/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/69/2b/692bbf82-f6b2-4a0d-b1dd-600c03ba5807/lbfd_concept_landscape_hi-res.jpg)
Posted on 04/05/2018 2:39:00 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Lockheed will build the airplane at its Palmdale, California Skunk Works facility, which is well known for building risky and high-technology airplanes. Lockheed was previously awarded a design contract, and were the only bidders for the $247.5m construction award. The company expects to reach Critical Design Review—after which the design is fixed and construction begins—in September 2019, with first flights anticipated in 2021.
The first year or two will be devoted to baseline testing: Proving the new airplane can fly, carefully measuring its subsonic noise, and comparing it to a NASA F/A-18’s noise levels. Starting in 2022, the demonstrator will fly supersonic tests up to Mach 1.4, culminating in flights near cities and detailed surveys to ask people in the flight zones what they heard.
The new airplane (currently known as Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator—it will soon receive a formal X-plane designation)...has a new and unique shape, but incorporates as much as possible from existing airplanes in the name of cost and simplicity. The cockpit, for example, is from a T-38 trainer, the landing gear from an F-16. NASA’s aeronautics division, often overlooked compared to the agency’s spaceflight programs, is in the midst of rebuilding its portfolio, and another crewed X-plane, the electrically-powered X-57 Maxwell, is currently under construction. More designs are waiting in the wings should funding for NASA aeronautics remain steady.
(Excerpt) Read more at airspacemag.com ...
They should let Bose design it..................
It looks more like a speedboat than an airplane.
These guys could make it quiet..................
Kind of light on forward visibility.
Maybe it has a periscope like the Spirit of St. Louis.
it either breaks the barrier or it doesn't.
Kind of looks like the old X-3. Stiletto I think it was called. Put under powered engines in it and hard a hard time going supersonic, looks be damned.
What is the purpose / role for this plane? Will it be a testbed for designing future warplanes that have “stealth” sound capabilities?
“Kind of looks like the old X-3.”
It does. Not too many remember the Stiletto. What is the purpose of this new plane or is it simply to test a design?
"looks be damned." yup
“What is the purpose / role for this plane?”
Speculation but here’s a few ideas:
1. This helps to introduce the public to a technology that may already exist and is in use by the military.
2. It’s an impossible technology but we’re going to let the Russians and Chinese steal it so they can waste billions trying to perfect it.
3. The tech exists and this story sends a warning to Russia and China that supersonic stealth aircraft have been flying around their skies and there isn’t diddly they can do about it.
Did not find out it was a gutless wonder with inertia coupling issues until decades later.
It’s time to figure this out. It takes as long to fly to Europe as it did 1962. The concord sorta worked but the problems made it unsuitable, there must be way to do this.
.
Easy!
Just don’t go to U-rope.
.
inertia coupling = double plus ungood...
Assuming I ever knew, but getting out of the X-3 in an emergency looked chancy with no canopy, etc. Think the early F-104 had downward ejection, mebbe the X-3 did too.
Had a model of X-3.
X-15 still holds records.
damn... wonder how many punched down and lived to tell the tale?
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