X-51A Waverider -- this thing is AWSOME

[The Infidel]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZUwKX3_uE4]YouTube - X-51A Waverider Record Breaking Hypersonic Mach 5 Flight[/ame]

AP - Associated Press
Thu May 27, 6:21 am ET

WASHINGTON – An experimental aircraft has set a record for hypersonic flight, flying more than 3 minutes at Mach 6 — six times the speed of sound.

The X-51A Waverider was released from a B-52 Stratofortress off the southern California coast Wednesday morning, the Air Force reported on its website. Its scramjet engine accelerated the vehicle to Mach 6, and it flew autonomously for 200 seconds before losing acceleration. At that point the test was terminated.

The Air Force said the previous record for a hypersonic scramjet burn was 12 seconds.

[Related: Secret X-37B space plane spotted by amateur skywatchers]

"We are ecstatic to have accomplished many of the X-51A test points during its first hypersonic mission," said Charlie Brink, an X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

"We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War II jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines," Brink said.

The Waverider was built for the Air Force by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing Co.

Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said, "This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation."

Four X-51A cruisers have been built for the Air Force, and the remaining three will be tested this fall.

"No test is perfect," Brink said, "and I'm sure we will find anomalies that we will need to address before the next flight."

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says dat ain't no good - who wants to fly inna plane dat's gonna break apart?...

WaveRider hypersonic jet targets Mach 6
14 August 2012 - The aircraft will break into pieces at the end of its flight

Hypersonic jet WaveRider is to undergo another test flight above the Pacific Ocean aiming to reach Mach 6. At this speed - more than 4,300mph (6,900km/h) - it could travel from London to New York in about an hour. The project is funded by the Pentagon and Nasa, and is part of plans to develop faster missiles. During a test in June 2011, WaveRider travelled at Mach 5, but failed to reach the target speed. It is one of several projects currently under way to create a hypersonic aircraft. The research could also be used to build a commercial plane, able to reach much higher speeds than today's jets, after Concorde was decommissioned in 2003.

Five-minute flight

A B-52 bomber will lift the wingless unmanned jet from US Edwards Air Force Base in California to 50,000 feet (15,250m). The craft will then be dropped, and after a free fall of about four seconds, its engine is supposed to ignite. X-51A WaveRider should then climb to 70,000ft (21,300m) and eventually reach Mach 6. The Mach number is the ratio of the speed of an object to the speed of sound. Mach 1 is the speed of sound - approximately 768mph, depending on various factors including temperature and altitude.

So Mach 6 is six times the speed of sound. Concorde's cruising speed was Mach 2 - it flew from London to New York in just over three hours. The WaveRider test flight is expected to last for about five minutes. At the end of it, the aircraft will break into pieces and fall into the Pacific. The test is essentially a repeat of last summer's attempt, when the hypersonic aircraft reached Mach 5, but the engine failed to attain full power.

Concorde's legacy?

European aerospace and defence giant EADS believes that hypersonic passenger flights are likely to appear in the near future. In 2011, EADS presented its own concept of a commercial high-speed aircraft designed to fly at Mach 4. "The business community who wanted to be in New York in three hours made Concorde highly viable, and now there's interest on both sides of the Atlantic to jump a generation and go from supersonic flight to hypersonic flight," EADS' vice-president of business development, Peter Robbie, told the BBC. "Such an aircraft will be very expensive, of course, because of the enormous amounts of energy that is required to get to such speeds. "But the idea of going from Tokyo to Paris in two-and-a-half hours is very attractive for the business and political community - and I think that by about 2050, there may be a viable commercial aircraft."

In August 2011, US military scientists attempted to get another unmanned hypersonic experimental aircraft to reach Mach 20 - 20 times the speed of sound. However, they lost contact with the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) after it had separated from its rocket.

BBC News - WaveRider hypersonic jet targets Mach 6

See also:

Imagine flying from New York to London in under an hour
August 14th, 2012 - Perhaps Han Solo said it best in Star Wars when, describing his hyper-fast smuggling spaceship the Millennium Falcon, he said, "It may not look like much, but it's got it where it counts."

While the Air Force might take exception to being likened to the Falcon, in reality the platypus-nosed X-51A Waverider hypersonic flight test vehicle really doesn't look like much. But it definitely has it where it counts. On Tuesday, the unmanned 25-foot-long vehicle will be dropped off of the wing of a converted B-52 bomber off the California coast and try to fly for 300 seconds at science fiction-like speeds of Mach 6, over 4,500 mph - fast enough to fly from New York to London in less than an hour. It is the Pentagon's latest test as it studies the possibilities of hypersonic flight, defined as moving at speeds of Mach 5 (about 3,400 mph) and above without leaving the atmosphere. The technology could eventually bring missiles or airplanes to the other side of the planet in minutes instead of hours.

The Air Force and the Pentagon are not saying much about Tuesday's test, but the military could use such technology for reconnaissance aircraft, cruise missile-like weapons or vehicles that could carry people or cargo so fast adversaries would not have time to react, according to military analysts. The Air Force conceived the X-51A program in 2004 and, according to the military analysis website Globalsecurity.org, the service has spent $140 million on the Waverider system. The Air Force will not disclose the actual cost of the program. Long like a missile and with just a few fins in the rear, the Boeing-built aircraft is not designed as a bed for a weapon, according to the Air Force, but it is testing the technology to build future weapons around.

Past Waverider flights have come with mixed results. In May 2010, the Waverider made its first flight at 3,500 mph for 143 seconds before a malfunction caused the test to shut down early. A June 2011 test also was shutdown early but did collect some data for the Air Force. If all goes as planned, the flight Tuesday will end with a dive into the Pacific; there is no intent to recover the aircraft. The Air Force says the program was designed for each vehicle to be destroyed at the end of its flight test because of the cost that would be involved in recovering them. Data is fed back to evaluators during the test. The Pentagon considers hypersonic flight the new stealth. The technology could move reconnaissance or bomber aircraft at high altitudes and speeds that put them far out of the reach of surface-to-air missiles or other anti-aircraft fire. The kind of speeds the X-51A is able to reach cannot be achieved with current jet-powered technology.

The aircraft uses "scramjet" technology, an engine with virtually no moving parts. It uses oxygen from the atmosphere for its engines, as opposed to carrying large fuel tanks that rockets require, making it a more efficient vehicle for military or commercial purposes. Additionally, because of the high speeds the vehicle is also able to ride on the shockwave it creates at six times the speed of sound, increasing efficiency, according to an Air Force factsheet on the X-51A. It says that is also the genesis of the vehicle's nickname, the Waverider. The Pentagon's high-technology research group, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says getting aircraft to speeds of Mach 20 - which would enable the military to get anywhere in the world in under an hour - is an area of research where significant scientific advancements have eluded researchers for decades.

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[Mad Scientist]

Was the guy recording that video Darth Vader or was he just masturbating?

"Oh yeah, good release!"
"Booster rocket!"
Ahhhhh, Supersonic!"

 

[Douger]

They should put a chair on the nose for Duh Pope to ride on.