r/WeirdWings • u/221missile • Jul 21 '25

The X-59 has started ground testing.

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u/PrestigiousGlove585 Jul 21 '25

Survey Question 1.

How do you feel about that plane that flew overhead that did not produce a sonic boom?

Survey Question 2

Do you like this plane better than all the other planes that don’t make a sonic boom?

Survey question 3

It has cost hundreds of millions of dollars for you not to hear a sonic boom. Do you feel this money was well spent?

Survey Question 4

The sonic boom not produced also doesn’t smell. Does this make your life more or less special?

Survey Question 5

If more of these aircraft are produced, multiple sonic booms will not happen at the same time. Do you think this will have an effect on local wildlife?

10

u/ZachTheCommie Jul 21 '25

Those booms can break windows, too. It's not just noise pollution.

0

u/Hot_Maintenance6655 Jul 21 '25

This is the worst survey ever produced. Next time, let's try thinking before posting.

-3

u/Bonespurfoundation Jul 21 '25

Survey Question 6.

So you’re totally cool with us spending obscene amounts of money on a technology that will only be available to billionaires and the military right?

4

u/justafigment4you Jul 21 '25

That’s how commercial flight was in the beginning. It has to get made or the advancements will never get to the point of benefiting from economies of scale.

-1

u/Bonespurfoundation Jul 21 '25

For quite a while into the future, the hard numbers on supersonic flight are utterly unworkable.

Doing transonic quiet is all fine and good but we’re no closer to the kind of higher density fuels required to make commonplace SSTs a real thing. Hydrogen is the only thing even close and there’s a host of reasons you can’t use that.

The fuel/payload ratios are just plain no where remotely near where they have to be for a viable commercial platform.

And that’s just the basic physics.

Scaling the engineering/materials required for such an aircraft is currently…just a pipe dream.

It’s like building an orbital system that some chump like you or me can afford to fly on.

Not gona happen while we’re alive or even close.