The second chase was a Northrop T-38 … not T-28. I don’t think you can pedal a T-28 Trojan that fast 
Now if I could just get Elon / DOGE to cancel all funds for the X-59 and make Boom, et al, pay for that project … NASA / Armstrong has no business sticking its nose into that effort.
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Why? Anything that Boom develops would be patented and owned by them, whereas anything NASA develops is generally publicly-available knowledge. Many of the major advances in aerospace science have been developed by NASA and passed down to the private sector. That’s how public-benefit programs work.
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The X-59 is YEARS behind schedule and has cost taxpayers HALF A BILLION DOLLARS and has yet to fly. Pardon me BUT … that’s ridiculous. Together with the now (finally) cancelled X-57 Maxwell, NASA Armstrong has wasted 3/4 of a billion bucks. Sorry … this is an excellent example of Government waste. And – oh by the way – the purpose of the X-59 is to fly an airplane with a reduced sonic boom signature over populated areas to see if they’d accept the sound level. I think Boom – and any other Company that wants to build a supersonic airliner – ought to be doing that work. Here we are in this forum often talking about trying to build electric airplanes or other “green” powered airplanes and these people want to build a supersonic airplane that’ll pollute orders of magnitude more … one hand is doing one thing and the other is doing something else. I am personally familiar with NASA at Edwards … the place is RIFE with projects that are overpriced and not needed. THAT is my position and I’m stickin’ to it. Cancel the X-59 Elon !
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I forgot. I was involved with an airplane tested right there at (then) NASA Dryden to see if careful shaping of the airframe could reduce the shock wave overpressure compared to an unmodified similar airplane. It did. Google SSBD (Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator). SO NASA already knows that reduction in the sonic boom is possible … and that’s what Boom is doing with the XB-1. Why NASA wants to test the thoughts of the population on the subject is nutty and – as I said – they’re doing work Boom ought to be doing AND paying for… They aren’t inventing anything. Nothing to see here. We did it almost 25 years ago. You can see the SSBD airframe at the Valiant Air Museum in Titusville if you’re interested.
Thanks for the spots - fixed.
Or perhaps the clipped wing version?
You are way behind in your reading. BOOM IS DOING THE WORK, without government subsidy. The company has 130 orders from JAL, UAL, and AAL for OVERTURE, the passenger airliner version. We’re not here to talk about what NASA (and you) knows and doesn’t know or your opinions of overpriced and failed projects, but the success of this one.
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The video of the two-hour test flight is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qisIViAHwI
Mach1 is reached at almost exactly the one hour point.
I’m willing to give a pass to one of the talking heads in this video for blanking on the technical jewels in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, but he omitted the ONLY institution with an Aerospace Engineering program, NC State University in Raleigh. Geez.
I enrolled there as an Aerospace Engineering major as a fallback because none of the in-state schools had an undergraduate Computer Science major. I was already a pilot and had helped my uncle rebuild a Cub; how hard could it be? On the first day of freshman orientation I was forced to sit through one of those “Look to your left, look to your right …” military induction lectures. (This was the summer of '69 and that was a most unappealing alternative.)
After three hours of that crap, as I was walking through an adjacent building to get some lunch, I saw a flyer announcing their brand-new “Computer Science” BS program. I changed my major that afternoon and never looked back. Even at that tender age, I knew I should not take something I really loved to do, and make it a job.
For many years, my computer jobs required weekly travel, and I was able rack up quite a few left-seat Cessna hours, as opposed to being strapped in the back of a cigar-tube. It made it possible for me to be a respectable donor to the NCSU Engineering school in retirement. And I still love to fly.
Bottom line, NC State has an excellent Aerospace Engineering school, unlike all the other basketball schools he remembered.
Note that the Test Conductor was a woman, no doubt a DEI hire with no relevant credentials of her own …
If there is no market for an executive supersonic jet where money is available to acquire and operate, how can a commercial 68 passenger jet find any niece market. Didn’t Gulfstream and Sukhoi go down this road way back when kerosine was cheap?
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Should be niche, not niece.
Ya know Tom, some people just “LOVE SPEED”.
I’ve worked with a couple folks who could have been very happy with a Cessna 182 for their average mission but insisted on a Turbo Prop. I would show them in so many ways how a simple IFR aircraft will do the job for a couple hundred thousand but they spent the Multi-million for the one flight each two years that they may want to do.
Just as Braniff Airlines advertised… “if you’ve got it, flaunt it”
You are only partially correct. Boom can take all the orders it can, they can build the full sized production airplane but UNTIL the FAA comes up with some FARs about supersonic flight over the US, they can’t USE the thing in commercial service. It’ll just be another Concorde. Further, I’m hearing that Boom has no intentions of supersonic flight over the US … so what the heck is the point of the X-59 beyond rewriting a few FARs?
NASA Armstrong has invested $630M in ONE AIRFRAME – the X-59 – to determine if a reduced sonic boom overpressure is acceptable to the masses. That airplane is years behind schedule and the work has already been done by the Northrop Grumman SSBD airplane – which HAS flown and extensive tech data has been generated by NASA (then) Dryden.now Armstrong.
SO … essentially … NASA is building an airplane at great cost to duplicate what we already did with the F-5 SSBD airplane (and NASA also paid for). Helluva deal if you can get it. THAT is why I am SO IRATE over the X-50 QUESST program.
I invite the readers to read this well written Forbes article on the X-59 … it is asking the same questions I am: