airflow over the wings and fuselage so the shock waves the
airplane sheds don’t combine into a big bang, Lockheed
program manager Peter Iosifidis says. “The most import-
ant aspect of the design is its shape—what’s touching the
air,” he says. Small horizontal stabilizers called canards
mounted in front of the wings help, as does a curved and
tapered fuselage. Engineers are also integrating quieting
measures, such as removing the windshield to decrease
the pressure wave it creates (pilots fly by camera), adjust-
ing the airplane’s angle of attack, and tuning its weight
to help it maintain the 55,000-foot altitude “sweet spot”
needed for these tactics to succeed.
Theoretically, these tricks should work. Proving it is the
point of the X-59, which Lockheed expects to fly by 2021.
The goal is to generate a sonic boom with a perceived
decibel level of 75 for anyone on the ground. That’s about
as loud as slamming your car door. If successful, the re-
sults could convince the U.S. and Europe to reverse their
bans on overland commercial supersonic flights.
Spike is betting everything on that scenario. The com-
pany flew an unmanned, small-scale demonstrator in
October 2017 to prove its design could fly. It expects to
begin testing a full-size version by the end of 2019 and,92 SPRING 2019 • POPSCI.COM
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