Supersonic Planes Are Coming BACK — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00[Ticking]
2. 0:01"On the world's first ever supersonic commercial flight, the most exciting
3. 0:05aircraft the world had ever seen, twice  the speed of sound..."
4. 0:07"5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
5. 0:10This is a one-of-a-kind supersonic plane.
6. 0:13Wait, hold on, we got to go back. 20 years ago, you could fly
7. 0:18in a plane going faster than sound. Why  can't you do that now? This supersonic
8. 0:23plane, the Concorde, could get from New York to  London in 3 and 1/2 hours. And it was so cool...
9. 0:33It flew at an altitude so high you could see the curve of the Earth, all while popping champagne.
10. 0:42But then, that all changed...
11. 0:44"The Concorde is no more!"
12. 0:45"Concorde will never take to the skies again"
13. 0:48These planes stopped flying and we never  made any more like them. Today, New York to London
14. 0:52takes 7 hours. But why? What happened to supersonic planes? And more importantly...
15. 0:59Can we bring them BACK?
16. 1:01If you ask NASA, the answer is yes. We  got to go see their brand new experimental
17. 1:06supersonic plane that they're building. Here's  what's really huge if true: If NASA succeeds
18. 1:11they could bring back commercial supersonic  flight, allowing you and me to fly faster than sound.
19. 1:16"Supersonic"
20. 1:17"Supersonic!"
21. 1:18"Supersonic airplanes"
22. 1:19[BOOM BOOM]
23. 1:21"X-59"
24. 1:22"a new supersonic airliner -"
25. 1:24"twice as fast as current airliners - "
26. 1:26"twice the speed of sound -"
27. 1:29"you're going faster than the Earth rotates!"
28. 1:31"it's the only way to cross the Atlantic"
29. 1:33"So we're now going supersonic? "Yep!"
30. 1:40"You ready?"
31. 1:41"I'm ready"
32. 1:42"Let's do this. Let's go see a supersonic plane!"
33. 1:49When we say supersonic, I know it's faster  than sound, but exactly how fast are we talking?
34. 1:54For comparison, the world's fastest train can  go around 286 mph. The fastest car goes around
35. 2:00330. Your average Boeing 737 today will cruise at  around 520 mph. And once you reach around 767 mph
36. 2:09you're at the speed of sound also called  Mach 1. The Concorde? It went 1,350 mph. For
37. 2:17reference that's roughly the same top speed  as a military F-16 fighter jet today! And now,
38. 2:2120 years after the Concorde's last flight, NASA  is trying to build a new supersonic plane and
39. 2:26we're on our way to go see it...
40. 2:29We have entered the land of the planes. And the weird short palm trees...
41. 2:37Let's do it. We're here at Skunkworks where  Lockheed Martin is building a supersonic plane for
42. 2:42NASA. This plane is really cool. There aren't that  many images of it online, it's possible that we're
43. 2:46like one of the only teams to ever see it, which  makes me feel awesome. I kind of can't believe that
44. 2:50we got this shoot if I'm honest, because we just  emailed NASA and we were like "hey, we know you're
45. 2:55working on this supersonic plane, is there any  chance that we can come see it?" and they said yes!
46. 3:00But there was this very long security clearance  process and then we got this email just a couple
47. 3:05weeks ago, you're allowed to come visit on this  day for these two hours, so here we are!
48. 3:13Is that the plane?
49. 3:13This is it! This is the X-59.
50. 3:19This plane is beautiful. And weird-looking!
51. 3:22In order to understand what NASA's building here,  you need to understand how a supersonic plane
52. 3:27actually works, and the best way to do that is is  obviously Legos. I'm just going to try to fit Legos
53. 3:34into as many episodes as possible, okay? This Lego  set is of the original Concorde and it's a plane
54. 3:40was just the physical embodiment of a simple fact  about our species which is that humans just love...
55. 3:47speed.
56. 3:56What's this? Oh my there are more in here...
57. 3:59Look how thick this instruction book is. 545 pages long.
58. 4:06What have I gotten myself into. So in the  1960's when the Concorde was originally designed,
59. 4:11passenger planes looked pretty similar to what  they look like today. But the Concorde look like this!
60. 4:17"The shape still looks futuristic. It  still looks like every child's paper dart."
61. 4:23That's Captain Mike Bannister, the former Chief Concorde Pilot at British Airways.
62. 4:26"I flew a total of 22 years. Flying Concorde was an absolute  joy. You are flying something that's traveling at
63. 4:3323 miles a minute, on the edge of space where the sky  got darker, where you could see the curvature of
64. 4:38the earth. You're traveling so quickly that you're  going faster than the Earth rotates. And when you
65. 4:43got close to her, you could see the elegance in design..."
66. 4:46Now I gotta actually build this thing...
67. 4:50[LEGO BUILDING!]
68. 4:55[PLANE WHISTLE]
69. 4:56Look it's coming together! You can see  some of the features on it already. This
70. 4:59plane had a long narrow body to streamline air  resistance, it had these very wide delta-shaped
71. 5:03wings to generate lift. It had this funny long  nose called the droop snoot that drooped upon
72. 5:08takeoff and landing so that the pilots could see...
73. 5:10[PURE JOY]
74. 5:12See that?
75. 5:14And special powerful engines that could handle the rapid incoming air. Even
76. 5:17special paint that discharged heat. And the price to go this fast
77. 5:21wasn't cheap! And tons of people paid lots of money  to experience the thrill of riding supersonic
78. 5:27But once you hit the speed of sound, something happens...
79. 5:31[SONIC BOOM]
80. 5:32Let me play that again:
81. 5:33[SONIC BOOMS]
82. 5:35"Folks are aware that supersonic aircraft make a sonic boom, which we as human beings
83. 5:40do hear as a double bang, buh-boom..."
84. 5:43If you listen carefully you can hear that  double boom:
85. 5:45[BOOM BOOM]
86. 5:47Alright, I need to spend some time building...
87. 5:55As the plane flies, it pushes air  out of its path creating pressure waves at the
88. 6:00front and back of the plane. When a plane flies  faster than the speed of sound, the air molecules
89. 6:04literally cannot move out of the way in time, "and  so they get compressed together, they form a wave
90. 6:10off the front of the airplane and a second wave  off the back." When those pressure waves reach our
91. 6:14ears our brains process them as sound. A massive  BOOM. But a common misconception is that a sonic
92. 6:20boom doesn't just boom once when the plane hits  that speed. It booooooooms the whole time all along the
93. 6:26path of the plane, carpeting the ground below  it, meaning everyone under the flight of the
94. 6:30plane hears the sonic booooom. Weirdly though, inside the plane, you don't hear the boom at all.
95. 6:35"There was no indication whatsoever physically on the  airplane of going through the sound barrier. You're
96. 6:41traveling as fast as the pressure waves are. We put  an indicator in the cabin so the customers knew
97. 6:47when they were going through the sound barrier  because otherwise they wouldn't have done."
98. 6:50"We're coming up to twice the speed of sound!"
99. 6:52But for those on the ground, the boom was loud. For context
100. 6:55if this is how loud distant thunder is, and this  is how loud a hand clap is, and the firework
101. 7:01this is how loud the Concorde sonic boom was from  the ground. Just below a balloon pop. Because of how
102. 7:09loud supersonic booms are, in 1973 the FAA changed  their rules and banned commercial supersonic
103. 7:14flights over the United States and similar  rules followed around the world. This meant that
104. 7:18companies could mostly only offer flights over the  ocean which dramatically reduced their routes, plus
105. 7:23these fuel guzzling engines and rising fuel costs,  combined with a deadly crash in 2000, hurt public
106. 7:29reception of supersonic flight and finally Air  France chose to stop flying the Concorde, eventually
107. 7:34forcing British Airways the only company now  paying for the upkeep of the aging planes to
108. 7:38stop flying them as well. "And so in early 2003 on  April the 10th British Airways very reluctantly
109. 7:44announced that they were retiring their Concorde  fleet and on the very last flight we invited
110. 7:49100 people at British Airways' expense to join us on  that last flight and getting the message across
111. 7:54that this was something that they should really  be proud to have been part of." The Concorde was
112. 8:00ahead of its time but even as advanced as it was  it couldn't overcome the problem of the sonic boom.
113. 8:15The X-59 is NASA's attempt at fixing the  boom problem. It's a single-seater jet that can
114. 8:19travel at 925 mph or 1.4 times the speed of sound  and it's specifically engineered to prove that
115. 8:26supersonic planes can be quiet. That's Cathy Bahm,  the NASA lead on this effort, and these are the
116. 8:31leads from Lockheed Martin, Dave Richards and Mike  Buonanno. "Our goal is to change that regulation so
117. 8:37that it's, as long as you are below this sound  level then you can fly supersonically over land."
118. 8:43To achieve this goal, NASA reference design features  found on the Concorde, including those large delta
119. 8:48wings, the very streamlined body, and that narrow  nose. But the nose on the X-59 is much longer.
120. 8:56"There's no way you can miss our 38 ft nose!" Unlike  the Concorde, this 38 ft carbon fiber nose doesn't
121. 9:06move, which means the pilot can't see out the front  during takeoff and landing. Instead they've built a
122. 9:11camera at the front that sends a live video feed  to the the pilot. But once in the air, this nose is
123. 9:17key to reducing the sonic boom. "I liken it to, you've done a cannonball into a swimming
124. 9:22pool and what we want to do here is, that splash  that you make is like the sonic boom and we want
125. 9:27to make that splash or that sound as as small as  possible." Then NASA wants to send as much of the
126. 9:32remaining boom as possible up, away from people.  "If you look at the bottom of the airplane, it's
127. 9:36very very smooth and clean so that anything that  would create a bump or anything like that that
128. 9:41makes a shock that would go down, they're all on  the top, and they go up." Any remaining supersonic
129. 9:45boom that's still going down, they're going to try  to cancel it out. "When you jump into the pool doing
130. 9:50that that cannon ball, the biggest splash is when  all the water comes back together, and so there is
131. 9:54a big shock on the back end of the airplane." This  feature called a T-tail creates its own shock that
132. 9:59interacts with that boom, cancelling some of it out. By the way, I still can't believe that I got to see
133. 10:03that plane up close. Normally, that is really  not allowed. "How many people have been allowed to
134. 10:09be this close to this plane?" "Well in the state that it's in  right now, you're actually the first! I'm going to
135. 10:14get fired but yeah you guys are the first ones  to come in." "You're not actually going
136. 10:19to get fired? "No but I already got yelled at." "So  there's no way I can sit in -" "Nope." "That seems fair,
137. 10:25I pushed it enough." If NASA can help change  the rule preventing supersonic over land, that can
138. 10:34help everybody. It can open the floodgates to  more companies and more planes. There are a
139. 10:38bunch of private companies, including one called  Boom, fighting to bring back these planes. And the
140. 10:42pressure is on. It was very clear talking to this  team that there's a lot on the line with this plane.
141. 10:47"You know this takes a long time to develop and  there's a lot of money in the development of it.
142. 10:51To see something from a concept drawn  on a napkin to having the airplane here and then
143. 10:55to fly it, it is a lot of hard work. Really this is  our one opportunity to try to repeal the law. This
144. 11:00is our one chance to get it right." So in order to  change the rule that limits supersonic flight, they
145. 11:05had to design the X-59 to have a sonic boom that's  quiet enough to not disrupt everyday life. But how
146. 11:11quiet is that exactly? "The answer to that question  is that no one exactly knows right now, and that's
147. 11:16the entire reason why we had to build X-59 and  why NASA plans on flying it over the next several
148. 11:22years." NASA is anticipating that 75 perceived level  DB will be sufficiently quiet enough so that's the
149. 11:27goal that they're aiming for right now. "The result  of that is that it would sound kind of like your
150. 11:31neighbor closing their car door in front of  their house but most of the time you won't
151. 11:35even hear it at all." This plane is just amazing. Every bolt, rivet, and tiny little winglet has
152. 11:40been placed specifically to optimize aerodynamics  and speed, all the way down to the paint. "It has a
153. 11:45very special anti-static paint. So you know how you  walk along and you get static from the carpet? Well
154. 11:51the carpet is like the air. As the airplane moves  through the air it generates static electricity on
155. 11:55the airplane, so we have a special paint that's  like putting Teflon on your shoes, so
156. 11:59that you don't build that static charge." But it's  clear this is not a passenger plane. "Yeah we're not
157. 12:04going to build any more of these. This is a  one-off airplane, it's very dedicated to just this
158. 12:09one demonstration, to show that we can make an an  airplane that is capable of a low boom supersonic
159. 12:15flight." So NASA's building their supersonic plane  in the hopes that the breakthroughs that they make
160. 12:19are one day going to be able to be translated  into commercial passenger supersonic planes
161. 12:24that can carry more people... but when?When are you  and I going to get to fly in one? When is passenger
162. 12:29supersonic flight finally coming back? "Not soon  enough in my book! But first we'll go through
163. 12:35the regulation process. That'll take a number of  years to test this aircraft, then go to test the
164. 12:40communities, and then go through the regulation  process." So it looks like we're at least a decade
165. 12:45away from seeing these planes, and claims from  companies like Boom echo that. They've set a goal
166. 12:49of bringing their planes to market by the end of  this decade. But the industry seems so confident
167. 12:53that this is going to happen that three airlines  have already placed orders for their supersonic
168. 12:57planes. Eighty years ago, we set out on a journey to  go faster than sound, because as humans we love
169. 13:04going fast. We work so hard at it! We build these  beautiful machines that hurdle us through the air!
170. 13:10Just imagine flying on a machine like this. It's  just so cool! But the promise of supersonic flight
171. 13:17is much more than just being extremely cool. For  all of history, being able to go farther faster has
172. 13:22meant greater connection. When our world shrinks  in size, it means that we as humans get to explore
173. 13:28more of it. And today, we have an opportunity to  take another leap forward. It'll be our second try,
174. 13:33but the good thing about that is we can fix what  we know went wrong. Allowing supersonic flights
175. 13:37over land is just step one. New supersonic planes  need to be more sustainable. They can't guzzle
176. 13:42fuel like they used to. They'll need to be cheaper.  They'll need to be able to hold more than just one
177. 13:47passenger. But we can do this. "It's 20 years now  since Concord last flew and I really do believe
178. 13:54there will be another supersonic airliner offering  supersonic travel to the general public in the not
179. 13:59too distant future." "The future is so bright and  it's so achievable. I know that sounds like a
180. 14:04cliche but you can see it!" "That's really exciting." "It really is." "Huge if true!" "Huge AND true."
181. 14:15Okay, I want to show you one more thing. My  grandfather passed away a few years ago, and uh
182. 14:19I miss him a lot and and he actually worked for  NASA in the 1960s and as we were going through
183. 14:25his stuff we found this pin of his. I've been  keeping it close to me while I was researching
184. 14:29this episode. And at the end of our visit to see  this plane, NASA gave me this! And so now I have
185. 14:38my own pin and uh it just really means a lot  to me. So thanks for watching this episode and
186. 14:44thank you so much to NASA. If you like optimistic  science and tech stories and you want to support