Posted on 08/15/2012 11:23:51 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The dreams of being able to fly from New York to London in under an hour are once again put on hold, as the latest effort to fly at over five times the speed of sound has ended in failure.
A US Air Force test of a missile that is supposed to travel at six times the speed of sound has ended in failure when the vehicle went out of control and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.
It is still unclear what went wrong with the test flight. However, it joins a long list of failed hypersonic flights that shows just how difficult it is to reach these so-called hypersonic speeds.
The X-51 WaveRider - an air vehicle powered by a scramjet, a supersonic combustion engine, was dropped from a B-52 bomber off the coast of southern California on Tuesday. It was supposed to be propelled by a solid-rocket booster, then ignite its scramjet engine to reach speeds of up to Mach 6.
The X-51 is one of several military test programmes aimed at building an air vehicle that can travel at hypersonic speeds, usually defined as Mach 5 or above. Tuesday’s flight was the last of three planned tests of the X-51, a vehicle that was supposed to demonstrate the feasibility of a hypersonic missile.
But even building a test vehicle has proved difficult: the first X-51 flight test was cut short due to a flight anomaly, and the second test failed after the vehicle didn’t separate from its rocket, as planned. Yesterday’s failure is likely to raise even more questions about the future of hypersonic efforts. “Hypersonics test and evaluation is extremely unforgiving of miscalculation and error,” says Richard Hallion, a former senior advisor to the Air Force, and a leading expert on hypersonics.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Ping
Green fuel?
The WaveRider crashed by California? Some gnarly waves, dude.
It took Edison over 6,000 tries to get a light bulb to burn right.
Assumed the test flight was unmanned.
Assumed the test flight was unmanned.
Materials, Materials, Materials, do not let the ChiComs get their hands on what is left...
Thank you for the ping. I appreciate it.
Drat! Lost another one..., as far as we know. ;^)
Yes. Unmanned.
They need some better di-lithium cystals.
Roll your window down at 50 MPH and stick your hand outside and wave the palm up and down. Now imagine doing that at 5 times th speed of sound.
Just a little wiggle from the guidance will send that thing into some crazy spin.
Edison didn't have sophisticated computer modeling and hypersonic wind tunnels.
And it didn't cost taxpayers a billion dollars every time he tried.
Good thing it was BEFORE the flight began, because whatever they would have recovered woulddn’t have been very man-like after a hypersonic crash.
If you ask me....
"What is this? A center for ants? How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read... if they can't even fit inside the building?"
-- Derek Zoolander
True. Very true. Extremely true: It didn't cost the taxpayers anything because he was doing it on his own (well, with a team he paid for). Just like today, when most R & D that's worth doing is being done in the private sector.
Except for this mach-6 whirlygig.
Understand. But I think we do need to give the some room for error. The things they are trying to do are not easy.
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