Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, with NASA, have created a revolutionary new jet. The X-59 Quesst is pure R&D at it’s finest. Creating new technologies and novel solutions that may change both flight and transportation as we experience it today.
The most noticeable innovation is also one of the simplest. They removed the front view window!
The front view is now a camera mounted outward and a screen facing the pilot. This augment reality (AR) approach helps to reduce the sonic boom associated with supersonic flight.
Breaking the sound barrier has been the big barrier in using supersonic jets over residential areas. By minimizing the sound, this opens up more commercial opportunities for supersonic flight.
The obvious applications will be supersonic passenger jets. Honestly, I can’t wait to get around the world in the time it takes for a short domestic flight. Suddenly, jetlag will seem as distant as smoking in planes.
Less obvious are smaller scale applications that can have significant impact on everyday lives.
Rapid response emergency medical services have the potential to introduce a multitude of new groundbreaking products. When you combine this with embedded medical sensors tied to live monitoring and alerts you have a new premium healthcare offering.
Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing scales up and is no longer limited to local production. Driving down the costs of small-batch products, rapidly pivoting products, and implementing corrective recalls.
Over time I imagine there will be countless other applications no one has conceived of yet. When you also consider the development of super heavy rockets we may be moving into a golden era of aerospace.
-jm