

Raising jet fuel prices via taxes has my support. Raising jet fuel prices only on a specific segment of jet fuel usage does not.

No forward facing window, pilot relies on augmented reality for visual flight.

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