NASA - Low Boom Supersonic Flight Demonstrator Contract

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It’s my great pleasure to let everyone know that NASA is officially back in the X-plane business. Today, with the awarding of a contract to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company to design, build and flight-validate a large-scale, quiet supersonic technologies X-plane, we enter a new era.

We haven’t designed, built and flown a piloted X-plane like this since the days of the lifting bodies and X-15 rocket planes during the 1960s. But now, our long tradition of solving the problems of supersonic flight will continue.

The low-boom supersonic demonstrator will be large-scale -- large enough to be piloted, and built specifically to fly technologies that reduce the loudness of a sonic boom to that of a gentle “thump.” This will help us fly quietly at supersonic speeds over land – something that isn’t possible today.

The drive to explore ways to make flight more efficient led to NASA-developed technologies being on board every commercial aircraft flying today. And now the drive to explore solving the challenge of the sonic boom can lead to just as far-reaching an impact – possibly enabling commercial supersonic flight over land anywhere in the world.

Today’s announcement is the next giant step in our mission to build the demonstrator and then do something no one else is doing – fly that aircraft over select U.S. cities and ask residents to tell us what they heard – if anything.

It is our intention that the human response data we gather will enable the rules to be changed so commercial, quiet supersonic flight over land is allowed in the United States and around the world. This X-plane is the tool we’ll use to do that work. For all of us who fly regularly, as well as those on the ground, it could be a huge step forward.

Please join me in congratulating the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and the Centers as we mark this next step of aviation transformation! I can’t wait to see what comes next!

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