Posted on 03/09/2010 10:16:28 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The U.S. Air Force is gearing up for the first of four planned test flights of a hypersonic aircraft designed to operate for much longer durations and cover far greater distances than previous platforms of its type.
The maiden flight of the X-51 Waverider aircraft — the first U.S. hypersonic vehicle to fly in six years — is scheduled to take place later in March. Boeing Defense, Space & Security Systems of St. Louis has been developing the aircraft since 2003 on behalf of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The missile-shaped X-51 will be carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber, Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said in a Feb. 22 interview. It will be released from the jet over the Pacific Ocean and drop for four seconds until its rocket motor ignites and accelerates it to about 5,800 kilometers per hour, just shy of the widely accepted start of hypersonic flight at Mach 5, or about 6,100 kilometers per hour. At that point, its air-breathing scramjet — or supersonic combustion ramjet — engine, built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., will kick in, shooting the craft to Mach 6, or more than 7,400 kilometers per hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Hypersonic ping.
BTTT
great....the govt now owns two car companies and an airplane manufacturer owns the govt....might as well since no other companies can match the “standards” being set by the AF.....one wonders why.....
Staff Sgt. Jonathan Young with the 412th Maintenance Group prepares to upload the X-51A WaveRider hypersonic flight test vehicle to a B-52 for fit testing at Edwards Air Force. The Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, and Boeing are partnering on the X-51A technology demonstrator program. (U.S. Air Force photo/Chad Bellay)
Forgive me for my ignorance here, but I have a stupid question:
Why is supersonic speed necessary to be able to venture into space?
I mean, if I could fly a Piper Cub in a straight line up to a height of, say, 25,000’, what would prevent me from going even higher, especially when you consider the fact that the earth’s gravitational pull on the plane will diminish the higher you go?
I’m just curious, OK?
The thinner the air, the less lift, less oxidizer, less progress until stall. I think you forgot the /sarc tag.
You might want to read something about escape velocity.
I warned you that it was a stupid question. :-)
One day my grandchildren will come running into my home and after I sit them down for cookies they will ask me if men not robots really flew planes.
Thank you...I’ll check it out then. Where do you suggest that I look...Wikipedia isn’t a trusted source for info, is it?
If you had enough air pressure up there for the prop to work against, you could go higher in your Cessna, but you would never go fast enough to keep from falling back to earth once you ran out of gas...
If you could get your Cessna up to a bit over Mach 34 before running out of fuel, you would be going fast enough to keep going up and not fall back.
There are a number of reasons why a Cessna would be a poor choice of vehicle for the attempt, though, even if you happened have a few dozen JATO bottles to strap onto it... (Flying apart before it reached Mach 1, for one...)
Even though diminished, the tug from gravity is still constant, even very high above the atmosphere.
Without some opposing force (centrifugal force) , The Space Station and all satellites would already have come crashing back down to Earth.
Same reason the Moon isn't locked into one spot in the sky. It must move round the Earth fast enough to keep from being pulled back into the Earth.
You can go ahead with Wikipedia, but make sure you look at their citation websites, so that you can have an idea whether the facts are authentic or not.
Wikipedia is generally excellent for starters-level scientific stuff.
I’ll take two.
They will be alfalfa-carob-granola wafers served with soy-protein faux dairy beverage.
(Paid for with a swipe of your government implanted biometric palm chip.)
That Piper Cub needs air to function, and so do you.
They will be alfalfa-carob-granola wafers served with soy-protein faux dairy beverage.
If by all that jazz you mean Soylent Green than yes.
Since others have already tackled the escape velocity aspect let me delve into Wiki. Wikipedia has had some negative press (from both sides of the aisle, usually following an entry that makes the Repub or Dem side a little 'unsettled'), and there are a FEW real issues (primary being that anyone can make a change to an entry). However, overall it is an extremely helpful resource, considering that at an entry-level (and in quite a good number of cases even moderate/medium level) it is very good. It would only be a problem if someone based 100% of what they know from Wiki, but as a starting point, reference point, bridging, etc etc etc it is a very good resource for those who, unlike me, did not sleep with encyclopedias (LOL). Now, as for the fact that anyone can change ...well, that is true and a weakness. However it is not as bad a weakness as some make it, since the same way you can say Reagan was a b!t$h I can come and change that entry into something veritable, and then report abuse meaning that future changes are not messed. A good example is the Wiki entry for FreeRepublic ....if Wiki was as messed as some claim it is, the page would be filled with nonsense. As it stands, it is quite accurate (even the parts about banning members, having lived through at least 3 seperate purges since I joined quite a number of years back). Sure, the odd DUmmie member can try and make a change, but such do not last long before someone changes it back.
Wiki is not a fool-proof site, but then again there is no fool proof site. Even my encyclopedias as a child could get things wrong ...or skewed. As for people being able to make changes ...that is a weakness, but it is also a solution to that weakness since someone will take out the dross statements.
As a starting point for research that is NOT too serious, or a bridging gap to fill in some vacuous spaces, Wikipedia is quite good. It is only a problem (and asinine) if you are basing all or most of your perspective on it, in much the same way that it would be ludicrous to base one's perspective solely on what one reads on FreeRepublic.
The Piper Cub engine breathes air... once you go high enough, it starts coughing and wheezing just like those climbers going up Mt Everest.
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