The X-59 Quesst: On a Mission to Change Air Travel

Humanity has waited eagerly for a supersonic jetliner from the moment the world learned such things were possible. The prospect of the common person traveling vast distances across the world, quickly and affordably, has been a global dream stretching back for generations, but it’s a dream that has suffered disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Boeing’s best attempt died on the drawing board; the Tupolev proved unable to complete more than a handful of flights, and the Concorde, bold though it may have been, was helpless to prevent a slow, embarrassing demise. The ideas on offer today are little more than pipe dreams, and the grand concept of supersonic airline travel gets no more respect from the aerospace industry today than the idea of handing out arm-strapped glider wings to the consumer directly.

But a bold new team-up by NASA and Lockheed Martin hopes to change all that, and the aircraft they’ve designed in order to do so, is one hell of an interesting proposal. Dubbed the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology, better known as Quesst, this experimental plane is one that intends to rewrite all the rules. By offering a sleek, ultra-modern aircraft that can conduct supersonic flights without the many drawbacks, the Quesst hopes to prove to the entire world that supersonic airliners could still be the way of the future. It’s an idea so crazy, that it just might work.

Design and Development

Across the entire American public and private sectors, there are a small handful of places known for being where the really, really cool work gets done. DARPA has cemented its reputation for being at the cutting edge not for modern technology, but for technology that will be considered modern in a couple of decades. Defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems routinely construct some of the most impressive creations of the defense industry, with many of their innovations slowly making their way down to the consumer. But there are two names with an unparalleled track record of making the coolest of the cool: NASA, and Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works.

So when the news broke in 2016 that NASA had awarded a preliminary design contract to an elite aeronautical engineering team from Lockheed Martin, it was clear from the outset that there was something very, very interesting that was about to take place. The contract was for an X-plane, the latest in a long line of vaunted experimental aircraft that various elements within the United States’ defense and research architecture have built over the years. In nearly every case, the purpose of an X-plane isn’t to enter production or even to have more than one copy of the thing built. Instead, the goal is to provide proof that a boundary, whatever it is, can be broken.

And in this case, the boundary NASA wanted to break was the sound barrier…in a manner of speaking. Of course, the sound barrier itself had long since been shattered by airplanes, and it had even been shattered by the kind of planes NASA was interested in—that is, supersonic transport aircraft, or SSTs. These are planes like the ones we discussed earlier, the Concorde or the Tupolev, and while they’re capable of crossing the sound barrier, they can only do so while producing a massive sonic boom.

Now, if you’ve ever been to a particularly good airshow, you can probably recall the experience of feeling a sonic boom in person and thinking to yourself that it was pretty cool…except, no you probably can’t, because they’re generally illegal to do except in certain circumstances, and whatever cool, percussive, very intense sound you heard an airplane make at a relatively low altitude, it wasn’t actually a sonic boom. Sorry to disappoint. The bright side is that the decision not to show you a sonic boom directly led to you keeping your eardrums.

And while it might seem like a cool, novelty experience to attend an event where you sign up to have a sonic boom thrown at you, they’re a lot less cool when they’re happening all the time over a major urban area. They’ll wake people up in the night, scare the living daylights out of anyone who’s not prepared for them, and potentially even cause minor property damage. It’s even worse in cities, where tall streets around narrow buildings turn into a sort of man-made echo chamber where a boom can keep on rattling around for a while.

This is why the act of going supersonic is banned over most of the United States, and why even the Concorde had to get out to sea and angle itself a certain way before going supersonic, saving the inhabitants of the nearest city but probably giving everyone on the nearest fishing trawler a heart attack.

The real and perceived damages involved in a sonic boom have been some of the biggest historical impediments to supersonic commercial flight, and the headaches involved with trying to address those issues have just made the planes too risky for most airlines to consider buying—and thus, for airplane manufacturers to consider making. But the idea at the core of NASA’s initiative to build a new X-plane is the idea that it might be possible to vastly reduce a sonic boom by changing the design of the aircraft itself. More than, say, finding a way to angle a sonic boom away from a city, or finding a way to climb quickly and subsonically to altitudes where a boom wouldn’t be an issue, NASA wanted to bypass the issue entirely, in a project that, at the time, they referred to as the Low-Boom Plane.

The project belonged to Lockheed Martin from the start, and while other companies in the US were allowed to submit their own proposals for consideration, none did. In 2018, Lockheed Martin got a quarter of a billion dollars to build the aircraft they had designed on paper, and shortly after, it was gifted its official X-plane designation from the Air Force, the X-59. A smaller demonstrator airframe was put through a long series of strenuous tests, and out in the real world, NASA began testing the impact of sonic booms out over Texas. Relying on the input of local residents who described each boom they heard, NASA began diving an F/A-18 Hornet from 50,000 feet about eight times a day, in order to get it to briefly go supersonic and create the sort of booms NASA was hoping to simulate.

Over the following years, larger and better scale models were tested out, an engine was chosen for the full-scale aircraft, and bit by bit, the real-life X-59 was pieced together into a highly unique airframe. NASA put together plans to do real-life community testing for the plane, somewhere in the mid-2020s, and set the goal that the Federal Aviation Administration, the body responsible for the rules concerning supersonic flight, would have all the data they needed to enact a rule change by 2028. Then, in a piece of news that today’s viewers might have seen quite recently, the big reveal finally happened.

On January 12, 2024, after months of heralding in the press, the completed, full-scale Quesst rolled onto the tarmac at Palmdale, California, in the public eye for the very first time. After testing on the ground, it’s scheduled to take its first test flight later this year.

Specs and Capabilities

Now, obviously, we are still very early in the X-59’s lifespan, to the point where we don’t technically know with absolute certainty that it can even fly. But at this point, we can at least be reasonably confident that it’ll do what Lockheed Martin and NASA say it will, and that means that we can take a closer look at what this plane is supposed to be capable of.

The X-59 Quesst measures a total length, tip to tip, of 99 feet, seven inches, of which a significant portion of that length is its nose. It’s got an exceptionally narrow profile even for a supersonic X-plane, with a wingspan of just 29 and a half feet, or less than a third of its length. The plane is powered by a single engine sat way back toward the tail, a 13-foot-long General Electric F-414-GE-100 for those of our viewers who know what in the world that means, and it produces 22,000 pound-force of thrust, which, in layman’s terms, is pretty powerful. The plane has a maximum takeoff weight of just over sixteen tons, and features a single-seater cockpit borrowed from the Northrop T-38 and a set of landing gear taken from the F-16.

In terms of its performance, one look at the X-59 should be enough to tell you it goes fast. It’s set to have a maximum speed of 990 miles per hour, or one and a half times the speed of sound, and a cruising speed just a hair behind that, at 940 miles per hour or Mach 1.42. As for why it can’t go as fast as an ideal supersonic airliner would, closer to two or three times the speed of sound, that’s because it’s not meant to be a demonstrator of supersonic jetliner technology exactly.

The goal for now is just to get past that sonic boom issue. The aircraft flies at a comfortable altitude of 55,000 feet, and while other bits of information like its range or its runway needs aren’t yet known, we can assume that it’ll be conducting short-range test flights on established test-site runways anyhow.

But as impressive as all of the Quesst’s figures are, they’re also not the information we’re really after. We’ve got to know about the X-59’s sonic boom. Now, as we mentioned earlier, this particular X-plane was initially termed the Low-Boom aircraft, and as should hopefully be rather obvious, low-boom is not the same thing as no-boom. The X-59 does still produce shock waves when passing through the sound barrier, but in this case, they’re more of a sonic thump. Think of what it sounds like to hear thunder rumbling in the distance, or to be sitting indoors while somebody outside slams a car door.

The Quesst achieves that effect by making a range of adaptations in the way it’s constructed, which keeps the shock waves formed behind the plane from coalescing in the way that would cause most sonic booms to intensify. It features an exceptionally long nose, well over a third of the length of the plane, and not one, but two sets of canards up front: one very, very small pair to start getting airflow diverted in the way that NASA wants, and then a larger, more typical-looking canard just before the cockpit. The engine, too, should help with the issue, since it features a top-mounted intake, not a bottom-mounted one like the Concorde. Windshields, canopies, and anything else that might cause small ridges or flexions in the fuselage were removed, in order to allow the airplane to disperse shockwaves all along its length without ricochet.

The trade-offs involved with developing an aircraft of this configuration have led the Quesst to have a pretty unique cockpit interior, since the nose cone and the sleek, inlaid cockpit mean that the pilot basically can’t see in front of the plane. Instead, they’ll rely on a so-called enhanced flight vision system, or EVS, which uses a forward-mounted 4K camera that basically fills in the section of the pilot’s visual field that the plane obstructs. Another multispectral imaging system on board allows the pilot to land, despite not being able to actually see the runway even with the addition of the front-facing camera. Overall, it’s not a plane we here at Megaprojects would want to fly, but that’s why somebody else gets the test-pilot big bucks. In fact, even NASA’s Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, a former test pilot herself, expressed the same during the unveiling ceremony: “As a test pilot, the first time I looked at the design, I went ‘hmm’, really had some questions about that.” And, yeah, fair enough.

Big Implications

Hopefully, the X-59 Quesst is going to turn into the sort of megaproject we can revisit in a few years’ time, to report a long list of successes both foreseen and unforeseen. Sadly, we aren’t quite there yet, but what we can do is project outward on how the Quesst program is going to go, assuming everything keeps true to plan.

Obviously, the first step when you’ve got a fancy new plane is the step we’ve already talked about: taking a maiden flight. Once that’s done, the Quesst will travel across America in a city-by-city tour, and one that may turn into a rather compelling public spectacle. In each city, ordinary people will be asked to make their best effort to catch a hint of the Quesst’s sonic thump, in a cat-and-mouse game in which the Quesst, if all goes well, will be able to make its flights while being seen rather than heard. When people do pick up on the thump, they’ll provide critical insight on their experience that should help NASA make its case to the federal government. If NASA’s calculations are wrong, Lockheed Martin may have to create new iterations of their X-plane, but with any luck, the world’s leading aerospace engineers will find their expectations borne out.

And if that’s the case, and the US government really does show that it’s open to allowing a Quesst-like, low-boom aircraft to operate over the continental United States, then it’ll be on private industry to look into ways to make it happen. More specifically, they’ll have to figure out some way to reconcile the Quesst’s unique shape with the demands of a far larger commercial airliner. Some of the demands that the design calls for should, in theory, be fairly easy to meet; just by example, a much larger aircraft may allow a multi-pilot cockpit to be placed into the smooth fuselage so that the pilots can actually see straight. Other alterations will be tougher to square. By example, mounting multiple engines atop the aircraft to grant it a smooth underside poses an engineering challenge that hasn’t yet been confronted with a large supersonic aircraft, and if the nose of a Quesst-inspired airliner is as long as the Quesst’s nose relative to the rest of the aircraft, it’ll be a significant challenge to keep the thing rigid rather than drooping or causing aerodynamic issues during flight.

But regardless of what solutions the public and private sectors can ultimately agree on, that won’t be the Quesst’s problem. By then, it will have completed its mission, one way or the other, and hopefully, it will have succeeded. Whether it ends up becoming one of the world’s coolest museum display pieces, or makes a show flight from time to time, we’ll just have to wait and see, but with any luck, it’ll be the first of a new generation of supersonic aircraft…and nowhere near the last.

Key Takeaways

• The X-59 Quesst, a joint project by NASA and Lockheed Martin, aims to revolutionize supersonic air travel by reducing sonic booms.
• Previous supersonic aircraft like the Concorde failed due to sonic booms and other drawbacks, but the X-59 seeks to overcome these issues.
• The X-59 features a unique design with a long nose and top-mounted engine to minimize shock waves, resulting in a quieter sonic thump.
• NASA plans to conduct community tests across America to gather data on the X-59’s sonic thump, aiming for regulatory changes by 2028.
• If successful, the X-59 could pave the way for a new generation of supersonic commercial aircraft, addressing long-standing challenges in the industry.

Sources

• Original MegaProjects video: The X-59 Quesst: On a Mission to Change Air Travel
• https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2018-11-06/nasa-spools-low-boom-supersonic-research
• https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/skunk-works-rolls-out-x-59-nasas-newest-x-plane-302033941.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20231213104233/http://www.flightglobal.com/helicopters/lockheed-and-nasa-move-toward-design-review-for-supersonic-x-plane/123441.article
• https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/nasa-moves-to-begin-historic-new-era-of-x-plane-research/
• https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-lockheed-martin-reveal-x-59-quiet-supersonic-aircraft/
• https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/x-59-quiet-supersonic.html
• https://www.nasa.gov/mission/quesst/
• https://www.space.com/nasa-x-59-quesst-supersonic-jet-unveiled
• https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/x59-nasa-supersonic-plane-scn/index.html
• https://mashable.com/article/nasa-x-plane-supersonic-reveal
• https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/skunk-works-rolls-out-x-59-nasas-newest-x-plane-302033941.html
• https://www.fastcompany.com/90958050/lockheed-martin-designed-the-worlds-weirdest-quietest-supersonic-jet
• https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/futureflight/2023-12-12/nasa-will-roll-out-x-59-supersonic-flight-demonstrator
• https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/12/x-59-quiet-supersonic-jet-from-nasa-and-lockheed-finally-rolls-out/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2024/01/18/630-million-to-change-a-regulation-nasas-x-59-has-questionable-roi/?sh=13368a6619d0
• https://www.space.com/nasa-x-59-quiet-supersonic-jet-rollout-livestream
• https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/01/16/nasa-unveils-new-quiet-supersonic-aircraft-x-59
• https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/12/nasa-lockheed-martin-reveal-x-59-quiet-supersonic-aircraft
• https://simpleflying.com/x-59-supersonic-jet/
• https://www.sciencenews.org/article/supersonic-sonic-booms-acoustics-cities
• https://daily.jstor.org/the-problems-with-supersonic-flight/
• Hero image source by Alexandro Dias / openverse, by-sa.

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