NASA, Lockheed Martin reveal subtly supersonic X-59 plane NASA's X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft made its public debut on Friday in a media event at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, where the plane was designed. The X-59, the centerpiece of NASA's Quesst mission, was designed to fly at supersonic speed without the sonic boom created by planes breaking the sound …
Trump tried to restrict democratic choices first when he attempted to overturn the election and keep himself in office despite losing - and he knew he lost since everyone in his administration told him so. He had look for crazies like Eastman and Rudy to tell him what he wanted to hear, and willfully ignore the 99.9% of people around him telling him he lost. So I think it would be totally appropriate for the courts to rule him ineligible, and is in no way infringing on voters rights to "elect who they want" anymore than not letting them vote for someone not born in the US like Schwarzenegger or someone only 30 years old.
He made a choice to do what he did, and that choice was to stage an insurrection against the Constitution through all his schemes like attempting to strongarm state legislatures and secretaries of state to illegally certify him winner when he lost, fake electors he wanted Pence to accept as legitimate, and pointing whackjobs like Proud Boys and 3 percenters at Congress on Jan 6th then refusing to tell them to leave until after it had become clear that they could not achieve his goal of pressuring congress to certify him as the winner under threat from the MAGA mob. The consequence of his choice is that Article 3 of the 14th Amendment makes him ineligible to ever hold any office in the US government again. Unfortunately the MAGA cultists who see Trump as some sort of orange Jesus have never read past the 2nd Amendment.
The Senate should have done its job and convicted him when he was impeached for it, but McConnell chickened out. He believed Trump would fade away of his own accord so he delayed the impeachment trial until after Trump had left office to give himself and his cronies an excuse to vote against it.
I don't live in the US, and I wasn't going for particular analysis of Trump, I just find the idea that we should tell large groups of people 'that their voices will not be heard' a dangerous way to start going.
I find it all rather absurd. Surely if there were good opponents then nobody would still be talking about him.
It beggars belief that all these years on, the media still can't get away from Trump. Their constant coverage is surely feeding in to the hype, intentionally or otherwise.
"the media still can't get away from Trump. Their constant coverage is surely feeding in to the hype, intentionally or otherwise."
I always find whinging about the behaviour of the media like this to be counter-productive. The media exists to sell media. Be that airtime/printed paper/bandwidth whatever - the "media" will tell any story they can get away with that will increase their sales (and, often, no, not within reason, especially these days).
If a story, or (more accurately), a story told in a certain way, will get people to consume the media, without getting the media source sued, it will be released, no matter the consequences to any person connected to the story or not.
A media source may well have an agenda, but it will always be secondary to the prime motivator.... money.
I think it's a mix of the two. There are certainly some media outlets just interested in clicks but the activist ones, in my view, believe the best way to harm Trump is to cast him in the very worst light, even if it means bending the truth or wildly speculating. They fail to understand that this is both more effective at motivating his supporters to vote than his opponents and that the endless exaggerations undermine any efforts to communicate the genuinely bad stuff (of which there is hardly a lack of things to cover).
There are many requirements for being President of the United States. One of them is to not engage in insurrection.
The November, 15th judgement by Judge Sarah Wallace found Trump had incited an insurrection. The Constitution is quite clear on the matter, so striking him from the ballot was a foregone conclusion.
If one amendment doesn’t matter, why do any of the others? Why should the President have to be at least 35 years old? Why should they have to be born in the United States?
It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a legal matter. Trump disqualified himself. Honestly, in a civilized country, he would have received the traditional award for second place in a coup on January, 7th.
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Oh he'll be convicted at least in the Jan 6 federal trial by then. Hopefully the Georgia trial goes in August like requested or earlier (if the Florida judge in his pocket continues to delay the classified documents case and can no longer make the May date she put it down for) since that will be a PUBLIC trial. Even Fox News won't be able to ignore the daily TV coverage of that, and with so many of his own people testifying against him the spin machine won't be able to wave it all away.
If republicans are dumb enough to nominate him, they will have no one to blame but themselves for how badly that will tank his election chances, and his cries of "election interference" will hold no water. The problem is that if sanity prevailed and they nominated Haley - who would clobber Biden in a head to head race - Trump will claim election fraud (in republican primary elections!) and then announce he's running as a third party candidate. Because he doesn't care about republicans or conservatives at all, just himself. If republicans nominate someone else he'll go scorched earth and run as a spoiler knowing it will put Biden in office, rather than doing the right thing like anyone else would in his situation and campaigning for Haley.
"35" is an arbitrary age, just as are the "legal to drink alcohol", "legal to have sex with", and "legal to vote" ages. But I believe its intent was to ensure the candidate had a certain amount of knowledge, a certain amount of wisdom, and was out of the throes of younger-age, hormone-driven behavior.
"Born in the US" is a semi-accurate, yet easily codified, way of trying to ensure the candidate had grown up within the culture of the U.S.
> "Born in the US" is a semi-accurate, yet easily codified, way of trying to ensure the candidate had grown up within the culture of the U.S.
There was fear that friends of enemy powers would use elections to subvert the new nation. (France was mentioned?) (French support in the Colonial Revolt was from lesser nobility, not The King/le Roi. Lafayette was a rich kid and Freemason. After subverting royal power in America, he went on to support the French Revolution. While we think kindly on him today, you can see how the Virginians would fear an Evil Brother using American innovation to act against American interests.)
See also "carpetbaggers" in the US post civil war. Northerners (traveling by train with the then fashionable carpet-bag luggage) had the resources to stand for election in southern districts which had been impoverished and ravaged by domestic war.
Yes, there's plenty of scum born in the USA, some with allegiance to foreign powers, but as you say "born in America" is a first-cut to reduce riff-raff.
Trump disqualified himself.
As much as I hate political discussion in a science thread, I've got to ask these questions.
How did he disqualify himself?
What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
Even if he is off the ballot, there is always the write in vote.
Sorry about continuing this folks.
He disqualified himself by attempting to overturn the results a legal and fair election that he lost. By trying to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, he engaged in insurrection against the constitutional process of succession. Thus violating his oath as president.
Article 3 of the 14th amendment does not say you have to be convicted of insurrection in a court of law, and when congress was discussing the text of that amendment they were very specific about not requiring a criminal conviction. And people were kept out of congress via article 3 who were never convicted of any crime, just because they fought for or supported the confederate cause.
And yes there is a write in vote. But if the Supreme Court rules against him even if he won in a write in vote somehow he would not be permitted to take office. The 14th amendment prevents him from holding office, whether it prevents him from being on the ballot is a state by state thing (since states run the election, not the federal government) States have various requirements about being on the ballot, some require a candidate is qualified under the constitution. So if the Supreme Court rules him ineligible, that will not remove him from all states ballots. But the republican party would obviously want to run someone else in those states rather than having a candidate on the ballot who was ineligible to take office.
Even if the Supreme Court rules in his favor in the Colorado case regarding the primary ballot, that doesn't necessarily close the door on challenges to putting him on the election day ballot. They will not want to themselves have to rule on whether he is an insurrectionist or not under article 3, so they may specify how that is determined and kick it back to a lower (federal) court for the election day ballot. Since it doesn't require a criminal conviction it would probably be judged like a civil trial, with a preponderance of the evidence. He'd lose on that for sure, so he better hope it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt (but I think he loses there as well, or at best has a hung jury - zero chance he would be acquitted)
A constitutional requirement to be a president doesn't require a trial. If you don't meet it, you don't qualify. Just like not being 35. There is no need to be "convicted" of an offence related to the requirement. So election officials or indeed the Supreme Court can judge this without a trial.
There will have to be some procedure established though. The Supreme Court can't leave it up to the judgment of election officials as I'm sure Trump could convince many in red states to keep Biden off the ballot for made up reasons.
Now maybe the Supreme Court will feel it has to be the final arbiter of "is he disqualified" but actually judging something like that really isn't how they roll. They would set forth some sort of procedure and kick it down to a lower court. But that risks having a lot of cases in separate jurisdictions unless they say "the events occurred in Washington DC so that court will judge it"
There are so many ways this could go, but I don't expect anything final to come from the upcoming hearing. It is about rules for inclusion in the primary ballot which are state by state, so they might let individual states decide (since the party can effectively overrule them by nominating whoever they want regardless of what the state primaries say) and leave what they will do for the general election unknown. That would be the worst possible outcome since it would leave things in limbo for months, but that's just the sort of split the baby ruling the Supreme Court might do (hoping that if Trump doesn't get nominated the issue becomes moot)
Technically there's no crime called "insurrection." That's one of the issues that has to be sorted out. It seems likely the ultimate finding will be that the 14th Amendment is not self-executing and Congress dropped the ball by not passing a law spelling out what counts as an insurrection and who decides.
The US system of chosing a president isn't democratic in the first place. If it were, he wouldn't have been put into office in the first place. But both the US Senate and, to an extent, the Electoral college give land representation rather than people and some votes are worth more than others.
I'm aware that is by design (also, don't understand why you got downvoted for pointing that out). The founders of the US were primarily looking out for their own interests as largely wealthy, or at least, comfortable people. They just didn't like the mercantilists and aristocrats in charge and wanted to be the elites running things. They certainly didn't want the average Joe to have much if any input, far more like British Parliament than Swiss-style democracy.
"The US system of chosing a president isn't democratic in the first place."
Not at all. The 'some votes are worth more than others' is a known issue in every single representative democracy. Winning the presidency / government while losing the popular vote is a possibility in any system, whether it's first-past-the-post, proportional, single transferable vote, whatever. The problem is just made bigger when you have only 2 parties.
The US electoral rules might be weird, but they are also known to all participants, all of whom can devise an electoral strategy that will optimise their chances of victory based on a known set of rules. If anything, the bigger issue is local district gerrymandering (redistricting should be done by statisticians and land surveyors not politicians )
Doesn't really matter. Much as I hate the idea of Trump 2, it's going to happen. Biden got elected as a centrist, but has allowed himself to be sucked way to the left by his party extremists, hence his high disapproval ratings. His age is also definitely a factor. He should have already stepped aside and allowed someone with a better chance to run, but his pride is getting in the way.
On the other hand Trump has used his vast experience as a fraud, shyster and conman to convince Republican voters that he will deliver what they want, even though in his previous term he delivered nothing of what he had promised them. Rather than draining the swamp, he appointed more insiders. He didn't seek funding for his wall, and in the end built about 50 miles of it. More immigrants were deported under Obama than on his watch. He didn't pursue any legal cases against Hillary Clinton, and then blamed his AG for that. Etc etc etc. This time round, he has been non-committal on abortion rights even as the other Republican candidates loudly beat their chests on the issue (one of his talents as a conman is that he knows how to read his mark i.e. the American Public, and he can see that coming out fully pro-abortion will hurt his chances). He also wasn't required to attend in person either of the 2 hearings against him last week, but he went anyway and loudly complained about being forced to go, turning his own frauds and illegal actions into a vote-winner for the dupes that are his marks.
The left, on the other hand, is completely failing to read the room, and keeps pushing it's critical race theory claptrap on everything, while de facto advocating completely open borders, defunding the police and third-trimester abortions. The vast majority of sane Americans not living in a woke opinion-reflection bubble reject all of that. A more balanced (and younger!!) Democratic candidate supporting reasonable European-style abortion rights, stricter (but still fair) immigration rules, demilitarising (rather than defunding) the police, and meritocracy rather than reverse-race-ocracy would handily beat Trump, but such candidates have been weeded out from important roles in the Democratic Party because they don't conform to the left groupthink.
Sorry, off topic, rant over!!!
What has Biden done that's "way to the left"? You're just buying into the Faux News narrative of him as some sort of hyper liberal, when he's governed from the left center just like everyone thought he would. If he was governing from the far left then the far left wouldn't be so pissed off at him about promises he didn't keep like student loan forgiveness and repealing Trump's tax cuts for millionaires.
Sorry, but I have to interrupt the Trump bashing with a comment on the actual article topic.
"The X-59 isn't a serious passenger plane, or even a prototype of one; rather it's an experimental design that's intended to prove technology that can be implemented in future aircraft."
Perfected in Kerbal Space Program 2 first then?
OK, back to your regular scheduled political diatribes.
Way back in 1952, at the dawn of the supersonic age, NACA flew a plane with a silly long nose like this. It was of course deeply unstable, so let's hope that, 56 X-planes later, the control surfaces have enough authority for the flight computers to deal with that. It was also grossly underpowered, so let's hope that mistake has not been made again either.
Then again, shock waves have a way of obeying their own physics once they have left the plane behind them, so way down at ground level that "quiet thump" rides on some unproven assumptions.
Looking forward to the answers
I have to wonder what having all that extra surface area does to the overall Aerodynamic drag. Creating a fleet of passenger aircraft that get there faster but use a lot more fuel would not seem like a step forward. Although I understand that with ships, for a fixed width, the longer the hull the less the drag so it may be OK.
> Way back in 1952
And no forward-facing window harks back nearly 100 years to Lindbergh's 1927 Spirit of St. Louis. Charles put extra fuel where a windshield normally went. At 100mph he could do what he did when carrying oversized mail-bags: yaw (fly a bit crabways) and look out the side; might be disruptive at Mach 1.5? He had a passive optical periscope too, which might be wise on the X-59 because a few airplanes have lost power in flight. {EDIT: or "Kernel Panic".}
Then again, shock waves have a way of obeying their own physics once they have left the plane behind them, so way down at ground level that "quiet thump" rides on some unproven assumptions.Hence the new effort to test the hypothesis with said long-nosed plane! And yes, the data ought to be interesting and will probably be eagerly awaited by the likes of Boom Supersonic (whose Overture is designed along this line of research).
:-)
Reality check: Supersonic wind tunnels do not have the eight-miles-high width to test the long-distance propagation characteristics of shockwaves.
Boom are certainly interested, and the two projects are fully aware of each other. Not sure how active their relationship is.
Actually, it's usually Congress that slashes NASA's budget.
Historically, the president asks for an increase and Congress says "fuck you"
And not that I support Trump, but he asked for the biggest NASA budget increase since Apollo.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-nasa/white-house-calls-for-biggest-nasa-budget-in-decades-to-reach-the-moon-mars-idUSKBN2042J9/
So get your facts straight before popping off at the mouth.
《The SPV (admittedly a land vehicle not available until 2068) used a video screen for the backward-facing driver.》
The backward facing driver made me think of Joe 90 or Captain Scarlett (having more or less real actors, not UFO as it might have been a bit dangerous. :) I hadn't watched the puppets since I was a child but its surprising what sticks after 50 years.
Giving the Duck a Go I came up with Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle hence the SPV and the delivery date 2068 which I thought was a bit too realistic for US DOD or UK MOD. Cybertruck III?
Well, hooray for solving (mostly-solving?) the technical difficulties of quieting supersonic flight, but ... what sort of (mental) fogged-up glasses are those designers wearing?! Where's the backup system for when the XVS quits working (or quits working reliably)?
There's some sort of ... thing ... that's leading more and more people to think/say, "Oh, that [bad thing X] will never happen." Perhaps they are thinking that it won't happen to themselves, because they're somehow special.
All this despite our history being littered with instances of technological systems failing. I live in a major metropolitan area, and last night we were hit with a small amount of snow, and 13-degree F temperatures. This oncoming storm was predicted-and-publicised days ago. Electric power failed. Internet service failed. All Metro commuter-train service was suspended "until further notice". Bus lines were cancelled. I saw vehicles abandoned, in traffic lanes, said vehicles did not have chains mounted. I saw people trying to get their chainless vehicles unstuck by stepping on the gas and literally spinning their wheels, which did not get them unstuck.
My power and (land-line) Internet went out, yet I was little inconvenienced. I'd previously laid in a stock of firewood for our (backup system) wood-burning stove, I had fully-charged emergency lights, I had gas cylinders for my camping stove, I had extra blankets set out, a full charge on my laptop and phone batteries, and Internet connectivity via cellphone service.
Backup systems, people! They are a real thing -- As are primary-system failures!
《Codename "Cyrano"》
How about the Durante? Or the schnozzola which is apparently Italianisation of a Yiddish word so full circle. A rather decent chap I understand.
Must look up why these aircraft have such long pointed noses - even the Concorde (and Concordski) had pretty outstanding peckers. On the ground the Concorde looked more detumescent which is another anatomical reference altogether with no shortage of potential codenames from the tech billionaires .
I thought on serious reason the SST program was scrapped was the real likelihood of buggering up the ozone layer. Isn't this a concern now? - given we will have parboiled ourselves through climate change long before we get toasted or sauté with UV I suppose not a big worry.
I was wondering whether there was some connection between the interest in hypersonic craft and the revival of SST civil aviation. Cannot see any connection myself.
I am no aerodynamic expert, but I remember seeing pictures of some of the shock-wave patterns that were coming out of wind tunnel experiments in the mid-60's when they were doing research work on Concorde.
One of the physics text books I used at school, "Ordinary Level Physics" by Abbot (a big blue or green book, depending on the edition) had a picture of the shock-wave pattern of a model of Concorde on the cover (It was topical, I was using the book from 1971, between Concorde's first flight and the first commercial flight).
What this shows is that Concorde, like most supersonic aircraft has one major shock-wave which has the nose of the aircraft as it's origin (there are actually other, smaller shock waves from the wing roots and tail fin).
What I believe that this exercise by NASA is trying to do is 'smear' the shock-wave along the length of the nose, so that instead of one sharp shock-wave, there will be a myriad of smaller ones, spread out over a longer period of time and distance. This is why it will appear as a 'thump' rather than a 'bang'. There is probably the same energy in the shock-wave, but it is spread out. I don't fully understand why this would be the case, but these people are much cleverer than me.
One thing that many people (but not here, I'm sure) get wrong about the 'sonic boom' is that there is not just one as the aircraft transitions from sub-sonic to super-sonic, the boom follows the aircraft all the time that it is flying over the speed of sound. You only hear it as a single boom as the shock-wave passes you (although you may also hear echoes of it).
The other thing is that as far as I am aware (never travelled in a supersonic aircraft), nobody on the aircraft can hear it (something Thunderbirds got really wrong), because the aircraft will out-run the bang because it's travelling faster than the sound. Anything you may hear on the aircraft is more likely to sound like a continuious roar, but most of the energy will be projected outward
What killed Concorde more than the sonic boom (which cynics may be forgiven for thinking was an objection over-egged by the US at the behest of Boeing, whose supersonic plane was such a catastrophe), it was fuel costs and democratisation of air travel. Concorde could seat about 100 passengers, already on the low side when designed, but its faster speed couldn't beat 300+ passenger 747s for throughput, and airlines make money per passenger, not on travel time.
The other problem was efficiency: Concorde burned three times the fuel of an equivalent subsonic jet. That was okay with pre-Oil Crisis pricing, but once fuel became a significant share of costs, Concorde was never going to thrive.
Unless those shortcomings are fixed by this plane, it will be nothing more than a tech demo.
I seem to remember the 100 seater Concorde was due to the decision to effectively put the prototype into commercial service rather than go and design a larger aircraft; so as to salvage something from the rather expensive R&D project.
It will be interesting to see whether the X-59 can be scaled to a 100 seat plane…
A little googling gives Concorde ‘B’
“ This was the aircraft the airlines really needed and the aircraft the manufacturers wanted to build.”
https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b
However, I see this was a mid 1970s proposal, whereas my childhood memory was more about the earlier media discussions, when only the “prototypes” were flying , about producing a version for commercial operations and the decision was made to actually do a production run of 14 Concordes.
"Unless those shortcomings are fixed by this plane, it will be nothing more than a tech demo."
Someone will propose an all electric alternative propulsion system and rake in the VC before it's eventually realised that the weight of the batteries reduces available passenger space to 2 very small people, has a range of 30 miles and can only exceed the sound barrier on descent for 30 seconds before landing impact.
The other thing which killed Concorde, rather less publicised, was the damage done to the ozone layer from the 50k' cruise. No idea what the design cruise altitude is for Boom, but if anywhere near that they will need to figure out a way to mitigate.
This design seems unwieldy to me because the nose is long and thin. It looks like a pencil shape with wings and I wonder how they're going to translate this into a commercial airliner.
The absence of a front window is workable since we have UHD camera's and displays these days and in emergencies the plane could even fly itself based on GPS navigation signals.
My concern are not the little things like windscreens but if the "1/3 nose" is a requirement then it becomes (a) a weight issue for an industry where weight costs money and (b) a size issue for access to ground facilities. In addition, if the top mounted engine set very low in the fuselage is a design requirement that becomes a capacity restriction.
So, it's quiet, quick and looks great but as a significant passenger vehicle will be too big for terminals and have a low passenger capacity, therefore would at best be developed as a billionaires' private jet ...
So many questions...
What's the rendering lag between the camera and the display? You'll cover a hell of a lot of distance in even a fraction of a second, so something where you've "seen" it is already somewhere else.
What's the camera field of view? Yeah a cockpit window might be narrow, but you can move your head around to see more.
Does the camera view track the pilot's eyeline? Again, in a real cockpit you can move your head to see more / different points of view.
2D vs 3D? Is that dot big and far away, or small and close? No birds at supercruise altitude, but could be stuff up there you might hit. No, I imagine lack of depth perception is more a problem at lower speeds closer to the ground.
Why only 4K? That might be fine for watching a movie, but it seems unrealistically low for maximising vision at supersonic flight speeds.
What's the refresh rate? Want it a damn sight higher than 50 or 60 Hz. This comes back to processing lag and the significant distance covered in that fraction of a second.
I get thtat this is only a tech demostrator, but there's a lot that could go wrong with this.
Full-on all-around virtual cockpit would be pretty cool. Literally looking throught the fuselage. But again, same questions about processing time, resolution, eye-tracking, 2D etc.
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Concorde had heat shields that popped up over the nose to streamline it at supersonic speeds. There were two little side windows so pilots could see where they'd been but not where they were going to be. Hardly a backward step if we were doing it in the 60's - plus they'll have TV's to help this time around. This isn't general aviation: these things will be flying in controlled airspace so it's ATC that make sure they have a bubble of space around them (we have been doing this right for many, many years, give or take the occasional runway incursion). Quite honestly, if you think your reactions are up to seeing, never mind avoiding, another aircraft coming at you at cruising speed then you're doing better than most and, anyway, action to avoid an extreme air proximity incident would almost certainly overstress the airframe so the end results would be similar but with only one hull destroyed.
I would imagine the hardest bit would be pilot acceptance, despite all the 'partial panel' training they already do.
Is any article that talks about NASA contractually required use the phrase "US Space Agency"? Literally the second letter of the acronym, stands for "Aeronautics", coming before "Space".
NASA's role is an Aeronautics research agency, hence the work described in this article. It just happens that some of their aircraft fly higher than others...
"Is any article that talks about NASA contractually required use the phrase "US Space Agency"?"
The technical term is "padding". It helps to fill column-inches. In the old days of hand-set type, it was something you could ad or remove to help fit the type to the page. These days, they just leave it in. (Does anybody still get paid by the word? Not taking the mick, I honestly don't know.)
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