In July, Lockheed Martin completed the build of NASA’s X-59 test aircraft, which is designed to turn sonic booms into mere thumps, in the hope of making overland supersonic flight a possibility. Ground tests and a first test flight are planned for later in the year. NASA aims to have enough data to hand over to US regulators in 2027.

  • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    This is wrong. NASA from the beginning was co-opted by the MIC owned by the original billionaires with a tissue thin veil about civilization advancement. Any discussion about super-sonic flight has already dismissed environmental impact and economic accessibility even if it’s ostensibly NASA doing it.

    IF there was a supersonic capable flight technology that somehow wasn’t reliant on fossil fuels or other externalities and was cheap enough that a minimum wage worker could use them as often as they use the Subway in the top 10 largest cities in the world, then I’d be 100% behind it. But that isn’t the case, that is not the intended case, and that will never be the case.