New X-Plane Coming: Introducing the X-51A

seem that more toys are starting to come out of the attic lets hope it dont start an arms race

lol, theres no one to race with.

you mean to tell me they are retiring a plane that they are pouring billions of dollars into fixing. lol the shuttle is turning into a hanger queen from the sounds of it.

Anyone who actually pays attention to the Shuttle and its current situation hates the direction Nasa is going with it. I hate that there spending so much money to work out all the foam problems when it wont be a problem on ANY future rocket flight.

They should have retired the shuttles after Columbia. Then By now we would have its successor nearly finished, and we could use the Heavy Lift Vehicle Concept that Nasa has to finish lutting the ISS components into space.

I thought the X-51 was going to be pilotless...i.e. remote control or drone?

Sorry, couldn't read the article as the link changed.

As for the Aurora, jury's still out on that one, but I do know that Lockheed's contract with the Army was cancelled for their new spy plane... Can't remember if the Navy cancelled theirs too (as it was to be for them too)... Talk about dumb...two totally different mission profiles, so I'm not sure what some general was thinking....that's two different planes guys...

They ie nasa is working on the new rockets for the moon flights but as you said if we want to even catch up with the schedual for the ISS build it would make sence to build a new shuttle that can do that heavy lifting that nasa will need even for their mars flights too. I love the shuttles its a great plane/glider but can they please start flying the thing? I probably should check over in the space section but does anyone here know if the chunk that came off the tank had the potential to do much damage and should nasa be postponing flights like they are?

Well yes Waynos... I'am a bit confused too... The picture doesn't look at all like the one on Intelgurls thread, but I was more thinking about the page were I took my picture from... It is after all a pretty reliable source...

Since all this work is related to Aurora, why don't they just admit the stupid plane exist and quit screwing with these 'Research Models'? I swear, they must be having alot of problems with the full size machine to have NASA cover-up for them. Guess the Aurora's funding from Copper Canyon ran out and they need to suck it up somewhere else. Expect 'cost-overruns' with X-51 to cover the cost of what the project is really for. After all, only 3 years til' first flight? With such an extreme test plane? Even unmanned and based on data from the X-43 HyperX, that's as far fetched as you can get... unless it's already been built, perhaps even scaled down from a larger, working aircraft. They're not fooling me for a minute. Lockheed SkunkWorks couldn't build the X-33 in 3 years. There's more to the X-51 than what is being said...

You know, that's a really excellent point. From other posts on ATS, you see that the indians, iranians, russians and chinese are frantically trying to build or steal the technology to compete with the F-22. But before they even get anywhere close to that goal, they find that the bar has been moved again - way higher this time. Add in the recent info about U.S. beam weapons getting ready to come on line and what are they all to do - give up or keep trying to catch up?