NASA Shows Off X-70 Fractal, a Crewed Research Jet With Swappable Parts

NASA unveiled the X-70 Fractal, a crewed experimental aircraft, on Wednesday, November 4, at the UP.Summit at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to speed up flight research, the agency said.

The release does not give a clock time for the unveiling, so none appears here. It comes from NASA's news release, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman made the announcement.

What NASA says

NASA calls the X-70 a "high-performance, highly adaptable research platform." The point is to speed up the development and testing of advanced aviation technology.

The plane carries a pilot. NASA says it uses flight controls that can be reconfigured quickly, which will let the agency "explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never before demonstrated in crewed flight."

The aircraft can also carry up to 2,000 pounds of experimental payloads, NASA says, both inside the airframe and on the outside. That is the idea behind the name on the brief: one airframe, many experiments. Instead of building a new plane for each test, NASA can swap the gear and fly again.

Isaacman put it this way in the release: "Its modular design and ability to rapidly swap internal and external payloads will keep our teams flying, learning, and moving quickly from one experiment to the next."

NASA lists these design figures:

- Takeoff weight of 10,000 pounds.
- Cruise speed of Mach .75. Mach 1 is the speed of sound, so this is about three-quarters of that.
- Altitude of up to 45,000 feet.
- Range of more than about 1,726 miles (1,500 nautical miles).

NASA says these numbers will let it run demanding flight research across a broad range of operating conditions.

Laurie Grindle, director of the Aeronautics Division within NASA's Research and Technology Mission Directorate, said in the release: "It's exciting to bring on another X-plane to accelerate and drive aeronautics research."

The picture, and the gaps

One detail from coverage of the release: the image NASA put out carries a "Generated Content" label. Accounts of the announcement say that leaves open how closely it matches the real aircraft. Those accounts describe a fighter-sized shape with canted twin tails and a bubble canopy, wrapped in cloud. Treat that as a notional picture, not a design drawing.

The release does not say who built the X-70, what it cost, or which technologies will fly on it first. It also gives no flight-test schedule, according to coverage of the announcement. Those details are not in the record yet.

Where it fits

NASA places the X-70 in a long line of X-planes. Its release names the Bell X-1, which first broke the sound barrier in 1947, the X-15 hypersonic research aircraft, and today's X-59 quiet supersonic demonstrator.

Accounts of Isaacman's remarks at the summit say he also pointed to two older maneuverability testbeds, the X-29 and the X-31. Coverage of the event reported he said, "I promise you, there will be more," about future X-planes.

The announcement also followed a bit of public guessing. Isaacman said on a podcast the week before that a new X-plane was coming and was not the SR-71 Blackbird that people had been talking about, according to reports of that interview. The X-70 is a different story from that one.

What is next

NASA expects the X-70's first flight "under the NASA banner" within the next two years, Isaacman said in the release. That is an expectation, not a scheduled date. NASA has not named a day, a place or a pilot.

NASA's Max Power airshow runs at Kennedy Space Center from November 6 to 8, according to coverage of the announcement, with agency research aircraft on display, including the X-59. Whether NASA shows more of the X-70 there is not known. For now, the picture is generated and the first flight is a promise of two years or less.

Stay curious.

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