NASA's X-59 plane is aiming for a sonic thump, not a boom

Feature Sitting in the hangar of Lockheed Martin's famous Palmdale, California Skunk Works facility is one of the oddest aircraft ever to take shape: the X-59 that's looking to revive supersonic travel over land.

The X-59 is a very strange looking bird. It's 99.7 ft (30.4 m) long with a 29.5 ft (9 m) delta-style wingspan – but the first third of the aircraft is all nose. That elongated proboscis is designed to pierce shockwaves created when aircraft top the speed of sound, and by doing so reduce sonic booms to a more muted sonic thump that won't deafen folks on the ground.

Earlier this month, NASA fired up the X-59's engines for the first time ahead of next year's test flights. The Register caught up with the project’s head of propulsion, Ray Castner, and test ...