Going on national tour
The ultimate test of the X-59 design’s success would come in the third phase of the program, when NASA plans to fly the aircraft above communities all across the United States. The agency wants to perform X-59 flight tests over communities that are broadly representative of the United States when factoring in demographics, building construction, climate, geography, and a host of other characteristics.
The ground microphone arrays will once again be deployed, but NASA also plans to recruit community members who can share their feedback on the sounds they hear each day during the flight tests. Each community may experience frequent flight tests for about a month, during which they may hear quieter and louder sonic thumps ranging from 70 PldB to 90 PldB, Coen said.
“Each day, we’ll fly over the community and [fly] the X-59 a little bit differently, so each flight will produce either a quiet sound or a louder sound,” Coen said. Many people may not even hear anything on the lower end, but the louder sonic thumps could approach “something that is quite annoying,” he said.
For the first community test, the X-59 will take off from NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert before conducting supersonic test runs over an unspecified neighboring community that does not typically hear sonic booms from other test aircraft.
But follow-on tests elsewhere in the United States will require an airfield capable of supporting the X-59’s runway requirement of 10,000 feet. Although NASA has not yet finalized its list of communities designated for the flight tests, dozens of major airports have the runway lengths capable of accommodating the X-59.
Community feedback and other data from the X-59 test flight program will eventually be shared with the US Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization, so regulators will have the evidence to create new standards for overland supersonic flights.
“The objective is to come up with a standard that enables innovation and allows us to have supersonic flight in the future but still protects the public on the ground,” Coen said. “Phase 3, where the public is allowed to weigh in on what they heard and how it affected them, is something that I’m personally really looking forward to.”
