Dean discusses NASA Quesst's X-59 aircraft with Senior Research Engineer at NASA Langley, Dr. Jonathan Rathsam and Aerospace Engineer at NASA Armstrong, Ed Haering. Will supersonic air travel make a comeback?
Just how quiet will NASA’s X-59 be? Check out the graphic below or go here to view it in full size.
“Edward A. Haering Jr. is an aerospace engineer and technical lead for supersonic aerodynamic research at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, a position he’s held for almost 40 years.”
“Dr. Jonathan Rathsam is a senior research engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He conducts laboratory and field research on human perceptions of low-noise supersonic overflights. Rathsam also serves as co-chair for Team 6: Community Response to Noise and Annoyance for the International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise, an organization that promotes scientific research concerning all aspects of noise-induced effects on human beings and on animals, including preventive regulatory measures. Additionally, Rathsam authored several technical papers on sonic booms and noise annoyance."
Homework assignment:
Would you go on a suborbital flight?
Send us your thoughts at lookingup@wvxu.org or post them on social media using #lookinguppod
Additional resources referenced in this episode:
- NASA Quesst Mission
- Yuri Gagarin, World's First Spaceman (1961)
- The Right Stuff (1983)
- Remembering John Glenn: See Footage of His Legendary First Orbit of the Earth | National Geographic
- John Glenn's Transcontinental Record (1957)
- Universal Newsreel Volume 35, Release 2, 01/01/1962
- Mission Sonic Boom (1959)
- Sonic Boom (1984)
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean Regas: A whole lot of the early astronauts were first test pilots. You see this really well portrayed in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff. It follows brave, sometimes reckless, test pilots making the transition to being astronauts.
[The Right Stuff, 1983]: They want to make me an astronaut. Oh, I hope not.
Dean Regas: But for that first batch of astronauts, the Mercury 7 as they're called, NASA had a lot of requirements for people to even apply. Like, you had to be, number one, less than 40 years old, less than 5 feet 11 inches tall, because you had to fit in a spaceship, in excellent physical condition, with a bachelor's degree or equivalent, a graduate of a test pilot school, and you had to have a minimum of 1, 500 hours total flying time as a qualified jet pilot.
So, basically, to be an astronaut back in the day, you had to be a pretty good pilot.
[The Right Stuff, 1983]: Sounds dangerous. It is. Very dangerous. Count me in.
Dean Regas: From the studios of Cincinnati Public Radio, I'm your host, Dean Regas, and this is Looking Up, the show that takes you deep into the cosmos or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so great.
Our guests this week are Dr. Jonathan Rathsam and Ed Haering from NASA's Quesst mission.
[Archival Audio]: Into the soft light of this Florida dawn emerges Friendship 7, making its debut in the To the day of its destiny.
Dean Regas: So I'm definitely an Ohio boy and growing up, my favorite astronaut was John Glenn. Sorry, Neil Armstrong. I mean, I know here from Ohio too.
[Archival Audio]: The Mercury Atlas stands alone waiting. Depart this earth in pounds of rocket thrust equal to three and a half million horsepower to hurdle a 168 pound astronaut. Thanks.
Dean Regas: John Glenn was. my astronaut I don't know why, like, there's, you know, Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on the moon, but John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth.
[Archival Audio]: Astronaut John Glenn of New Concord, Ohio. Lieutenant Colonel, United States Marine Corps.
Dean Regas: The first two Americans that went into space, they went up high enough to be technically in space. They're called suborbital flights, where they go up and then they come back down. So they go up to the limits of space, but not circle the Earth.
That's why I thought John Glenn's mission was so cool, because he got to circle the entire globe. And you know, like about an hour and a half or so and look down on so many parts of the earth. So he's basically the first American to, to see the whole world at one time.
[Archival Audio]: Oh, that view is tremendous.
Dean Regas: I try to imagine what that must've been like.
If you're looking out that window, what would you be looking for?
[Archival Audio]: To John Glenn, now belong awesome panorama. The world curving beneath him, just as it was filmed from an earlier mercury capsule.
Dean Regas: And the other thing you notice is that there's no, like, lines between the countries. It's all a big, massive land or water.
The first person to orbit the Earth did it way before John Glenn, and that was the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
[Archival Audio]: Ever since the Russian word Sputnik gained a firm foothold in the languages of all the peoples of the Earth It was clear that the first space flight would be made by a Soviet man.
Dean Regas: I gotta admit, you know as an American growing up in the 1980s, well the accomplishments of the Soviet space program were muted, to put it mildly.
I mean, I can't say I ever learned one fact about the Soviet missions as a kid.
[Archival Audio]: Man had his first great success in space when the Russians pushed a man across the threshold. He was Yuri Gagarin, the astronaut the Russians lionized as the first to orbit the Earth. It was the propaganda coup of the year.
Dean Regas: Just to put this in perspective, Yuri Gagarin flew around the Earth. One time, on April 12th, 1961. And so April 12th is now known as Yuri's Night, and that's mostly known in places around the world less so around the United States, but this was more than 10 months before John Glenn's flight. So as far as firsts, I mean, Yuri, Yuri Gagarin is the first one to circle the Earth, and John Glenn came afterwards.
One more little bit of John Glenn trivia, which I like. So, in 1957, so this is years before his orbital flight, he took off in an experimental jet from California and flew to New York in three hours and twenty minutes.
[Archival Audio]: 9 a. m. Marine Airman Major John Glenn begins an attempt at a supersonic transcontinental flight.
Dean Regas: This was like a speed record. This was the stuff that the pilots did. They wanted to fly the fastest and cover the most ground. So his speed was hovering around 725 miles per hour. And his project was called Project Bullet. The most interesting part of it to me is that he recorded it. Like he had a camera on the plane filming the entire 3 hours and 23 minute journey from takeoff to touchdown.
And it was the first such film, basically, of the entire country. So, we may fly in planes today without really looking down on the landscape. But not me, man, I love looking out the window whenever I'm flying, you know, when I always get a window seat, if I get stuck in aisle seat, Oh man, I am not happy. And I am looking out that window almost every second of the trip because it's really incredible.
It's really amazing. The fact that we can fly through the air number one, and then I can look down out of that window. See the country, see the land below. And I guess I just got the John Glenn bug. I mean, a flying is just never boring for me. So today we're speaking with Dr. Jonathan Rathsam, Senior Research Engineer at NASA Langley and Ed Haering, Aerospace Engineer at NASA Armstrong.
Well, Jonathan, Ed, thanks so much for joining me today. So first off, Jonathan, tell me about the Quesst mission and what makes this X-59 aircraft so exciting and special?
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: Oh, wonderful. Well, you know, the whole Quesst mission, it has two main goals. The first goal is to create an airplane that can fly supersonic without creating a sonic boom.
The second goal of the mission is to fly this aircraft over different localities across the United States and to do a public survey to find out what people's reactions are to this new sound of supersonic flight. And that data is going to be collected and shared with noise regulators at the national or international level.
Dean Regas: Well, so has there been a ban on supersonic aircraft and, and what was happening to cause that?
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: Yes. Since 1973, there's been a ban on commercial supersonic flight over land. And that ban was put in place after some community testing that happened in the late 1960s, which found that supersonic aircraft of that era were too loud. The sonic booms were too disturbing in communities for it to be publicly acceptable.
And so that ban was put in place, that ban had its 50 year anniversary last year. And that's why NASA is looking into this technology, you know, based on. Laboratory testing that we've done it based on wind tunnel testing. It looks like we can design an aircraft to fly supersonic. Like I said, without that sonic boom, but we can't know what people's reactions are outside of the laboratory in their own homes going about their daily routines unless we test this at full scale.
Dean Regas: And so is there a hope that someday, you know, the average person can go on something like this?
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: Yes, that's absolutely the goal is to improve life for the traveling public, get people to their destinations faster so they can spend less time traveling.
Dean Regas: Well, and Ed so although this aircraft is the X-59, it'll be supersonic, Engineers are expecting it to be a lot quieter when breaking the sound barrier. So like, what causes the sonic boom that people would hear if this thing, you know, for previous supersonic aircraft and, and how could you make it more of a sonic burp thump?
Ed Haering: We call it the sonic thump. And most people don't have experience with supersonic airplanes, but most people have seen boats on the water, motorboats. There's kind of an analogy there. When a motorboat's going across a nice calm lake, you'll see this V shaped wake behind the boat. And that's because it's disturbing the water.
That's the two dimensional case of what we're doing in three dimensions flying an airplane. We're flying an airplane faster than the air can get out of the way.
[Archival Audio]: Sound expands in a sphere. The sound source produces vibrations which travel in all directions as waves of compressed air. They combine to form a percussion wave which a person perceives as a very sharp booming sound.
Ed Haering: So what happens is anytime you have a change in the aircraft shape or lift it produces a shock wave. And the problem is, until now, All those little shock waves from all the different parts of the plane would all combine into a one huge shock at the front and one huge shock in the back and on the ground you'd hear boom boom.
So what we're trying to do with X-59 is we're trying to keep all those little shocks separated so as it goes down from high altitude to the ground they get weaker and weaker and never combine so you'll just hear a little bit of a thump. We're targeting a sound that's kind of like someone 20 feet away slams a car door.
You hear it, but it doesn't bother you. It's not a big deal. And if you're engaged in conversation, you may not even notice the sound at all, but we're going to be flying this over rural areas, urban areas, all kinds of different climates cause the weather does affect it and we, you know, wind and turbulence and things like that. Humidity.
So we'll be testing in all different cases to ensure that this plane is always giving us the sonic thump and not a sonic boom.
Dean Regas: And what would be the, what's the cruising speed going to be? You know, like compared to a normal you know, passenger plane.
Ed Haering: So this is going to be going 1.4 Times the speed of sound or Mach 1. 4. So it's about 925 miles an hour. Most commercial jets, they fly a bit slower Mach 0. 8, 0. 9. This is a stepping stone. When we get a fleet of supersonic commercial planes, they might be flying double the speed they are now. So you can get wherever you want in the world in half the time. That's the goal.
Dean Regas: Half the travel time. That sounds pretty cool.
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: In order to achieve this, this special design, the cockpit had to be built without a forward facing window. So there's a, a camera that's looking directly ahead and a really high resolution display for the pilot to see, but the pilot can't see directly, you know, forward out of a, out of a window.
Dean Regas: So Jonathan you know, we're going to be having a community testing phase. So like, how can people in the community share their thoughts on the sound that they're hearing?
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: Absolutely. During the community test phase. The X-59 will fly over different locations. Like I said, it'll spend about a month in each location. It's flying over multiple times a day and there will be a survey. So within the region that's overflowing, certain sample of people will be recruited. Through mailings to their home so coming from different backgrounds, different age groupings, we want just a really representative sample of people that live in that area.
We're going to conduct between 4 and 6 of these community surveys across the U. S. Taken together, we want that sample of people to be representative of, of all areas across the country.
Dean Regas: And so will the, the, the folks listening for this, will they know ahead of time when it's coming or is it like random and you're just like trying to catch them in a normal day?
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: Yes, exactly. Trying to catch them going about their normal activities. We would send a reminder after the aircraft has passed to go fill in a survey, but we wouldn't prompt them beforehand to say, get ready, you know, be listening for it. We would just want to see what their reactions are without prompting.
Dean Regas: So this is a test where you hope they don't even notice.
Ed Haering: Well, you know, based on our laboratory results, we have reasons to believe that this is a sound bubble. What X59 is capable of could be acceptable to many people in the population. But we can't know that for sure. And so, you know, whatever the results are those are, those are going to be really important results from the public as, as this research moves forward.
Dean Regas: And the idea isn't to go to space. So, you know, what's, what's the, the altitude, I guess it's going to be mostly kind of tested out at?
Ed Haering: Above 50, 000 feet. The plane can go up to 60, 000 and by adjusting the altitude and speed a little bit, we can make the plane a little bit quieter, a little bit louder.
Dean Regas: And the big question I have for you is when will it be ready and when do you two get to fly in it?
Ed Haering: I don't think we ever get to fly in it because it's a single seat airplane and neither Jonathan or I are fighter pilots or you know, NASA research pilots . But we have a good number of folks here who've been training and they fly military planes and NASA research planes .It's projected to fly this year for first flight And it's going to take about nine months to get all the testing done and make sure it's safe to fly.
And then in 2025, we're going to do some research, making sure it's quiet enough, various measurements on the ground and up in the air, and then 2026 or so we'll start doing those community tests.
Dean Regas: All right, well this checks out you guys are real engineers you're interested in building it and not flying it That's it's a good way to do it. Only put one seat on there that guarantees you're not going to go in it, right?
Well, this is a pretty exciting project I can't wait to see how this goes and I you know, I wonder maybe I can be one of the test subjects I'd you know, if you put me on the list it flies over us here in Cincinnati. We'd love to be part of it but either way, I think it's going to be a great mission and You Good luck with it. Thanks so much for chatting with us today. You're very welcome.
Dr. Jonathan Rathsam: Yeah. You're very welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for bringing us onto your program.
Dean Regas: A lot of people ask me about the you know, the private space companies, the companies that send people up for a good fee up into quote unquote space and, you know, what do I think about them and is there ever going to be a time when the average person can go into space?
I mean, I have totally mixed feelings about these private space trips and companies because they're not. Really, well, number one, they're suborbital and we already know how I feel about suborbital flights. It's up and down. You don't even go around the earth like John Glenn. So I'm like, eh, you know, they're pretty expensive, that's for sure.
And they're not really breaking any new ground or testing out any new technologies. They're kind of going where people have gone before. So I'm not a huge fan of the private space companies. If you ask me the other Question, would I go on one? Well, all my objections disappear. Of course I would go! Of course!
If they asked me, I'd totally go! Give me a flight! Give me, you know, Elon, call me up. I mean, Jeff, I'm available. Never mind that I don't really think they're doing much, but sure, it'd be fun. I mean, if you're gonna do it, why not take me? Yeah, sounds good. So here's your homework for this episode. Let us know what you would do to get on a suborbital flight.
Like, what would you pay? What wouldn't you pay? Who would you, like, have to schmooze with? I don't know. Or, what if there's no way you'd ever go up into space in one of those rockets? Totally legit answer also. So, write to us at lookingup@wvxu.org and you know, maybe we can pull some strings with those powers that be and get you up into space.
And one other thing, let's say you want to participate in the Quesst mission. You want to help log some data. You want to know what the flight logs are going to be. And maybe even if you want a boarding pass to watch a flight. You can do that by going to nasa.gov/quesst
Looking Up with Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio , Kevin Reynolds, and I created it.
Ella Rowen is our show producer and editor and director. Definitely has the right stuff for the job. Go Ella. Marshall Verbsky assists with audio production, editing, and flies around the studio so fast he creates many sonic booms. Oh, can we add one of those in post? I think we should. Jenell Walton is our vice president of content. Ronny Salerno is our digital platforms manager, and Brittany Mayti is our social media coordinator. Our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran, and our cover art is by Nicole Chance. Keep looking up!
