Posted on 06/06/2010 4:09:01 AM PDT by valkyry1
Boeing's X-51 WaveRider has made aviation history by completing the longest ever supersonic* combustion ramjet-powered flight. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flew for almost three and a half minutes in the skies off the southern California coast on Wednesday, reaching an altitude of about 70,000 feet and hitting hypersonic (Mach 5) speeds.
The X-51 WaveRider scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is being developed for the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.
The goal of the program is to create a free-flying, scramjet-powered vehicle capable of operating continuously on jet fuel and achieving continuous hypersonic speeds - a challenge which program officials compare to "lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it burning."
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmag.com ...
Now, what we need is an administration who sees this as a blessing, rather than a curse.
I want one.
//Now, what we need is an administration who sees this as a blessing, rather than a curse//
Well that is the question isn’t it.
Yes the B52 is fantastic!, and then there was the B-70.
Hopefully this leads to reduced travel times around the world that have not been improved for almost 40 years.
Of course, traveling at Mach 5 would be a thrill all its own.
one of these crashed, the other is in a museum, but the parts for the third one just disappeared....me thinks the cia build it and is using it to launch recoverable spacecraft for space intellegence gathering...
My grandfather let me sit in B52 cockpit way back in 65. Never forgot the salutes!
Agree, long one of my favorites, The XB-70 was another victim of the “missle idiots” of the AF. Would have led to a fine SST as well.
Have you proofread your tag line lately?
It looks Photoshopped, I didn’t do it though. I was actually looking to put a picture of a jet ski (wave running) up, but this one caught my eye.
Your the first one to catch the misspelling. Thanks.
“Hopefully this leads to reduced travel times around the world that have not been improved for almost 40 years.”
The eventual spin-offs could possibly lead to reduced travel times for humans but the first application will be for high-speed kinetic kill missiles.
The main issue is that you have to be flying pretty fast to light off a scramjet engine, hence the launch from a flying aircraft. It takes lots of fuel to get an airframe flying at high enough speeds to kick off the scramjet, so there are inherent problems which have to be resolved before you could have an airplane with this technology.
It’s a challenge to get any vehicle flying at those speeds, since there are issues of heat due to air friction and the guidance and control issues are monumental, too. This is a big step toward some new technologies for the future.
I know we won't be going Mach 5 on United Airlines anytime soon, but the technology may help develop other technologies to increase current speeds.
Pretty close to a mile a second.
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