In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound – or 925mph (1,488 km/h).

The aircraft, which stands at 99.7ft (30.4 metres) long and 29.5ft wide, has a thin, tapered nose that comprises nearly a third of the aircraft’s full length – a feature designed to disperse shock waves that would typically surround supersonic aircraft and result in sonic booms.

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[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Pierce said the X-59’s job would be to “collect data from the people below, determine if that sonic thump is acceptable and then turn the data over to US and international regulatory authorities in hopes to then lift that ban”.

Why can’t commercial airlines fund the project, then? Why is NASA investing public money to deregulate private industry?

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 41 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Huh? NASA is providing thought leadership to expand the possibilities of human travel, but has no interest in running a commercial airline.

Many technologies you use every day started as NASA research

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee -4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Why are tax dollars going to something that will only benefit a small percentage of people and will cause relatively bad environmental damage.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Are you aware what NASA stands for?

I personally am happy some of my tax dollars go towards advancing science.

The reason we have issues in society...homeless people, lack of universal healthcare, etc is not because we find NASA, it's via mismanagement of the funds we have, and bad politics, etc. None of which are NASAs fault or purpose.

NASA does a huge amount of environmental research as well. But part of their team focuses on experimental flight, and this is a product of that.

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

I'm happy to fund science too, but this isn't the time to develop even more fuel-intensive commercial travel options.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nasa is always researching supersonic/hypersonic travel, that's what a space agency does.

It would be hard to list ALL of the ways that research benefits you.

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah but it doesn't usually research how to make commercials transportation way less fuel efficient.

"The New York Times looked at the same comparison in the late 1970s when rising fuel prices were causing major difficulties for Concorde. It concluded that Concorde used four times the amount of fuel of the 747, based on a New York to Paris flight. These comparisons are even worse when looking on a per passenger basis – Concorde, of course, only took 100 passengers, compared to well over 400 on the 747-400." source

Planes are already a bad source of pollution, this makes it 8 times worse. Awful.

[–] DistractedDev@lemmy.world 33 points 2 years ago

The first A in NASA is aeronautics. They just do the science. I would say deregulation is a fairly strong word here. It's more like they'd be updating the laws to reflect modern tech.

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago (3 children)

This is literally how every expensive R&D project gets done. Private companies won't dump this kind of money into good R&D, but the government will because they don't care about ROI.

[–] You999@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

Except this ignores the existence of bell labs, you know the private R&D lab with ten Nobel prizes and a laundry list of inventions that quite literally shaped our modern world.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Deregulate is not the same as engineering a solution to solve the problem that was previously solved by regulations.

[–] PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

The assumption that all regulations are good now, and in perpetuity, is the issue here. Deregulation of shite or outdated regs is a good thing ffs.

It's insane to me that the word seems so opaque to people.

[–] PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 years ago

This is probably defense spending, tbh.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

American is a Socialist country for those wealthy enough.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world -3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is outsourced to Lockheed Martin so it's basically just using Nasa to fund the military even more. There is nothing commercially interesting about this. It's all military planes.

[–] PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

Well, this might be missile research.