Guest Blog: Scrap the X-59: Supersonic Flight is Overrated

Ed. Note. Larry Stencel is frequent commenter on AvBrief stories and has personal knowledge of NASA’s sonic boom reduction efforts so we’ve elevated this comment on the X-59 program to a guest blog.

I was a participant in the SSBD (Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator) program nearly 25 years ago. No new overpressure research is being conducted by the X-59 program.

The very same NASA (then Dryden) tested the SSBD around Edwards AFB and verified that careful shaping of a fuselage can mitigate the overpressure. Each specific new supersonic airplane design has to stand on its own merit as to overpressure reduction. With the X-59, they want to fly the X-59 over populated areas to determine the public’s reaction to a supersonic “thump,” and nothing more, for $632 million!

Having spent 15.5 years supporting flight test at Edwards plus 12 more after my USAF time nearby, I know how these people work. Someone high up invents a program, “sells” it and gets funding. Then, off they go happily making work for the hoardes. NASA Dryden cum Armstrong does good work overall but the X-59 isn’t one of their useful programs and is a total waste of taxpayer dollars.

Beyond the questionable productive usefulness of this program, the premise that civilian supersonic transport is needed is itself nutty! In a time where all the tree huggers are trying to convince everyone that electric this, that and everything else needed to save the planet (I don’t buy it!), they’re now trying to move us still faster from A to B whilst consuming massively more fuel to do it. If I were a billionaire, I’d be more interested in lavish comfort than saving a few minutes of time laying horizontally in some contraption.

Read the book, Quieting the Boom by Lawrence Benson. It’s a part of the NASA Aeronautics Book Series written 13 years ago. You can also see the SSBD airplane decaying at the Valiant Air Museum on the Titusville, FL airport.

This program to build one airplane started in February of 2016. That’s one airplane in 10 years and the testing still hasn’t begun. We built the B-2 a heckuva lot faster than that!

Another nutty program invented like this was the X-57 Maxwell which mercifully was cancelled. On that one, the taxpayers never even got an airplane. Together, these two programs at NASA Armstrong cost us nearly three quarters of a billion dollars! But hey, folks in the Antelope Valley of California are employed (sic).

It’s time to put NASA on a diet. They could reduce the sonic boom “thump” by just not flying supersonically. Problem solved, the planet is saved and no one has to worry about their windows breaking.

The post Guest Blog: Scrap the X-59: Supersonic Flight is Overrated appeared first on AvBrief.com.