Shockwave Images Help NASA In Development of 'Quiet' Supersonic Jet (go.com)

An anonymous reader writes: NASA is working on developing a next-generation supersonic jet that can break the sound barrier with a soft "thump" instead of a sonic boom. They are using a technique called schlieren imagery to "visualize supersonic flow phenomena with full-scale aircraft in flight" with the sun as the backdrop for the photos. According to a NASA blog post, viewing shock waves and their density is crucial to the project so engineers can work on a design to minimize those reverberations. While the Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) research aircraft is being developed, stunning images were captured of a supersonic jet flying at Mach 1.05 with the sun in the background. NASA says when QueSST is operational, it could "unlock the future to commercial supersonic flight over land," essentially ushering in a new era of aviation that could allow us to get from point A to point B faster and without the loud roar of the Concorde as it breaks the sound barrier.

Comments

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

So Tahoe wealthy Tepublicans can go even faster to more places to ruin our lives even more.

Re: Great

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what their kind lives for. Spreading misery.

Re:Great

[sycodon]

Actually, being able to get from point A to point B faster than a day's worth of travel will probably save countless billions in time and money for everyone from executives to a family going to Disney World, or Europe.

To get from the middle of the country to either coast takes about 4 hours in the air. Add in the precursor activities and post arrival activities and it's an entire day wasted.

Consider a Family of four going to Disney on either coast. A one hour flight vs. 4 (at best, if you get a straight through) will save you four meals, two hotel rooms for a night, and take up one less day of your vacation time.

With the Supercruise capabilities we see on F-22's it may even mean lower fuel consumption per hour.

Re:Great

[Ol Olsoc]

Actually, being able to get from point A to point B faster than a day's worth of travel will probably save countless billions in time and money for everyone from executives to a family going to Disney World, or Europe.

Poor modern day Americans. They have not found out yet that the journey is the important part. When I read posts like this, I think of Chevy Chase in Family Vacation, impatiently giving his family five seconds to look at the Grand Canyon because, Wally World!

I've been to Disney World twice, and Disneyland once. And what I remember is the fun I had getting to those places, not a whole lot about the places themselves, except for standing in line a lot. Sunrise in the High desert, the spookieness of the Joshua Tree National forest in the moonlight. The drive along Route 101. The Smoky mountains in Tennessee. Same with Las Vegas, My best memory of that place is Hoover Dam, which was on the way out of Vegas toward the Grand Canyon..

Re:Great

[sycodon]

If you are going to drive, then drive. Enjoy the sites.

If you are flying, then you obviously have no interesting in those things. So it is in the best interest of everything to fly there as quickly as possible.

Re:Great

[unrtst]

Actually, being able to get from point A to point B faster than a day's worth of travel will probably save countless billions in time and money for everyone from executives to a family going to Disney World, or Europe.

Bah humbug! YMMV, but for me, most of my travels are within 400-1000 miles or so (or 1 - 3 hours in the air). For those on the shorter end of that, it often takes less time to just drive it once you take into account time to get to/from the airports, screening, baggage claim, etc. While supersonic may provide a noticeable difference in some cases, they really need to reduce the end point issues if they want it to seem significantly faster.

Re:Great

[Ol Olsoc]

If you are going to drive, then drive. Enjoy the sites.

If you are flying, then you obviously have no interesting in those things. So it is in the best interest of everything to fly there as quickly as possible.

Or just watch a TV show. That's even quicker.

But you are right. I just have different tastes in entertainment. I suspect it's because while I am enjoying the ride, others care only about the destination. I get there as well, and get a whole lot more entertainment. Others settle for much much less.

I've done a lot of flying, but am an experience whore.

Re:Great

[ls671]

Also, it seems like somebody finally found a use for Adobe Shockwave, I never thought this would happen and I am impressed that this somebody is the NASA.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...

Bitter people

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how on every story there is some bitter person bitching about the rich.

Re:Bitter people

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that is why they are not rich themselves, say nothing about the additional self hatred that would follow.

More important than the sonic boom

[Nutria]

Are modern engines as efficient at Mach 1.5 as they are at Mach 0.9?

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Anonymous Coward]

No, which is what doomed the Boeing Sonic Cruiser. Airlines prefer cheap operating costs over aircraft speed. In fact, they typically run their current fleet slower than the aircraft are able to cruise, for fuel economy reasons.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[AK Marc]

The physics works differently at 0.9 than 1.1. For small planes, it may be easier to sustain 1.5, rather than 0.9. But the passenger jets aren't fighters, and would likely see increases for all increases in speed.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Aviation Pete]

Are modern engines as efficient at Mach 1.5 as they are at Mach 0.9?

No. The engine doesn't notice the speed, the intake takes care of that. But to create thrust, the exhaust flow must be faster than the intake flow, and making the exhaust flow faster lowers the overall efficiency of the engine. This is why subsonic engines have a high bypass ratio while for supersonic engines bypass ratio must be kept low.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Anonymous Coward]

the engine efficiency is most not the problem, engines are actually slightly more efficient at higher speeds due to the relatively efficient ram-compression (concorde olympus is I think the most efficient aero-engine ever). The real problem is that the lift to drag ratio of supersonic aircraft is only 7-10 which is only 30-40% of high subsonic commercial jets taht are now in range 20-22. That means (all other things being equal) that you need ~3x the fuel to travel the same distance.

This supersonic L/D deficit is pretty fundamental, and even the best possible configurations (oblique flying wings that are basically unworkable due to massive wing spans needed) will only bring supersonic L/D up to perhaps low teens. While subsonic jets are eventually targeting 30:1 L/D with strut braced wings or blended wing bodies.

But fuel is typically only 20-40% of ticket costs, so this is not necessarily a show stopper for commercial service. And if we can do cheap nuclear power synthesized fuels gradually increasing wealth of world should eventually make supersonic flight in 1-4 person pilotless aircraft (to eliminate noise issue) ubiquitous.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[AmiMoJo]

The Japanese effort to developer supersonic passenger jets is looking to offset lower engine efficiency by reducing drag through aerodynamics and flying higher. Ideas include reconfigurable geometry and some advanced computer modelling that wasn't available when the last one was being designed in the 60s.

It's still very experimental and may not work out, but maybe there is a way to overcome the issues.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[NotAPK]

There's a bit more to the story than that.

While Boeing was developing its own supersonic airliner, they were faced with the tough task of competing against Concorde, which was already established and flying. Instead of competing, the entrenched US aviation industry smeared the supersonic airline industry and encourage an FAA sanction prohibiting Concords (or any supersonic airliner) from flying supersonic over land.

It's funny that they are now looking into this again, and all their old fear-mongering is biting them on the ass.

FAA information.

Concorde.

An example of how there is a lot of confusion regarding take off noise (which was indeed very loud) and the sustained sonic-boom during supersonic flight. The author of that page also states that he's been unable to acquire data detailing the noise at ground level caused by the sonic boom from a Concorde. My own search has also been futile...

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Richard_at_work]

The Sonic Cruiser was never intended to go as fast as Mach 1.5, it was intended to hang around in the trans-sonic region (Mach 0.98 - 1.02 ish) and it was also intended to use the same engines as the Boeing 777 was using at the time. In the end, it was the fact that the aircraft was smaller than a 777, had much the same operating costs as the 777 and only arrived twenty or thirty minutes earlier than a 777 that killed it.

Of course, Boeing received a lot of NASA funding for development into composite structures that later went into the Boeing 7E7 (which became the 787) - some people might say that Boeing ran the Sonic Cruiser project purely as a means to get free funding from NASA...

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Anonymous Coward]

..The author of that page also states that he's been unable to acquire data detailing the noise at ground level caused by the sonic boom from a Concorde.

There was an alleged test done by the UK and France way back in the 60's/early 70's where they took a Concorde supersonic at low level over land somewhere in France. I say alleged, as it was one of my college lecturers back in the 80's who came out with this, he was military R&D during this period.
If this did happen, knowing how idiotic the military can be regarding trivial things, the noise/damage data is probably still classified.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[XNormal]

... they were faced with the tough task of competing against Concorde, which was already established and flying ...

... and developed with French and British government funding. While the Concorde was operationally profitable for a while, it never made anywhere close to its original development costs. I can understand Boeing sour about it.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[peragrin]

The reason the Concorde wasn't operational profitable was because it ws limited in routes. if it could fly, london, to newark, to la, to toyko, and then back to london it would have been better.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[NotAPK]

I have no doubt that a low-level flyover at supersonic speeds would be absolutely nuts, and potentially dangerous for people and animals on the ground.

But at cruising altitude??

From the Wikipedia page: "Concorde had a maximum cruise altitude of 18,300 metres (60,039 ft)" which is almost twice as high as most subsonic airliners. A Boeing 777 cruises at 11,000 m (35,000 ft).

Anyway, all I was trying to say is that it would be really nice to see some reliable ground measurements of the noise from a Concorde flying at Mach 2 at cruising altitude.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[sycodon]

Yes.

The Raptor's two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engines pump out 35,000 pounds of thrust each (compare that to the 25,000-29,000 pounds of thrust for each engine on an F-15). Combined with the sleek aerodynamic design, the engines allow the Raptor to cruise at supersonic speeds with less fuel consumption than any other aircraft.

So the technology is out there.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Nutria]

the engines allow the Raptor to cruise at supersonic speeds with less fuel consumption than any other aircraft.

"Most efficient supersonic engines" != "More efficient than subsonic engines"

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Ol Olsoc]

No, which is what doomed the Boeing Sonic Cruiser. Airlines prefer cheap operating costs over aircraft speed. In fact, they typically run their current fleet slower than the aircraft are able to cruise, for fuel economy reasons.

Many modern airliner engines have enough power to go supersonic. Obviously the airframes would make that not a good idea.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[WheezyJoe]

the engine efficiency is most not the problem, engines are actually slightly more efficient at higher speeds due to the relatively efficient ram-compression (concorde olympus is I think the most efficient aero-engine ever). The real problem is that the lift to drag ratio of supersonic aircraft is only 7-10 which is only 30-40% of high subsonic commercial jets taht are now in range 20-22. That means (all other things being equal) that you need ~3x the fuel to travel the same distance.

This supersonic L/D deficit is pretty fundamental, and even the best possible configurations (oblique flying wings that are basically unworkable due to massive wing spans needed) will only bring supersonic L/D up to perhaps low teens. While subsonic jets are eventually targeting 30:1 L/D with strut braced wings or blended wing bodies.

But fuel is typically only 20-40% of ticket costs, so this is not necessarily a show stopper for commercial service. And if we can do cheap nuclear power synthesized fuels gradually increasing wealth of world should eventually make supersonic flight in 1-4 person pilotless aircraft (to eliminate noise issue) ubiquitous.

At the same time, all jet engines are terrifically inefficient at low speeds. Even modern subsonic planes lose a comparably huge amount of fuel when taxiing around the airport. Swept-wing SST's would be worse, because they have to accelerate to a higher speed before they can take off (unless you rig them with folding wings like the F-14, but that would weigh too much if scaled up for a commercial aircraft).

Thinking F-14's leads to an idea, though... rig airports with catapults to save a little fuel and make air travel more exciting.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no doubt that a low-level flyover at supersonic speeds would be absolutely nuts, and potentially dangerous for people and animals on the ground.

Absolutely nuts? certainly, but it's military R&D so par for the course, still, I'd love to see the footage they undoubtedly shot.....
Don't know about people and animals, but large amounts of hush(sic) money were paid out to cover damage to properties etc.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Agent0013]

I don't know about dangerous. I was on a US Navy ship when we had a supersonic flyover pass overhead. It was low enough that you could see the line made in the ocean beneath the plane as it was approaching from the pressure wave. Standing on the deck of the ship and watching it fly overhead was interesting. There was no sound at all as it approached, then the boom as it passed overhead. I know it must have been higher than it looked, but it appeared to pass between the two masts of the ship.

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, once again the Brit's wanted to try to make money off of the Americans without first clearing it with America. Then they bitched that they should have been allowed to and blame America for their failed business plan. Guess what? You do not get to make the rules in countries you do not own!

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[Anonymous Coward]

Which explains why the USA has never tried to set the rules for other countries...

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[mrchaotica]

I'd like to know how cruising supersonic at 60,000 ft compares with cruising subsonic at 35,000 ft in terms of fuel economy (theoretically based on the best engine tech we have today, not empirically comparing Concorde vs. 777).

Re:More important than the sonic boom

[stephows]

But catapult flights only go to Elbonia

NASA or NACA?

[fsagx]

This headline could have been from the 40's or 50's. This is the way supersonic flow has been visualized as long as it has been studied. The supersonic wind tunnel and the Schlieren setup at the university I attended appeared pretty ancient to me in the 1980s.

Re:NASA or NACA?

[Anonymous Coward]

As mentioned in Wikipedia, Schlieren optics were developed to study supersonic motion in **1864**. Yes, 152 years ago. I'm happy to see it mentioned as it's a very simple but effective tool. When grinding my own Newtonian telescope mirror in 8th grade (1967) I noticed the Foucault knife test performed as a Schlieren system when a hand was placed near the mirror - the rising air currents from the warm hand are strikingly obvious.

But headlining NASA's use of this is like headlining that Accountants use Arithmetic - it's not really *news*.

Re:NASA or NACA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only recently that they managed to do Schlieren photography outside a lab (i.e. on real aircraft flying over).
Whether that helps them with this development or not, I don't know.

Re:NASA or NACA?

[Sique]

Most interesting is that the imaginery is still called schlieren optics. Schlieren is a german word meaning the streams and runmarks that can be seen if you mix two liquids of different optic properties like ink and water or Hydrogen peroxide and water.

Re:NASA or NACA?

[fsagx]

I remember my prof saying that it was German for "smear." I also remember thinking he was making that up, and assuming (wrongly, I find out 30 years later) it was really named for some guy named Schlieren. Thanks for the info!

Great, just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't many people who complain that air travel isn't fast enough. The bigger issues are the hassles in airports and the cramped seating in planes, not that flights aren't fast enough. The real effect of this will be to increase carbon emissions, which is the last thing we need to be doing. After the past few years have been the hottest on record, we should be concerned with making travel more fuel-efficient instead of faster.

Re: Great, just what we need

[cyber-vandal]

Being cramped in a plane for two hours instead of 10 sounds like an improvement to me.

Re: Great, just what we need

[WheezyJoe]

Yeah, imagine if it was actually available. Normal flight, and express. Once you got used to flights five hours or less where ever you're going, it would be really hard going back to "slow" planes no matter how far back the business-seat reclines.

If you never have to fly long distances, obviously you won't care. But if you do, particularly if you have to for business or family, paying up to save time becomes a real thing. In the day, business travelers loved the Concorde, 'cause they could fly to London hold a meeting and be back in NY the same day and no jet lag. If LA to Tokyo or Shanghai or Sydney were available as a 5 hour option over the typical 12+, people would pay the premium.

What killed the Concorde was not that it didn't have passengers. Never mind the sunk costs for R&D, it died because of the weird way Britain and France built it: no supply chain was established for new planes, upgrades, or even spare parts. Airbus didn't exist then, and Boeing had nothing to do with it. When Airbus was approached later to make replacement parts, they declined because with maybe 12 planes in the entire fleet, there just wasn't any money in it, nor did they have any interest in building a replacement if they're only going to make a dozen planes for two routes. The fleet was kept in the air by cannibalizing parts from retired Concordes until this simply became unsustainable.

Things might be different now. If Airbus or Boeing committed to a viable SST that could fly over land, you can bet airlines serving Dubai and Qatar would place orders, as well as Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Johannesburg. That might add up to enough planes to actually make economic sense. Fly to Dubai in 5 hours instead of 18? You might actually want to go there.

The Aliens Already Gave Us This Technology

[Freshly Exhumed]

Why are they wasting tax dollars when the technology already has been known in Area 51 since the 1940s? The 1943 Wizarding
Accords, of which the author of the Declaration of Independence, Labach the Elder, was a signatory, allowed such advanced technology to be exploited for civilian purposes. Smarten up, NASA!

Look, shit-head:

[Anonymous Coward]

If You think that I'm not kicking the ass of that little fat pile of cat shit off my yard just when I car passes by, You really should consider thinking again.

You can adjust the speed of the air in the engine

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Are modern engines as efficient at Mach 1.5 as they are at Mach 0.9?

You get to adjust the speed and pressure of the air in the engine - by a factor of several, if necessary - so the engine works well and makes good tradeoffs. That's much of what those cones, scoops, and funny-shaped housings are about, at least at the front. (Along the sides they're more about making room for the engine in the passing air without creating excessive drag.)

FUD

[Woldscum]

NASA has to get a press release out about something. Can not have SpaceX making all the new science.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX, or any other commercial entity, would not exist if NASA and other US government agencies had not spent billions on research, experimentation, and delivery of the technology SpaceX now uses. Now that the commercial entities have providing orbital lift capacity NASA can move on to developing new technologies. And SpaceX is not using any new technologies they are applying existing technology in a different way. And their plans to land and reuse boosters is 1 for 3 so they still have some work to do.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way is this increasing Fear, Uncertainty or Doubt?

nice images would be wrong way to design

[sittingnut]

this makes great copy with images (which seems to be required thing for so called technology and science news stories regardless of substance ) but to design aircraft based on way they are photographed under particular conditions seems not to be the correct or safe way go about it.

Re:nice images would be wrong way to design

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. Imaging the airflow over an actual airplane at speed couldn't possibly help in the design of the aircraft. And it certainly couldn't be safe to take photographs of the thing!

Re:nice images would be wrong way to design

[sittingnut]

this method is not the best way to take images, or find and test airflow over an airplane, with too much atmospheric distortions, and with inability to recreate the same images and tests, and other inherent disabilities in the method .

This will only be used on business jets, if at all

[Aviation Pete]

Supersonic flight adds a new source of drag, called wave drag, which comes on top of all other drag. It depends on the slenderness of the plane, but can easily double the total amount of drag. Optimizing the design for less pronounced shock waves will increase drag yet again, so fuel consumption per mile flown will make the cost of supersonic travel prohibitive. After all, the travel speeds of modern airliners (Mach 0.78 to 0.855) is typically a bit lower than the design speed of early jet airliners like the Convair 990 (Mach 0.87) or the Vickers VC-10 (Mach 0.89). That was half a century ago!

But there is a pocket of aviation where progress has been made in flight speed: Business jets! While the first generation flew more slowly than airliners (Lockheed JetStar, Lear Jet 25), the latest designs are quite a bit faster (Cessna Citation X, Gulfstream V) at up to Mach 0.935. Why? There is a peeing contest going on among their owners who is the fastest. A very small segment of mankind is licking their fingers at a new chance for showing off. A supersonic business jet would be a sure sell to this crowd, even if the operating cost per mile doubles.

Well, see it this way: This is a chance for the other 99.9% of mankind to lower the Gini coefficient a bit.

I thought this seemed familiar

[MrPeach]

http://m.phys.org/news/2015-08...

Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

who at a glance on the first word "shockware" thought of Macromedia...

Oblig...

[wbr1]

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom"

Re:This will only be used on business jets, if at

[Maury Markowitz]

> Supersonic flight adds a new source of drag, called wave drag [wikipedia.org],

As the author of the article you are linking to (if you don't believe me, click History and look) I find it somewhat odd that you apparently didn't *actually read it*.

Wave drag is primarily and effect in the *transonic* from about M0.8 to 1.1 or 1.2, and then basically disappears at speeds above that. Jet airliners spend a significant portion of their flight time dealing with it, which is why it is important for modern air travel.

Supersonic aircraft do indeed use much more fuel than subsonic, but it's not due (primarily) to wave drag, and designing to lower boom does not necessarily upset it for the worse.

Ummm

[Maury Markowitz]

"technique called schlieren imagery"

This is a terrible summary, and the linked articles aren't great either.

This technique has been used since the 1800's, and specifically for supersonic aircraft design since the 1930s. If you poke about in Google Images you'll find German war-era photographs of swept-wing designs being tested. It was used for artillery design long before that.

The real "news" here, which is hardly news because it's been used for a while now, is the use of outdoor photography to produce these images. Previously you needed perfect-enough conditions that only a wind tunnel was suitable, but now they're using fancy image processing to do the same. Clever, and interesting, but misleading all the same.

Re:This will only be used on business jets, if at

[Anonymous Coward]

A very small segment of mankind is licking their fingers at a new chance for showing off.

So in the future, the 1% can be accused of breaking eggs of rare birds and almost extinct frogs, making children to bleed from the ears, and crashing windows and cutting our pets with the shrapnel. Science save us!

Roar? hmm.

[nicolaiplum]

Concorde "roar" was the takeoff power with reheat. The sonic boom is not a roar, it is a short bang

No-one near land heard Concorde's sonic boom. They all heard the engines, which were louder than a modern high-bypass turbofan.

You really want faster travel? Fire the TSA.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> allow us to get from point A to point B faster

You really want to travel faster? Fire the TSA.

Not feasible in the US until we get rid of TSA

[lamer01]

What is the point of making air travel faster when we have to spend hours in lines at the airport and getting to/from the airport? This only makes sense for really long trips like trans continent trips.

Re:Not feasible in the US until we get rid of TSA

[Thud457]

pfha.
The 1% that will be able to fly on this thing will just pay for preferential treatment at security screening.
They don't even bother to pretend this is a democracy anymore.

Re:Not feasible in the US until we get rid of TSA

[WheezyJoe]

Then we need better body scanners.

Re:This will only be used on business jets, if at

[Aviation Pete]

Where does the article even hint at wave drag disappearing at higher supersonic speed?

Wave drag is primarily and effect in the *transonic* from about M0.8 to 1.1 or 1.2, and then basically disappears at speeds above that.

Wrong. Why don't you do some basic fact-checking yourself before wrongly accusing others?

Re:This will only be used on business jets, if at

[DRJlaw]

Where does the article even hint at wave drag disappearing at higher supersonic speed?

"The effect is typically seen on aircraft at transonic speeds (about Mach 0.8)..."

I found it in less than 30 seconds.

Wrong. Why don't you do some basic fact-checking yourself before wrongly accusing others?

I'm certainly willing to completely trust conclusory statements simply thrown out there by "Aviation Pete." Especially ones that contradict the very source that such a self-professed fount of chose to cite in the first place.

Even though Wikipedia is suspect and the entry has very sparse backing, you, sir, could not surpass even that frighteningly low bar.