24:54
This is the X59, NASA's latest Xplane and the newest creation from Loheed Martin's Secretive Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. The same facility that produced the SR71, F-17 Nighthawk, P-38, F-35, and F-22. This plane is designed to do one thing. Make supersonic boom so quiet that a supersonic transport could fly over a city and barely disturb a mouse. With the insane experience in a house at Skunkworks, this plane became a Frankenstein monster. Pieced together with parts and lessons from F-16s, T38s, and even an old F-17 Nighthawk,
resulting in one of the most aerodynamically interesting Xplanes in recent memory. But can it really accomplish its mission? This is the insane engineering of the X59 Quest. The X59 is littered with interesting design choices, but its key feature is right here. This weird nose. From tip to nose wheel, it takes up over half the plane. The pilot can't even see out of the cockpit, and the center of gravity is 3/4 down the plane where the wings curve deep into the slim waisted fuse lo. All these sharp twisting features are the result of a decade of
aerospace research on how to slice through the air in an entirely new way. one that the X59 hopes will bring back supersonic flight. Because ever since the Concord last flew, commercial air travel has been subsonic and actually slowing down yearbyear. Part of the reason for that, arguably the main reason, is the lack of suitable routes for supersonic passenger planes. The Conqueror flew only a few select flights over the Atlantic where it sonic boom couldn't bother anyone. If we can quieten the booms, more routes would open and drive money into the development of
supersonic passenger planes. The X59's unique design choices are all in pursuit of this goal. But let's start by explaining why it's impossible to be both supersonic and silent. This is a plane flying at 200 m/s, the speed of a regular airliner. Like any object pushing through the air, it generates pressure waves. They spread out in all directions at the speed of sound. Most forces transmit this way. You just don't notice the delay between pushing a table and seeing it move because the speed of sound in a solid is so high. Aircraft just fly fast enough that it starts to matter. Now
watch as the plane speeds up. The pressure waves traveling ahead of it don't get very far before the plane catches up with them, causing them to stack up and increase in pressure. And that's how a shock wave is born. This causes a sudden disruption of the air flowing over the plane and sharply increases the drag it experiences. In fact, the drag coefficient of a regular airliner will double or triple at this air speed with a corresponding increase in the forces acting on its airframe too. These were enough to tear apart the first aircraft traveling at these speeds. And
it was so difficult to get past them that pilots coined the term sound barrier to describe it. And it's even worse when not all parts of the plane go supersonic at the same time. Here's the profile of a regular wing. Air flowing over the leading edge speeds up as it follows the curve. That can push it past Mach 1, even if the rest of the plane is slightly subsonic. Air transitioning from subsonic to supersonic and back to subsonic again doesn't follow the wing surface smoothly, causing it to separate into turbulent flow that violently shakes the wing. This is called MAC buffeting. The
aerodynamic center of the plane, the average point where lift is generated, also shifts to the rear. This effect, called Mac tuck, tends to pull the rear up, causing the whole plane to pitch down. If you're already in a dive, this deepens it, something that affected the P38 and required the addition of a dive flap to save pilots who found themselves in high-speed dives. The X59, of course, is built to handle this. It has delta wings that can survive aerodynamic forces without much structural support. They are highly swept, effectively reducing the velocity of the air
perpendicular to the leading edge. In fact, the sweep angle is deliberately chosen to be steep enough that the entire wing can hide inside the shock cone generated at the nose. Inside the cone, the wings act as if they were in regular subsonic air flow, avoiding the formation of shock waves over their surfaces and becoming dramatically more efficient. The wing profile is different, too. Compared to a regular wing, it is very thin and symmetrical from top to bottom. Air flowing over the wing doesn't accelerate as much, so it's harder to form shock waves and separate
into turbulent flow. The shock waves above and below the wing are balanced, too, reducing mock buffeting. The downside to this profile is that it doesn't produce lift unless it enters the air at an angle, unlike a regular wing. But you can see that the X59's wings are installed with a natural angle already. To maintain control, the X59 uses all moving stabilators instead of elevants in the tail. If the whole control surface tilts into the airflow, there's nothing behind the turbulent wake. So control is retained at supersonic speeds. It adds a supersonic trim. That is,
it tilts the nose up to counter the rearward shift in its center of lift caused by Mac Tuck. Normally doing so adds drag, but the canards in the nose are angled in a way to passively move the center of lift back to the front. So, the amount of trim the X59 needs is cleverly reduced. Now, the X59 accelerates past Mach 1. It is going supersonic, outrunning its own pressure waves as they get dragged behind it in a narrowing shock cone. The X59's design speed is Mach 1.4, which is 413 m/s in the cold air at 15 km altitude. At this speed, its pressure waves are pressed into
a 45° cone, an unavoidable aspect of breaking the sound barrier that makes it impossible to fly silently. If you were standing on the ground with one of these planes speeding overhead, you'd see it move past silently. Then, after delay, you'd hear a distinct bang. This double boom sweeps over the landscape, and it can be strong enough to shake buildings or break windows. The reason it's so powerful is because the shock waves from a supersonic aircraft merge as they spread away from the aircraft, adding up their energy until there's two peaks in an N-shaped
wave. This Nwave weakens as it travels down, but enough energy is gathered in each peak to produce a loud double boom at ground level. Quest goal is not to eliminate supersonic booms, but to alter them in a way that they are no longer disruptive to the people on the ground. There's two parts to it. weakening the shock waves so they become quieter and then shaping them so they don't become a powerful n-wave. The first part relies heavily on the Witcom area rule discovered by Richard Wickcom in 1952 while experimenting with wind tunnels. It basically states that abrupt changes
in the cross-sectional area of a plane from nose to tail are what create the strongest shock waves. A fuselage like a straight cylinder would have a constant cross-section until the air flow reaches the wings which suddenly adds a lot of cross-sectional area. In the earliest supersonic planes, this was the source of a very strong shock wave which resulted in immense drag. If instead the fuse latch narrowed at the point where the wings were attached, the change in cross-sectional area would be less abrupt and the shock waves would be weakened. Planes which
follow the Wickcom area rule typically have a coke bottle fuselage with a narrow waist and smooth curves. Modern aircraft analyze every change in cross-sectional area to follow the Wickcom rule from the cockpit bubble to the rudder placement. But the X59 applies the area rule differently. It is trying to generate the weakest shock waves by having the smoothest transitions possible between its thick and thin sections. That's why the nose is so long and why the cockpit blends seamlessly with the fuselage. And because of this, the pilot has to rely entirely on the cameras and screens of
its external vision system to fly the plane. At the point where the wings are the widest, the fuselage is also the narrowest. The engine looks like it sticks out, but the airflow sees it as a hollow tube rather than an obstacle, so it doesn't actually change the cross-sectional area as much as you would expect. In the rear, the tail is short with the rudder bridging the gap between the wings and the stabilators. Thanks to these features, the only strong shock waves that are generated are near the canards and the engine intake. The intake has a special bump called a divertless supersonic inlet that solves two problems with high-speed
flight. You can see these on the most advanced fighter jet, the F-35. As air travels along the length of the body, air begins to form a layer of slowmoving turbulent air called a boundary layer. If this air is allowed to enter the engine, it not only lowers performance, it can also damage the engine. As the turbine rotates, it will pass through the slow boundary air on one side and then the fast free stream air on the other. This means the force on the turbine blade changes for each and every rotation, causing cyclical bending, a recipe for fatigue failure. Planes like the F-16
feature a boundary layer diverter that separates the inlet from the fuselage with a small gap, but this design increases drag. Later variants of the F-16 tested the DSI, a divertless supersonic inlet, essentially a large bump that creates a region of compression that pushes the boundary layer away from the inlet while lowering drag. The test flight demonstrated it could meet performance requirements, ushering in its introduction to the F-35. The final product reduces weight by 30% and lowers production and maintenance costs. The X59 takes it to the next level by moving it onto its
back, so the shock wave it produces is directed up and away from the ground. The next step in Quest design is to shape the sonic boom. If the main wings did all of the lifting, there'd be a single strong shock wave centered on them. With the canards, large stabils, and little fins on the rudder, the sources of lift are distributed along the plane's length, resulting in multiple smaller shock waves precisely spaced out from each other. The X59's unconventional layout helps it move all of these shock waves far enough apart that they don't merge as they travel down to the ground.
Instead of adding up into a single N-wave, they stay separate and weak all the way to the ground where they're heard as a longer, softer thump rather than a short boom. The objective here is to reduce the volume of a sonic boom down to 75 dB. That's like a door slamming shut across the street or a small truck passing you on the highway. To get to this point, the X59 was put through a rigorous regime of computer simulations and wind tunnel tests. Every bump and curve was mapped out and its effects on the air flow calculated by the advanced supercomputing division at the AS
research center. Scale models of the X59 were placed into wind tunnels at NASA's Langley, Loheed Skunk Works, and even Jax's test facility in Tokyo. All of this makes the X59 a unique design, but it's not the first plane to try to shape its own sonic booms. The most recent is this NASA F-15B that collaborated with Gulfream Aerospace on the quiet spike project. A multi-stage 7.3 m extendable spike was installed on its nose, adding 38% to the jet's length that helped split the shock cone at the front of the plane into three smaller shock waves. Before that,
the same F-15B tail number 836 was used to trial an ugly duckling F5E fitted with the much longer nose and modified fuselage to measure whether it could reduce the intensity of its sonic boom in flight. It did so by one/3. The X59 program is the most serious attempt at designing a plane purpose-built for reducing sonic booms. Loheed Martin Skunk Works got a quarter of a billion dollar contract to build it. Parts from existing planes were used wherever possible to save time and reduce costs, which is why it got the landing gear of a Falcon, the engine of a Hornet,
the cockpit canopy of a T38 Talon, the control stick of a Nighthawk, and even components from a U2 spy plane. After 5 years in the workshop, the X59 rolled out in 2023. The X59 was unveiled to the public on the 12th of January 2024, but its first cautious flight only happened on October 2025. In 2026, it is still being put through its paces. It reached an altitude of 6 km in April, then went supersonic for the first time in June 2026. A week later, it reached its design speed of Mach 1.4 at an altitude of 15 km. The next step is to fly over Edward's Air Force Base while
surrounded by sensors and microphones, both on the ground and flying alongside it at all altitudes to demonstrate that the low boom concept will work in the real world. Wind tunnel testing doesn't say what weather, winds, clouds, and terrain due to the impact of sonic booms on the ground. So, the data can only be gathered live. Then the big test. The X59 will be flown over several US cities to measure how residents will react to its sonic booms. This community response testing is the most important step in changing flight regulations from a straightup supersonic ban to
a 5.3 Pascal ground pressure restriction. If it succeeds, the door may open to a new generation of supersonic passenger flight. But a quieter supersonic boom doesn't solve all the problems. Technology may have progressed, but it's arguably more difficult economically to pull off today, mostly on fuel costs. Supersonic jets need smaller fuselages to cut down on drag and thus can spread the cost of fuel across as many passengers. With fuel costs higher than ever, the next big challenge is getting fuel demands lower. But that's no easy task. The engineers of
the X59 chose to use a reliable off-the-shelf military engine, the General Electric F414, the same engine the Super Hornet uses. This was primarily a cost of development choice, but these engines will just not cut it for a commercial application. The Concord was excellent in Super Cruise. Its four Olympus engines turned out to be the most thermodynamically efficient motors of their time, thanks to a complex arrangement of intake ramps that could compress the incoming air, slowing it down while recovering its kinetic energy as pressure rather than wasting it. That
way, it could super cruise at Mach 2, but getting up to super cruise required costly afterurners. The Soviets actually beat the Concord into service with the Tupalev Tu44. It was heavier, faster with 42% more powerful engines and canards to help it lift off. But its tragically unlucky career was terminated after 3 years. The X59 inherits features from both. Its delta wings are actually double deltas similar to the Concord with the inner portion at 76° and the outer portion at 68.6°. Its canards also help by generating vortices that spill over onto the main
wing at low speed. The next piece of the puzzle is creating an engine that can run efficiently at both subsonic and supersonic speeds. Astromechanic is designing and testing hybrid engines with an electric fan mode at low speed, an efficient turbo fan mode for transonic to supersonic flight, and a ramjet mode to keep it pushing up to Mach 3. A design this advanced is only made possible by recent progress in high powertoweight ratio electric motors, dense batteries, and heatresistant ceramic turbine blades. And just a little side note, my other company, Throttle,
actually created these animations for Astrome Mechanica. If you run an engineering company and need help making animations, we can help you out. With engines like these, a supersonic plane could enter a virtuous cycle of needing less fuel to make a trip, which means smaller wings to take off, which leads to less drag and smaller engines, which in turn reduce the fuel needed further, which would also potentially open up options for longer range trans-pacific routes, which could prove extremely valuable. But it's not a done deal. Private companies have
attempted to bring back supersonic flight since the Concord ended in 2003. The Aryan Corporation spent between500 million and a billion dollars on its AS2 design, a sort of supersonic business jet, but failed after declaring the effort would take closer to $10 billion. Exos, Virgin Galactic, and Spike Aerospace have all tried and failed. Boom Aerospace is the current contender. They plan to deliver an 80 seat supersonic jet called the Overture, which would super cruise at Mach 1.7. It has raised about $600 million to do it and has been working on it for the past decade when
it isn't busy designing gas turbines to power AI data centers. That is instead of a painstakingly designed airframe with a shaped sonic boom like the X59, they're relying on Mac cutoff, a phenomenon where sonic booms don't reach the ground if they start out between Mach 1.1 and Mach 1.3 at around 10 km altitude. A phenomenon they have tested once and claimed success. Simply put, sonic booms are sound waves that refract when traveling through air of different densities, and they can bend enough to make a U-turn in the air and never reach the ground under specific
weather conditions. This means Boom Aerospace would be constantly adjusting its speed, altitude, and flight path while navigating through the atmosphere, looking for those perfect conditions. There's still no guarantee that Boom Aerospace or some other company will succeed. Supersonic jets will always be more expensive than subsonic airliners just because they take more fuel and make more sacrifices to carry each passenger. Rising fuel costs and businesses relying on video calls rather than physical meetings in other countries are also
making them less likely. But there are a lot of people who will pay thousands of dollars to save themselves a few hours. And with 5,500 new millionaires being printed every single day around the world, finding a market for these faster planes might not be so difficult. Just to demonstrate how far technology has come since the Concord made its first flight in 1969, this was how big state-of-the-art calculators were at the time. This is the AL-1000 Commodore, manufactured by Casio in Japan in 1968. It's a beautiful piece of computer history.
It has just 448 bits of memory from its core memory array which stores data on tiny iron rings. And these high voltage Nixie tubes demanded a fairly complex power supply. I bought this as part of a Nebula series where I put cool objects like the Nokia 3310 and the first generation iPod into a CT scanner and then used the Volutric models to make messmerizing animations. Well, this calculator is both too big and too heavy to fit in the CT scanners we are using. So, uh I messed up there. But it did kickstart a new obsession for me. Uh the history of old
calculators. So, instead, the first episode is about the Curta mechanical calculator, which is an absolutely fascinating little portable calculator that uses gears and rotating levers for calculations. You can watch that episode when it releases on Nebula next month. With the help of Nebula, we hired a new animator with a background in electronic engineering to take the animation technique we developed to make one of these episodes a month. Next month, we'll be going further down this new calculator collecting hobby with the Sharp E8, which launched just 4 years
after this gigantic thing and benefited from the new arms race in microchip development. So, subscribe to Nebula if you want to watch me obsess over old calculators for the next few months. A monthly subscription to Nebula is usually $6. But with my link or the QR code on screen right now, you can get an entire year's membership for just $30. Or if you're sick of signing up to new subscription services like I am, we've created a lifetime membership if you'd rather just pay it and forget it. With YouTube policies changing more and more in favor of slop scrolling,
every subscriber over Nebula counts where we can focus on the things that really get us excited.
