Mark Piesing's Blog, page 7

Titan sub: How do surveillance planes spot ocean submersibles?

Above the Atlantic, various aircraft and surveillance technologies are being deployed to search for the missing Titan submersible near the sunken wreck of the Titanic. How do they work?

Read my latest for BBC Future in full below or the original on BBC Future here.

Ever since the Titan submersible was confirmed lost in the Atlantic this week, planes have been combing the ocean to hunt for it beneath the waves.

On Wednesday, the US Coastguard announced that a Canadian P-3 aircraft had identified unexplained underwater noises, apparently banging at half-hour intervals. The signal continues to be investigated and analysed, say officials.

How can aircraft flying high above the waves detect something so deep underwater?

Hunting for submersibles is traditionally the exclusive job of some of the largest and most technologically-advanced aircraft in any air force. Often based on civilian designs, these machines deploy a suite of impressive-sounding sensors to locate military submarines under the sea. It’s usually a cat-and-mouse game between aircraft and submarines that want to stay hidden. That’s not the case here. 

The fact that these aerial hunters are packed with advanced new technology would seem to give them the advantage. Yet as the lost Titan sub shows, submersibles remain very difficult to find, especially at depths of 3.8km (12,400ft) where the wreck of the Titanic is found.A P-3C Orion maritime surveillance plane in Germany, similar to the aircraft that Canada is using to scour the Atlantic (Credit: Getty Images)

The four-engine turboprop P-3 Orion, which detected the mysterious banging noise on Wednesday, first entered service in 1962 and is based on the Lockheed Electra airliner.

After dropping sonar buoys, the aircraft heard the noise, which drifted on the surface, listening for sounds that nature would be unlikely to make. It picked up a regular banging noise at 30-minute intervals, something that experts suggest are a sign human beings are making them.

“The fact the acoustic noises are 30 mins apart is a great sign,” says Jamie Pringle, a reader in forensic geosciences at Keele University in the UK. “A surface ship propellor which would be continuous. Acoustic noise travels far in water, so that is both good and bad news. You would need (at least) three of those static buoys to be able to triangulate the sound source to get a position fix.”

The Lockheed P-3 Orion is also equipped with magnetic anomaly detectors, which detect tiny disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by metallic submarine hulls. If an aircraft equipped with the detectors flies over a large mass of metal within its detection range, then it will pick it up. The presence of a known wreckage of a large  steel hulled vessel like the Titanic makes using this technique harder.

However, the P-3 is not the only aircraft involved in the search. Other planes scouring the Atlantic include the C-130 Hercules and the relatively new Boeing P-8 Poseidon, known as the world’s most advanced maritime patrol craft.

The Boeing P-8 Poseidon, flying in 2019. It deploys an array of remote sensing technologies to detect submersibles (Credit: Getty Images)

The Poseidon looks familiar because it is: the aircraft is derived from the Boeing 737 passenger plane. The Poseidon’s range is much shorter than the P-3: 2,250 km (1,400 miles) compared to 9,000km (5,600 miles). However, it can fly 12,000ft (3,660m) higher, and faster too.

Rather like a game of Battleships, the Poseidon’s aircrew uses a grid pattern to work out where a submersible is not, and then closes in on where it might be. It does this by deploying one of the most effective ways of tracking a submarine: sonobuoy fields. Fired from a rotary launcher at a high altitude, air parachuted Multistatic Active Coherent (Mac) buoys generate multiple sonar pulses over time in order to last longer and extend their search range. The arrangement of buoys like these is one of the most classified secrets of anti-submarine warfare. A single P-8 can deploy over 120 buoys.

Along with these buoys, the Poseidon uses a whole suite of technology that includes its own acoustic sensor, synthetic aperture radar (Sar) to detect, classify and track surfaced submersibles and detect periscopes a long way off, an electro-optical/infrared turret that can identify submersible exhaust, Electronic Support Measure (ESM) as an electromagnetic sensor, particularly useful in tracking the positions of radar emitters, and even a hydrocarbon tracking system to “sniff” the presence of diesel electric military submarines.Could aircraft tech one day make the ocean ‘transparent’? For now, that’s a long way off (Credit: Getty Images)

However, the Poseidon flies too high to use magnetic anomaly detection effectively, and instead, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) equipped with these detectors are being developed to launch from its sonobuoy tubes.

For even the most cutting-edge aircraft, what hasn’t changed is reliance on old-fashioned intelligence. “To be most effective, the P-8 needs first to have a rough sense of the location and direction of the submarine to find it,” says Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the UK defence and security think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

In a military search, this “rough sense” relies on intelligence gathered from signals, satellite imagery, interpersonal contact, and ever-growing networks of hydrophones placed on the ocean floor, often at “choke points”, to detect when submersibles pass over them. But in the case of the lost Titan sub, such hints are few and far between.

Perhaps one of the Poseidon’s most important capabilities – and one that distinguishes it from the Orion – is the ability to work as a communications hub, a “node” as it were, at the centre of a network of ships, sensor-equipped UAVs, and Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USV) that will in effect multiply its power.

This networked power has made some analysts think that the arrival of aircraft like the Poseidon is ushering an era when the sea becomes “transparent” and that submarines will find it impossible to hide.

But while the Orion’s and now the Poseidon’s technologies and capabilities make it sound like they have the upper hand, they have their limitations.

Sonar pulses, for example, can face interference from different temperature and salinity layers in the water. A submersible can be hidden under these. Magnetic detection technology tends to have short range – detecting only submersibles that are close to the surface and near to the aircraft’s position. And submersibles can also avoid detection by staying hidden in the “ambient water noise” of the ocean.

The P-8 may be the most advanced sub-hunter in the world. But as independent defence analyst H I Sutton told the BBC, “systems like Poseidon will still need to know where to look”.In truth, finding a submersible can also be a question of luck. After all, it was the 60-year-old P-3 Orion that detected the bangs that may be coming from the lost Titan.

Stratoplanes: The aircraft that will fly at the edge of space

The stratosphere has long been a challenging environment for aviation. But new designs could usher in a golden age of stratospheric flight.

I wrote about some amazing people, flying machines and balloons for BBC Future. Have a read in full below – or the original here!

It is June 2022, and a flying machine that looks like a cross between a prehistoric beast and a spaceship is about to take off. Named the Zephyr 8, it has long spindly wings the length of an airliner’s. Together with its small, thin body and head, these make it resemble a pterodactyl. Its shimmering tinfoil-like solar panels and lightweight skeletal frame are more like something you’d see on a craft meant for space…

It takes five or six people to lift the Zephyr. When it’s ready to launch, they run across the runway holding the craft above them. The machine’s two small propellers turn frantically before the plane begins its slow climb up into the cloudless sky to 60,000ft (18,300m) or 70,000ft (21,300m) – a relentless ascent into the stratosphere that can take 10 hours.

Its mission for the US Army is a secret, but clearly on its manufacturer’s mind is the desire to shatter a few records, particularly that for the longest flight duration for any type of airplane, which has stood for 63 years. In 1959 two men flew a four-seat Cessna light aircraft for 64 days, 22 hours and 19 minutes, refuelling in-flight from a truck.

British aviation pioneer Chris Kelleher designed the first Zephyr in 2002. His vision was of an uncrewed aircraft capable of “eternal flight” in the stratosphere. He foresaw that solar power and lightweight materials would lead to aircraft capable of staying aloft for months, or even years. The Zephyr S is the first production model. 

The stratosphere is the second layer of our atmosphere. It begins around 33,000ft (10,000m) and ends at around 160,000ft (48,800m). If an aircraft can fly above 50,000ft (15,150m), it can fly above the turbulent weather that we experience closer to the ground, in the troposphere. The problem is that that high the air is very thin, making flying – and breathing – a challenge.

The long, spindly wings of the Zephyr help keep it aloft in the thin air of the stratosphere (Credit: Zephyr)

For a long time, there was only one option if you wanted to explore the stratosphere, and that was a balloon. Balloons could climb to the ceiling of the world, where there is too little oxygen for wings, or air-breathing engines. The problem then was staying alive at those altitudes, and a good number of balloonists failed trying.

In 1931, humanity finally reached the stratosphere, with one balloonist achieving a height of 52,000ft (15,800m) in a pressurised gondola attached to a hydrogen-filled balloon. Two years later, Jeannette Piccard became the first woman to reach the stratosphere, with an ascent to 57,600ft  (17,600m).

From the 1950s it was the turn of expensive, state-financed and top-secret spy planes like the U-2, the SR-71, and recently the RQ-170 drone. Now the stratosphere is also home to weather balloons, amateur high-altitude balloonists, Chinese spy balloons and marketing stunts. A group of Cornish schoolchildren used a weather balloon to lift a Cornish pasty to an incredible 116,410ft (35,500m). It returned, frozen.

Yet the age of exploration isn’t over. The pressurised Windward Performance Perlan 2 glider set a new altitude record of 73,800ft (23,500m) in September 2018. It flew higher than any glider has ever flown, and even the maximum record altitude of a U-2 spy plane, using the waves created by the Andes mountain peaks to lift the glider all the way up to the stratosphere.

The challenge for their designers is to find the sweet spot of having an aircraft that is light and strong enough to stay up at those altitudes for long enough – Robert Kraus

The British-built Aalto Zephyr (the company was recently spun-out of Airbus) is one of a new type of flying machine designed to reconquer the stratosphere through eternal flight. Aircraft that, when combined with miniaturisation of components and powerful new computer models of the atmosphere, give humanity the possibility of a near-permanent presence at these high altitudes for the first time.

Known as Haps (high altitude pseudo-satellites), these autonomous, super-lightweight aircraft range from solar-powered gliders to solar-powered silver zeppelins.

Their jobs include providing 4G or 5G phone coverage and internet service after a disaster, spotting forest fires, and tracking the movement of enemy forces during wartime. All the while, they can do it better, more cheaply, faster, and more flexibly than satellites.

Technological improvements, especially in the development of lightweight materials, solar panels, and battery technology, make the “long endurance” part of the brief a reality.

The Zephyr can take up to 10 days to climb to its operational height (Credit: Zephyr)

“The challenge for their designers,” says Robert “Bob” Kraus, dean of the John D Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of Dakota, “is to find the sweet spot of having an aircraft that is light and strong enough to stay up at those altitudes for long enough, can haul enough payload to be useful to paying customers, and can survive the ascent – and descent – through the troposphere.”

Even in Low Earth orbit, micro-satellites orbit the Earth around 340 miles (547km) higher than an aircraft such as the Zephyr. This means there is still a slight latency – a delay to communication that can impede high-speed broadband communication. There are also some fundamental limitations in the use of satellites for remote sensing in terms of resolution, speed and flexibility that make the case even stronger for the use of Haps.

Some are now beginning to take physical shape.

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Inside a large cylinder-like structure in Roswell, New Mexico, for instance, is a large silver zeppelin Haps. It is another “eternal” aircraft. Its aluminium parts have been replaced with carbon. A Goodyear Blimp built to the same size would be 12 times heavier.

“We started small, with a 9ft (2.7m) version that couldn’t lift its own weight, so we had to attach it to a balloon just to start generating data,” says Mikkel Vestergaard, founder of Sceye, the materials science company behind the stratospheric zeppelin. “Then in November 2020, we opened the hangar doors for the first time to a 270ft (82m) version.”

By May 2021, the zeppelin had made it to its target altitude of 65,000ft (19,800m) at an average rate of 1,000ft (305m) a minute, and this year alone they have six flights. What really sets the zeppelin apart is the payload it can carry. While the Zephyr can lift around 5kg (11lb), the zeppelin can already lift more than 100kg (220lb). Future versions could lift 300kg (660lb), or a communication array to broadcast broadband direct to a large number of people. Broadband services can be provided by zeppelin instead of masts.

Once you get to the stratosphere, there’s no point in staying unless you can turn that into a business – Mikkel Vestergaard

So far Sceye has run two flights for broadband-to-smartphone. This September will see its first demonstration flight for methane leaks monitoring. (Read about the growing fleet of satellites identifying methane leaks from space)

“We’re very big,” he laughs. “We’re very visible. And so we work best at home in a friendly territory, to connect people, to help people.

“At the end of the day, once you get to the stratosphere, there’s no point in staying unless you can turn that into a business.”

In the past, balloons such as this design from Urban Sky, have been designers’ preferred method to reach the stratosphere (Credit: Urban Sky)

Some of the balloons used to carry humans to the stratosphere have been the size of a football stadium. Not so Urban Sky‘s. Inflated on the ground, these reusable microballoons are the size of a car, with a payload attached underneath.

As the images show, they offer the high-res aerial imagery needed to monitor the aftermath of wildfires, and to even image entire cities, which insurance companies or city planners might need.

“We can literally launch from the back of the pick-up truck,” says Jared Leidich, co-founder and chief technology officer of Urban Sky. “We figure out from the weather models where we would need to launch a balloon from to have it passively float over its target, and drive there. Twenty to 30 years ago the models were not good enough to do this.”

But climatologists are starting to worry about the impact all this increased activity may have on the stratosphere. Water vapour is present in minute amounts. So, any increase in its use due to the use of hydrogen powered aircraft may have a disproportionate affect, especially contributing to the destruction of ozone layer.

You must consider how you might disturb the stratosphere if you suddenly start building a big aircraft fleet that will fly up there every day – Michaela I Hegglin

“Pollutants will remain in the stratosphere much longer because atmospheric mixing is a lot slower,” says Michaela I Hegglin, a professor in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Reading in the UK and a member of the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany.

“So, you must consider how you might disturb the stratosphere if you suddenly start building a big aircraft fleet that will fly up there every day,” says Hegglin.

At around 4am on 19 August 2022, the Zephyr finally succumbed to gravity after an incredible three-month flight of 35,000 miles  (56,300km) at around 70,000ft (21,300m) and over 64 days aloft – only hours away from breaking the 1959 endurance record.

The Sceye zeppelin has already reached its target altitude of 65,000ft (19,800m) (Credit: Sceye)

“The flight was a huge success,” says Chris McLaughlin of the Aalto Haps programme. “It flew all the way down to South America on a mission and all the way back again. And the US Army pronounced themselves happy, but we are not allowed to open up on what they did with it.”

Its success was due to the singular focus of Aalto’s engineers at Farnborough in the UK, says McLaughlin. “One of the great skills of the team in Farnborough is they are obsessive about reducing weight. How do we reduce the weight of that wiring loom? Is there a better piece of carbon that we can put in place to strengthen this and at the same time reduce weight?”

The eight-to-10 hours the Zephyr takes to ascend to the stratosphere means that the aircraft needs a very stable weather environment to fly in. “We are planning to build several ‘Aalto ports’ around the world in countries with very good, stable weather at different times of the year,” says McLaughlin. “So we’ll always be able to get access to the stratosphere, and that was all part of Chris Kelleher’s original concept.”

The predicted increase in traffic may lead to demands for stratospheric traffic and environmental controls

In April 2023, Aalto signed a contract for a Zephyr trial flight over Japan with a mobile communications payload. The Zephyr is expected to enter commercial service by the end of 2024.

In their bid to reconquer the stratosphere, start-ups such as Aalto, Sceye and Urban Sky may be overcoming the technological hurdles to “eternal flight”, but they are going to face an increasing number of regulatory ones. The recent ill-fated flight of the Chinese spy balloon over the USA has highlighted that the stratosphere is national, not international, airspace, and the predicted increase in traffic may lead to demands for stratospheric traffic and environmental controls.

“It’s a fine natural balance that you have there. And you don’t want to mess around with it,” warns Hegglin.

The lure of flying in the stratosphere, however, may be hard to resist.

“The stratosphere is mostly empty right now,” says Leidich. “So we’re still working out the basic physics… This is sort of level-zero mathematical understanding of the area, which makes it fun.”

I gave a virtual lecture to the New York Adventure Club on Orford Ness: Britain’s Area 51!

Having helped develop technologies used to win two world wars and deter the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the legacy of Britain’s Area 51, known as Orford Ness, is still shaping our world today. What groundbreaking innovations came from this top-secret research and testing site, and why was it used by the British military, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, and even the U.S. Department of Defense?

In June, I gave a very well-received online talk for New York Adventure Club on the legacy of Britain’s Orford Ness, a highly classified military site located in a remote part of Britain’s east coast that operated for over 80 years beginning in 1915. The talk was inspired by an article I wrote for BBC Future called ‘The eerie emptiness of ‘Britain’s Area 51’

What the audience thought via a MailChimp questionnaire…

“It was an absolutely fascinating story of true history. The details were abundant. He set the tone for how it felt to be doing this work in this time, how challenging it was, so record-setting it was, and why we never heard of this place or these achievements till today.”

“A lot of great pictures and deep information about the site”

“There was a lot of information about Orford Ness, past and present, the people who worked there and the developments that took place there over several decades. Some especially interesting bits (no parachutes until the end of WWI, for instance) and lots of good photos of planes and weaponry, as well as the present National Trust property.”

“Very interesting topic, about a place I’d never heard of.”

“Because of the amount of detail, this was well worth listening to a second time.”

If you want me to talk to your group about Orford Ness, my book N-4 DOWN, or another topic, email me at mpiesing @ gmail.com – or find me on social media – to begin our conversation.

I just gave a lecture at the National Maritime Museum!

I still can’t believe this! But on June 13, I gave a very well-received lecture for the Royal Museums Greenwich in the National Maritime Museum lecture theatre to around sixty people. It was an incredible privilege. As a child, it was one of my favourite museums! 
The topic was Amundsen’s Last Expedition, which is featured in my critically acclaimed book, N-4 DOWN the hunt for the Arctic airship Italia. 

“Mark Piesing gave an incredibly interesting talk to the Members of Royal Museums Greenwich – tailoring the lecture to an area that would be of most interest to our members and linking to our collection. We had excellent feedback from all who attended.”
–Sarah Foster, Senior Membership Officer, Royal Museums Greenwich

If you want me to talk to your group about Amundsen’s Last Expedition, my book N-4 DOWN, Orford Ness, or another topic, email me at mpiesing @ gmail.com – or find me on social media – to begin our conversation.

A stunning location! Before the doors opened! Getting into the zone!

The Q&A!

Signing books – a busy evening!

The crazy plan to explode a nuclear bomb on the Moon

In the 1950s, with the USSR seemingly sprinting ahead in the space race, US scientists hatched a bizarre plan – nuking the surface of the Moon to frighten the Soviets.

I found Project A119 fascinating and horrifying to research and write.

Read it in full below, or the original by clicking here.

The moment astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out on to the Moon’s surface in 1969 is one of the most memorable moments in history.

But what if the Moon Armstrong stepped onto was scarred by huge craters and poisoned from the effects of nuclear bombardment?

At first reading, the title of the research paper – A Study of Lunar Research Flights, Vol 1 – sounds blandly bureaucratic and peaceful. The kind of paper easy to ignore. And that was probably the point.

Glance at the cover, however, and things look a little different.

Emblazoned in the centre is a shield depicting an atom, a nuclear bomb, and a mushroom cloud – the emblem of the Air Force Special Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, which played a key role in the development and testing of nuclear weapons.

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Down at the bottom is the author’s name: L Reiffel, or Leonard Reiffel, one of America’s leading nuclear physicists. He worked with Enrico Fermi, the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor who is known as the “architect of the nuclear bomb“.

Project A119, as it was known, was a top-secret proposal to detonate a hydrogen bomb on the Moon. Hydrogen bombs were vastly more destructive than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, and the latest in nuclear weapon design at the time. Asked to “fast track” the project by senior officers in the Air Force, Reiffel produced many reports between May 1958 and January 1959 on the feasibility of the plan.

The US was concerned that Soviet missile technology was advancing faster than they could keep up (Credit: Getty Images)

Incredibly, one scientist enabling this horrific scheme was future visionary Carl Sagan. In fact, the existence of the project was only discovered in the 1990s because Sagan had mentioned it on an application to an elite university.

While it might have helped to answer some rudimentary scientific questions about the Moon, Project A119’s primary purpose was as a show of force. The bomb would explode on the appropriately named Terminator Line  – the border between the light and dark side of the Moon – to create a bright flash of light that anyone, but particularly anyone in the Kremlin, could see with the naked eye. The absence of an atmosphere meant there wouldn’t be a mushroom cloud.

There is only one convincing explanation for proposing such a horrendous plan – and the motivation for it lies somewhere between insecurity and desperation.

It didn’t help American nerves that Sputnik was launched on top of a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile

In the 1950s, it didn’t look like America was winning the Cold War. Political and popular opinion in the United States held that the Soviet Union was ahead in the growth of its nuclear arsenal, particularly in the development, and number, of nuclear bombers (“the bomber gap”) and nuclear missiles (“the missile gap”). 

In 1952, the US had exploded the first hydrogen bomb. Three years later the Soviets shocked Washington by exploding their own. In 1957 they went one better, stealing a lead in the space race with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in orbit around the world.

It didn’t help American nerves that Sputnik was launched on top of a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile – albeit a modified one – nor that the US’s own attempt to launch an “artificial moon” ended in a huge, fiery explosion. The inferno that consumed their Vanguard rocket was captured on film and shown around the world. A British newsreel at the time was brutal: “THE VANGUARD FAILS…a big setback indeed…in the realm of prestige and propaganda…”

The successful launch of Sputnik in 1957 caused consternation in the West (Credit: Getty Images)

All the while, US schoolchildren were being shown the famous “Duck and Cover”information film, in which Bert the animated turtle helps teach children what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.

Later that same year, US newspapers citing a senior intelligence source reported that “Soviets to H-Bomb Moon On Revolution Anniversary Nov 7” (The Daily Times, New Philadelphia, Ohio) and then followed it up with reports that the Soviets might already be planning to launch a nuclear-armed rocket at our nearest neighbour.

Like with other Cold War rumours, its origins are hard to fathom.

Strangely, this scare also likely motivated the Soviets to develop their plans. Codenamed E4, their plan was a carbon copy of the Americans’, and eventually dismissed by the Soviets for similar reasons – the fear that a failed launch could result in the bomb dropping down on Soviet soil. They described the potential for a “highly undesirable international incident”.

They may have simply realised that landing on the Moon was the bigger prize.

But Project A119 would have worked.

In 2000 Reiffel had his say. He confirmed that it was “technically feasible”, and that the explosion would have been visible on Earth.

The loss of the pristine lunar environment was less of a worry to the US Air Force despite the scientists’ concerns.

“Project A119 was one of several ideas that were floated for an exciting response to Sputnik,” says Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science and nuclear technology, “that included shooting down Sputnik, which feels very spiteful. They refer to them as stunts… designed to impress people.

“Now what they did in the end was put up their own satellite, and that took a little while, but they continued this project somewhat seriously, into at least the late 1950s.

“It is a pretty interesting window into the sort of American mindset at that time. This push to compete in a way that creates something very impressive. I think, in this case, impressive and horrifying are a bit too close to each other.”

He isn’t sure that fear of the anti-communist witch hunt made nuclear physicists work on this project. “Anyone who’s in these roles is probably self-selected to some degree,” he says. “They don’t mind doing the work. If they were afraid, they could do a million other things. A lot of scientists did this in the Cold War; they said physics has gotten too political.”

The US attempt to send a satellite into space in 1957 failed when the Vanguard rocket exploded on launch (Credit: Getty Images)

There may have been more self-examination by the Vietnam War.

“Project A119 reminds me of the segment in The Simpsons when Lisa sees Nelson’s ‘Nuke the Whales’ poster on his wall,” says Bleddyn Bowen, an expert in international relations in outer space. “And he says, ‘Well you’ve got to nuke something.’

If some of the more outlandish ideas don’t find root in the US, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t find favour further afield

“These were serious studies, but they didn’t get any serious funding or attention when they left the space community. It was part of the late 50s, early 60s space mania before anybody knew exactly what nature the Space Age was going to take,” he says.

“If there is going to be anything resembling this kind of lunar hysteria again it is going to run afoul of the established international legal order… agreed by almost every state in the world.”

Could these plans surface again, despite the international consensus? “I’ve heard some noises coming out from some places and the Pentagon about looking at US Space Force missions for the lunar environment,” Bowen says.

If some of the more outlandish ideas don’t find root in the US, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t find favour further afield – such as China. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a community in China now wanting to push some of these ideas because they think the Moon is cool, and they work in the military,” Bowen adds.

Most of the details of Project A119 are still shrouded in mystery. Many of the were apparently destroyed.

Its ultimate lesson, perhaps, is that we should never gloss over the research paper with the blandly bureaucratic name without, at least, reading it first.

I have just written two scripts for an award wining podcast producer

I have just written two scripts for award-winning podcast producer NOISER! It was a great experience – and a challenge – to learn how to tell a story through the spoken word, and it was brilliant to work with and learn from a team at the top of their game.

Thank you, Noiser.

When I can share further details, I will.

I was on the Books & Looks Podcast to talk about my book N-4 DOWN!

“Books & Looks: Real Books for Real Readers was started as a podcast to supplement Blaine Desantis’ website, ViewsOnBooks.com, and expand into audio interviews with authors.

With Books & Looks, Blaine’s goal is to focus on real books that real people will read. At least half of the books he reviews are either new authors or unknown authors that many in the general public are unaware of. After a segment reviewing books or interviewing authors, Blaine ends each episode with a discussion of the movies and TV shows he is currently watching.

This Week’s Episode

Join us on this thrilling episode of Books and Looks as we dive into the world of Arctic exploration, airships, and political intrigue. I interview author Mark Piesing about his gripping book N-4 Down, which uncovers the lesser-known story of the 1928 Arctic airship crash. Discover how Umberto Nobile’s ambition and Mussolini’s political machinations intertwined with the Heroic and Machine Ages of polar exploration. Immerse yourself in this epic journey, full of humor, heartache, and the untamed allure of the Arctic. Don’t miss this captivating discussion that will leave you wondering how far we’ll go to conquer the unknown.”

Listen to it here

AIRSHIP DOWN! I was on The Hipstorians podcast chatting about N-4 DOWN!

In N-4 Down author Mark Piesing tells the unforgettable true story of what happened when the largest polar rescue mission in history was launched to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928.

I had a great time chatting to The Hipstorians about my book N-4 DOWN The Hunt for the Arctic airship Italia (HarperCollins).

Listen to it here!

The Return of the X-planes: How X-planes may solve the sonic boom problem

Rocket-powered and shrouded in secrecy, X-planes helped pave the way for the US space programme: Now they have another mission – taking the boom out of supersonic travel.

I have always wanted to write about Nasa’s X-planes, and now I have!

Read my popular BBC Future article in full below – or by clicking on this link.

In 1947, the first clue onlookers at Muroc Army Airfield, California, had that the sound barrier had been broken was a thunder-like sound, or bomb burst. It was the ninth powered flight of the experimental Bell X-1 aircraft, and onboard the pilot wrestled the controls as the aircraft’s stability fluctuated as it’s speed increased.

The legend of America’s X-planes was born in the mid-1940s and flourished till the 1960s, when rocket planes flew to the edge of space. Flights by cutting-edge aircraft like the X-1 and X-15 paved the way for the eventual triumphs of the Apollo programme and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. The fastest of the X-planes would take their human pilots to more than six times the speed of sound.

Now, in 2023, the latest X-plane – the X-59 aircraft –  is aiming to repeat a feat achieved by the first X-plane – break the sound barrier again. Only this time, if all goes to plan, nobody on the ground will notice.

In 1973, the US government banned commercial supersonic flights over land in the United States. With that ban – and others like it – went the business case for aircraft like Concorde.

That might be about to change if years of research into how to create a quiet sonic boom come to fruition; Nasa and the secretive “Skunk Works” of aircraft manufacturer Lockheed are trying to build an aircraft that creates it. Despite the advances in computer modelling and wind tunnel technology, it is still too much of a risk to build a quiet supersonic passenger aircraft without real-world evidence that the technology will work.

“I think the X-59 could be significant,” says Christopher Combs, University of Texas at San Antonio. “You are demonstrating for the first time with a real-world vehicle that you can make quiet sonic booms, and that can open the door for commercial industry to come in and start building aircraft like this.”

The Bell X-1 was the first X-plane to achieve supersonic flight (Credit: H Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images)

The X-1 looked like an aircraft designed to smash the sound barrier. It was a bullet shape with two straight wings (when it was designed, American aircraft designers hadn’t fully understood the advantages of swept wings, such as reduced drag) and a rocket engine.

The fighter-like X-59 is a rather more elegant – and cost-effective – answer to a challenging problem. The aircraft reuses parts from other planes, including the landing gear from an F-16 fighter, the canopy and ejection seat from a much older T-38 supersonic training jet, and some of the engine system used in the U-2 spy plane.

Everything about the X-59 is designed to create a quiet sonic boom at the test point of Mach 1.4 (1,074 mph) at 55,000ft (16,800m), which is in the range a commercial aircraft is likely to fly. It will do this by minimising the number of shockwaves coming off the aircraft and spreading them more widely across the airframe to prevent them building up into a loud boom.

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The long nose of the plane (which at 38ft (12m) is a third of the aircraft’s entire length) is designed to separate the shockwaves coming off the nose from those produced from the wing. The engine is on top near the tail of the aircraft –rather than below it like those on Concorde – so shockwaves don’t travel towards the ground. The underneath of the plane is also unusually smooth for an aircraft; this is intended to minimise the number of shockwaves it produces.

The new X-plane will also be piloted by a human rather than a computer, to help build trust with the communities it is flying over.

We always kind of joke that the X-1 broke the sound barrier and now we’re trying to fix it – Catherine Bahm

The borrowed canopy, together with the X-59’s long nose, means that the pilot won’t have any forward vision. Instead, the X-plane has a digital eXternal Vision System(XVS). This uses a high-definition camera on its nose and another underneath to create a display for the pilot which is the equivalent to a forward facing window.

“We always kind of joke that the X-1 broke the sound barrier and now we’re trying to fix it,” says Catherine Bahm, the project manager of Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD). “Its sonic boom won’t be loud enough for people to notice. It will be like distant thunder, or your neighbour’s car door closing, that merges into everyday life.

“If we get the feedback that says this is the case from the communities it is flying over, we can ask them [the FAA] to change their standards,” says Bahm. “If this happens, the X-59 will help open new markets for companies like Boom, Lockheed or Gulfstream who wouldn’t otherwise make the significant investment themselves.”

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People’s sonic boom surprise caught on camera

Watch people’s surprise as they hear a sonic boom from a Typhoon jet fighter over England in January 2021. 

However, for a new era of supersonic passenger aircraft to be financially viable they will need to be able to fly at supersonic speeds form airports in North America to Europe, for instance.

“So, it’s not just American standards we are seeking to change: it’s global standards,” Bahm adds.

For some, building an X-plane that produces a quiet boom is a long way from the glory days of breaking the sound barrier. It suggests that aviation is a mature technology that has run out of big new ideas. Others disagree.

What was an off-the-books project grew in importance as rumours of German jet and rocket experiments began to grow

“Integrating new ideas or new technologies is part and parcel of what the X-59 is all about,” says Christian Gelzer, chief historian at Nasa’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.

As is the collection of real-world data. “The engineers who are working on the X-59 want the data for the same reason as those who worked on the X-1,” says Gelzer. “They’re trying to find out if they can predict what an aeroplane will be like without having built it.

“No one had built anything like this before.”

Before the X-planes, scientists working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (Naca) – the precursor of Nasa – carried out their research in wind tunnels and with modified production aircraft, building a worldwide reputation for quality.

Then in the 1930s it all changed. Aerodynamicist John Stack sketched out his idea for a purpose-built, full-scale research aircraft capable of reaching Mach 1, the speed of sound. Ten years later Stack and a small group of engineers worked to turn this idea into a design for an actual high-speed test vehicle.

The X-15 still holds the record for the fastest crewed aircraft in history – despite first flying more than 60 years ago (Credit: Dean Conger/Corbis/Getty Images)

What was an off-the-books project grew in importance as rumours of German jet and rocket experiments began to grow. The USAAF (United States Army Air Force) heard about the project, and they wanted one major change: the plane had to be powered by a rocket engine.

Rocket-powered planes may sound ridiculous to us, but they were ideal to punch through the sound barrier because they had much higher acceleration and speeds than the same-sized jet aircraft.

Supersonic flight today is built on what the X-1 taught engineers about supersonic airflow, the performance of materials at high speeds, and the most effective forms of propulsion, as well the data it provided on how supersonic flight affected human physiology.

“Stable flight in a subsonic regime had been happening since the Wright brothers and suddenly you’ve got an aircraft that you’ve designed to push past these speeds,” says Combs. “That really sets the X-1 apart as one of the most impactful aircraft ever built. That’s quite a landmark that really sets a high bar for the rest of the X-planes.”

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Can supersonic flight be sustainable?

The golden age of the X-planes reached its peak at the end of the 1950s, with the first flight of the North American X-15 in 1959.  “The X-15 was a big project – it dominated everything – and it did extraordinary things,” says Gelzer.

It was a hypersonic demonstrator, and still holds the record for the fastest crewed hypersonic flight at Mach 6.7 (5,100mph/8,160km/h). Between 1959 and 1968, the X-15 showed that you can go into space, and come back, and not require a capsule with a parachute. It flew eight out of its 12 pilots to the edge of space and back, earning them astronauts’ wings.

Yet behind the glamour of the space race, the X-15 was essentially a flying laboratory. Around 765 research papers were produced, investigating elements such as the biomedical effects of high-g flight and weightlessness, stability and control problems in flight and re-entry, the performance of aircraft structures at very high temperatures, and the accuracy of wind tunnels.

The X-59, currently being built by Lockheed, features an extremely long nose to help dissipate shockwaves at high speed (Credit: Lockheed)

“A tonne of research came out of the X-15, but one of the things that is really overlooked is what it taught us about human factors,” says Amy Shira Teitel, author of Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before Nasa. “We learned a lot about how to train pilots flying unconventional vehicles, and to teach pilots how to deal with going far beyond what their normal was.”

A great deal of this research is still relevant today, particularly when it comes to hypersonic flight. “There were definitely lessons learned from that programme that we still talk about, such as how to manoeuvre at hypersonic speed,” says Combs, whose own laboratory has a hypersonic wind tunnel.

The X-15 programme was cancelled in December 1968 after 199 flights. A new generation of X planes followed. Rather than piloted rocket planes designed to go higher and faster, the new X-planes were often uncrewed and designed to solve specific and unglamorous technical problems – and they have singularly failed to grab the public’s attention.

The X-43 was the first X-plane to use a scramjet, which ignites fuel while supersonic air passes through the engine (Credit: Nasa)

Rocket planes like the X-1 and X-15 were simply a hard act to follow. “You had this handful of pilots who are flying to the fringes of space and they were at the forefront of this new era,” says Teitel. “There was a sexiness about that which appealed to people as well. It wasn’t just the incredible technology. It was the future.”

Nevertheless, there have been many X-planes over the past 30 years – and records are still being set. Bahm worked on a good number of them.

The Lockheed Martin X-33 Venture Star was a demonstrator of the Nasa–Lockheed Martin project to build a successor to the Space Shuttle. It was cancelled in 2001 before any test flights could be carried out owing to the failure of the fuel tank during testing, although construction was 85% complete.

Bahm also worked on the X-43 scramjet-powered drone, whose sleek lines could have been designed by a Hollywood director. In March 2004, an X-43 set the record for the first time a scramjet-powered vehicle had flown under its own power. A scramjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in the supersonic airflow through the engine. Eight months later an X-43 entered the record books when it achieved the speed of Mach 9.6 (or 7,000mph/km) and became the fastest airbreathing aircraft in history.

“That was a great, great, great project to work on,” says Bahm, who was deputy chief engineer on the record-breaking flight.

Now rather than going faster, the X-59 is aiming to be quieter, but it is only the start of the journey to quiet boom supersonic flight. “The X-59 is kind of fighter jet scale,” says Combs. “The next question is, can you build a bigger one that’s the size of a 737?”

British Council Feature No.2 The Future of Aviation

The British Council recently asked me to write two features for a new website they are launching.

The second was on Sustainable Aviation

It was great to fun to write.

As soon as it is published, I will post the piece here.