Posted on 06/30/2015 1:54:10 PM PDT by Red Badger
The U.S. military is reportedly developing a hypersonic jet plane that could soar at up to five times the speed of sound — faster than a bullet, which generally travels at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound.
The new hypersonic vehicle, which could take flight by 2023, builds upon research from a 2013 test flight of an experimental hypersonic vehicle, the X-51A Waverider, according to Military.com.
The $300 million X-51A program began in 2004. The program's final test flight occurred May 1, 2013, when the unmanned Waverider reached a top speed of Mach 5.1 (more than five times the speed of sound) in just over six minutes, before it was intentionally crashed into the Pacific Ocean. At the time, U.S. Air Force officials said the flight was the longest-ever for a hypersonic vehicle of its kind. [Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets]
During the 2013 test flight, the hypersonic jet was released from a B-52H Stratofortress at an altitude of 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). After separation, the Waverider accelerated to Mach 4.8 in just 26 seconds, powered by a solid rocket booster. The hypersonic jet separated from the rocket at an altitude of 60,000 feet (18,300 m), eventually reaching Mach 5.1 with its air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet (or scramjet) engine.
"X-51 was really a proof of concept test. It showed that you could get a scram jet engine, launch it off an aircraft and it could go hypersonic," Mica Endsley, the Air Force's chief scientist, told Military.com. "It was able to go more than Mach 5 until it ran out of fuel. It was a very successful test of an airborne hypersonic weapons system."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
The plasma front may be protective against lasers !
We don’t know what the Military Industrial Complex is developing at any given moment from the Skunk Works. They may be working on a ‘futuristic’ engine that will go Mach 10 for all we know right now. Or a Anti-Gravity device that will make all other forms of transport obsolete, who knows?..........................
When they first introduced the f 86 in korea, it would dive fast enough on a power on dive to catch up to and run into it’s own fired bullets.
Here is a great technical publication on Hyperburners and the development of Hypersonics:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050196667.pdf
Now I have the opening theme stuck in my head....
Occasionally I can find it in espanol on Univision here, “Donde esta Corredor X?”
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