NASA’s The Quiet Crew | Jim Less

In this episode of The Quiet Crew, you’ll meet Jim "Clue" Less, a test pilot for the Quesst mission. His role is to fly the X-59 through the three phases of the mission and to contribute to the simulation and development of the aircraft. He is part of the crew working to transform aviation as NASA and communities verify that the X-59’s quiet, supersonic design can turn a sonic boom into a sonic thump. This new technology, along with a potential change in regulations, will allow airliners to fly faster over land, cutting passenger travel time in half without disturbing people on the ground.

What is said in the film

I'm Jim Less, I'm a research test pilot for NASA working at the Armstrong Flight Research Center, and I'm a project pilot on the X-59. my role is going to be to fly the X-59 through the three phases of the Quesst mission. Early on we built a simulator, ultimately almost every mission that we fly in the X-59 we're going to rehearse ahead of time so that there are no surprises and we're really at the top of our game to go out and fly exactly what the scientists need us to do. One of the unique aspects of the X-59 cockpit is that we don't have a forward windscreen we'll be flying the aircraft primarily using a TV monitor as part of a system we call the eXternal Vision System or XVS. We're pretty confident that the XVS system is going to work just fine and we're going to be able to see where we're going.

I was in the U. S. Air Force before I worked for NASA and the Air Force likes to give the pilots call signs. When I was in initial Air Force pilot training the instructors took one look at my last name and said oh they're going to come up with something good with that one and sure enough I showed up to my very first first squadron Clue was picked and it kind of stuck. Work keeps me pretty busy.

At any given time I'm working on probably 10 other projects in addition to the X-59 and I travel quite a bit so when I'm home I mainly like to spend time with my family. I have a wife, Kim, and a daughter, Madeline. I do my best to spend as much time with them as I can. Certainly as a test pilot, getting to fly an X-plane is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Many test pilots fly their entire career without flying an X-plane and so to get to fly the X-59, a supersonic X-plane that does something completely revolutionary, produces a a quiet sonic thump, I think it's going to be the highlight of my career.

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