London to New York in ONE HOUR: US military to test radical new hypersonic aircraft that can reach 4

Hopefully USAF will have some good news from this particular test. There have been previous tests in the past but not much was achieved as hoped.

The craft, called the X-51A Waverider, is currently being prepared at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. Tomorrow, it will take part in a key test

LINK

Interesting, i recall seeing this many years back where the aircraft was designed to skim along the upper atmosphere.

THe concept art looks like a rocket with a skid plate on its belly.

Hopefully this test proves their theories and we can advance to the next stage of air travel....or air warfare, which ever comes first

Coincidentally, I was thinking only yesterday, 'why has there not been another supersonic/hypersonic passanger jet since Concord?' It's not like Supersonic jets are new tech...

Thanks for posting, synchronicity plays a good hand again.

So...
Please tell me that this is an unmanned flight.
If not and things go south as prototypes tend to do at times, the pilot may end up looking like a dog with his head out the window at 80 mph.
Well, just for the split second before his bones liquefy and the meat and bonemeal bag vaporizes.
4500 mph, that is at least 10 times faster than my car!!
Will be neat to hear or possibly see how this goes.
A wide angle flyover filming of the US would be cool too.

Pretty pointless as various government false flags mean that we now have hours of waiting, pat-downs, x-rays, eye-scans and everything else added onto arrival and departure. The extra time saved by hypersonic flight will only just make up for the increased delays at either end.

OP Linky

London to New York in ONE HOUR: US military to test radical new hypersonic aircraft that can reach 4,500mph within seconds
Scramjet engine can accelerate craft to over Mach 6
Could dramatically slash journey times by travelling at five times the speed of sound

I love it... Journey times... Not for people... Journey times for Missiles or Military Grade Explosive Payloads is more like it.

We wont be seeing this in civilian use.

reply to post by DaRAGE


You might be right. Why improve society with this technology, when you can destroy enemy societies with it. Seems to be the line of thinking for last 50 years of technological development.

Ooh, the race is on

There is a UK company, working with ESA, designing a hybrid jet/rocket engine called SABRE. The initial plan for SABRE and the Skylon spaceship it is designed to fit into is for cheap orbital insertions, but there are other applications including hypersonic passenger aircraft.

www.reactionengines.co.uk...

Although the US seem to be a few steps ahead with their flight test.. Hope it goes well It's about time, to be honest..

reply to post by g146541
Are you a 'salt racer' or a quarter mile junkie?

Originally posted by stumason
Ooh, the race is on

There is a UK company, working with ESA, designing a hybrid jet/rocket engine called SABRE. The initial plan for SABRE and the Skylon spaceship it is designed to fit into is for cheap orbital insertions, but there are other applications including hypersonic passenger aircraft.
www.reactionengines.co.uk...
Although the US seem to be a few steps ahead with their flight test.. Hope it goes well

It's about time, to be honest..

I always love a good healthy competition. UK & US go way back when it comes to technology sharing including crucial projects. Good luck to the chase

One must wonder what is the potential for the production of such a craft.
I can't think of a single reason that makes sense for military or especially commercial use.
I mean, we have missiles, right, and manned bombers are shortly to disappear?

But then, I can easily recall the massive triangle craft I saw in '89 moving low, slow and silently.
I assume that it wouldn't even need an airfield larger than its own size or a fuel truck to follow it around.
Now, who did that craft belong to?

'Course, maybe it was an alien craft as some like to think, and we really do need this super-duper scramjet thingy.

Originally posted by hp1229
reply to post by g146541

 

Are you a 'salt racer' or a quarter mile junkie?

NO NO NO!!
After 70 I get edgy!
I used to love bikes but as I got older and fatter and slower, that became a nogo.

Coastal Californians would be wise to keep their ears open tomorrow afternoon.

These are the machines that have caused the 'super sonic booms' out over the pacific.

With five minutes of scheduled flight time, this baby should get moving pretty good.

Originally posted by Wide-Eyes
Coincidentally, I was thinking only yesterday, 'why has there not been another supersonic/hypersonic passanger jet since Concord?' It's not like Supersonic jets are new tech...

Because they just cost too much - to develop, to run, to maintain - they aren't worth it in an age of cheap mass travel.

Originally posted by g146541
Originally posted by hp1229
reply to post by g146541
Are you a 'salt racer' or a quarter mile junkie?

NO NO NO!!

After 70 I get edgy!

I used to love bikes but as I got older and fatter and slower, that became a nogo.

Not me. I love to ride and still manage to catch a few rides here n there but the facts that I have 2 toddlers and a wife is keeping me off the 2 wheeler most of the times thats sitting the garage

we have not really come far have we...the x-15 was and did reach mach 4 back in 1961....but we have not had an aircraft reach these speeds again i believe...i could be wrong.

X - 15
Hypersonic Research
at the Edge of Space

This joint program by NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and North American operated the most remarkable of all the rocket research aircraft. Composed of an internal structure of titanium and a skin surface of a chrome-nickel alloy known as Inconel X, the X-15 had its first, unpowered glide flight on June 8, 1959, while the first powered flight took place on September 17, 1959. Because of the large fuel consumption of its rocket engine, the X-15 was air launched from a B-52 aircraft at about 45,000 ft and speeds upward of 500 mph. The airplane first set speed records in the Mach 4-6 range with Mach 4.43 on March 7, 1961; Mach 5.27 on June 23, 1961; Mach 6.04 on November 9, 1961; and Mach 6.7 on October 3, 1967. It also set an altitude record of 354,200 feet (67 miles) on August 22, 1963, and provided an enormous wealth of data on hypersonic air flow, aerodynamic heating, control and stability at hypersonic speeds, reaction controls for flight above the atmosphere, piloting techniques for reentry, human factors, and flight instrumentation. The highly successful program contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo piloted spaceflight programs as well as the Space Shuttle program. The program's final flight was performed on October 24, 1968

NASA

strange It does almost seem we have gone backwards...also since the loss of concord....It does make one wonder if things have been put on hold a bit since the moon programs....wonder why that is...did we get our pee pees whacked and told to back off?

I find this quote in the graphic a little disconcerting.

After five minutes of flight the engines cut out and the craft falls to Earth to break up in the Pacific.

That would put a whole new meaning to the term "rough landing".

In all honesty though, I think this would have more of a military application than a passenger service. Still, it's fun to think of the possibilities.

Originally posted by plube
NASA

strange It does almost seem we have gone backwards...also since the loss of concord....It does make one wonder if things have been put on hold a bit since the moon programs....wonder why that is...did we get our pee pees whacked and told to back off?

Like I said - it's just freakin' expensive.

the X-15 was a rocket - we still make rockets that fly that fast - every shuttle, every Arianne, etc - and now they are a lot more reliable than the X-15

this programme is about trying to make an air-breathing engine to fly hypersonically - the technical problems are vastly more difficult than "simply" blowing up some volatile fuel in a semi-englosed space - the dynamics of reducing airflow velocity to a speed where you can actually burn something, and then using that to generate useful thrust at Mach 5+ are not jsut a matter of chucking a bucket of fuel into a drum.

See scramjet

But of course that is the real world....so of little concern to many on here!

Aurora-realized?

The fact that it miserably failed after spending a fortune, makes me wonder if they had other motives altogether and 'deployed' something into the atmosphere and hiding behind 'launch of mach 6'. If they had secretly launched it, they would have a million and one questions to answer to the public and media.