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 11 points 10 months ago (6 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 38 points 10 months 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 -3 points 10 months ago (1 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 10 months 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 1 points 10 months ago

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

[–] DistractedDev@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 9 points 10 months 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 2 points 10 months 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 3 points 10 months ago

This is probably defense spending, tbh.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months 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 10 months ago

Well, this might be missile research.