X-43A reaches mach 10!

nasa recently tested out their x-43a scramjet and it reached a speed of nearly 7,000 mph! do you think we could ever incorporate the scramjet concept into a commercial jet? if so would it fall to the same fate of the concord?
yahoo news article

external image

For such a great achievement there are very few updates on the major news sites...

thats exactly what i was thinking, i was trying to find more info or photos but there isnt too much coverage of it.

My only thought on the lack of video is that NOTHING could keep up with it (lol). It does aggervate me that NASA chose to let that much money just spash into the ocean... (No recovery planned???)

ive been waiting for this for a while and now that were at speeds of 7,000 miles an hour how about using on of these sucker to fly over north korea and drop a nuke on them. theyll never know what hit therm

going that speed i wouldent be suprised if we missed n korea and accidentally bombed japan again!

ICBMs take only about 45 minutes to hit anywhere in the world from the midwest.

Mach 10 is for the Aurora to figure out where to target

Hey....Where did the funding for this come from? And who decides, now that this is the third one, if there will be a forth?
I read on the drudge yesturday that the mission was set for yesturday but something went wrong and they had to re-schedule for this a.m.
Any research info anybody? Who manufactured it? ect? And also is there a cover up for what thier intentions really are with such a craft?

i belive their intentions are to somewhat replace rockets for space travel. since the scramjet does not need on-board oxidizers (because it takes in and compresses o2 on its own) the weight is greatly decreased. however they do need some sort "push" from a rocket to bring it up to speed for the feature to "kick in".

That was one of Nasa's goals, but I wouldn't expect it any sooner then 2040.



Theres tons of info on it. I watched it on Nasa TV live, they had an hour long live part, so if ya have the internet no matter where you live you could have watched it.
heres Nasa site on the X-43 (Hyper-X).
X-43a


There quit abit of video, I watched it live on Nasa TV, and this one was way better then the last one because they had this cool real time computer program that they showed, it showed a virtual version of the X-43 while in flight and next to it they showed the altitude and mach number and other things, it was sweet to see.
Whats to recover? These are data projects only, since the craft is not reusable theres no need to pull it out of the ocean just to throw it away. The had a jet (F-18 I believe) that was next to the B-52, and when they lit up the pegesus rocket it followed it until the video feed went bad so then they showed it from the P-3's camera which showed it in much better detail, and once it got high they showed that real time computer program. They also have video of it seperating from the rocket, but have not aired it yet (that i'v seen), they will show that and reveal more data in coming days.


From us, it came out of Nasa's budget. NO, they only built 3, the first one was to go mach 5 but failed the second one hit mach 7 and now they just hit there mach 10 target.
Nasa built it, with help from others like Boeing.
As for cover-ups.....I believe the airforce has or is working on a scramjet bomber so the USAF put pressure on Nasa and congress to cut the funding for its add-ons, the X-43B and the X-43C, which would have been damn impressive.


Nasa knows that they cant just use scramjets to get to space, so I think they will (distant future) have a built in rocket to get them up to speed and then switch to the scramjet engine then while that ones stops functioning around mach 20, it will them switch back to its rocket engine to give it that extra boost it will need to get into space.

thanks for the info, murcielago!

Great achievement!!

If I remember correctly few other countries are also researching the scramjet/ramjet method(Japan,Australia etc.)

Any info on that? Which countries and how much progress have they made?
Im sure the brits and french will be into it, considereing the retiring of the concorde as the only supersonic commmercial aircraft ever.

Also scramjets IMHO cannot be used for space travel because they also breathe oxygen. I thought they were for upper atmosphere gliding.Correct me if im wrnog

not sure on Japan, but i know that Australia is putting money into scramjets, I believe there building a mach 11 version, but it will be one with the rocket, in other words No Seperation.

and yes they scoop up the earths oxygen, so no, they can not be used for space travel, but with advancements they will be able to get you into LEO.

The HOTOL engine that BAe and Rolls Royce was working on was intended as a 'non-stop to orbit' powerplant. Apparently it worked like a normal jet for take-off and initial climb and then converted itself to a scramjet for high mach number atmospheric flight, all the while storing up the oxygen element needed for space flight before finally operating as a rocket in space. I do remember seeing that Rolls Royce ran a testbed engine successfully many years ago but I know neither how the hell it worked or what became of it.

Maybe google search will provide the answer but I'm tired and going to bed, maybe I'll pick up on this tomorrow

Its now official, the engine did work, it reached 9.8 mach, at almost 110,000 ft, and it broke its olf record of mach 6.8 which it got in March. Genis was on hand for this flight as well, so the mach 10 flight will be in the Genis Book of World records in 2005.