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X-59 Supersonic Thump Project

25:59 recording · AUTO · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

X-59 turns the sonic boom into a thump so regulators replace the speed limit with a sound limit.

  1. A boom becomes a thump by shaping shocksThe long nose lowers and spreads the front shock, and the top-mounted engine keeps shock waves off the path to the ground.
  2. No windscreen, so a 4K external vision systemRandy Bailey's group at NASA Langley built the XVS with a 4K camera and monitor plus a flare cue, and it worked like a champ on first flight.
  3. The data goes to regulators, not to a prototypeThe X-59 is a research demonstrator whose community response data is meant to move the FAA and ICAO from a speed limit to a sound limit.
Executive Summary AI
  • Host Andres Almeida opens by noting the first of several X-59 flight tests took place in October of 2025, a subsonic flight whose successful takeoff and landing proved out the design and engineering teams.1:16
  • NASA lead research pilot David Niels Larsen explains that for over 50 years supersonic flight over land has been banned because of the sonic boom, with only the military, NASA and specially permitted flights allowed, so the quest is to get data that turns that boom into a sonic thump and a speed limit into a sound limit.1:41
  • He describes the design features that do it: the very long nose that lowers and spreads the front shock over milli- to nanoseconds so it does not startle like a firecracker, and the engine mounted on top because shock waves off the bottom are the ones reaching the ground.3:25
  • Because the airplane flies typically above 50,000 feet and up to 60,000 feet, a full pressure suit would not fit the T-38-sized cockpit, so the crew wears the same partial pressure garment used on the F-22 and the emergency oxygen bottles had to be upsized for a fall from that altitude.8:51
  • Larsen lays out three phases: envelope expansion now, then sonic thump measurement with ground recording stations and an F-15 probing the shock waves at altitude, then a traveling roadshow over US communities whose reactions become the data taken to the FAA and ICAO to ask for a sound limit instead of a speed limit.20:14
Key Quote
“So the short bite is turning a speed limit into a sound limit.”
— David Niels Larsen2:26
Key Quote
“In the airplane, you don't hear the sonic boom. You don't hear anything.”
— David Niels Larsen4:44
Key Quote
“Normally, you want to engineer out the problem.”
— David Niels Larsen11:32