Free Republic

History has been made by Stratolaunch, a hypersonic flight test research company headquartered in Mojave, California. The fully autonomous Talon-A2, equipped with landing gear, has successfully exceeded speeds of Mach five and completed its second autonomous landing at Vandenburg Space Force Base. This mission documentary follows the first recovered flight of TA-2, the result of five years of effort and dedication marking a pivotal moment in sustainable hypersonic flight test for our country. Congratulations to the Stratolaunch team and partners on this success! Next steps: fly TA-2 again and again, increasing the cadence of hypersonic flight tests for the United...

From a distance, it looks like a war plane imagined by Hayao Miyazaki, or the type of machine that could only exist in a science fiction novel. But according to aviation enthusiasts who captured footage of it soaring in the California skies last week, it’s an experimental aircraft designed by Stratolaunch, an aerospace company located in the Mojave Desert. Chances are, residents in surrounding towns will see more of it, too. Described as the world’s largest flying aircraft, Roc — which looks like two 747s fused together and has a wingspan larger than a football field — recently completed a...

CHINA’S round-the-world hypersonic nuclear weapon fired a second missile while travelling five times faster than the speed of sound, reports claim. No country had previously been able to demonstrate this advanced engineering feat and the test is said to have caught Pentagon scientists off guard.... ...Experts at the Pentagon’s advanced research agency Darpa are said to be unsure how China achieved the feat, as scientists say it "tests the constraints of physics". Military experts are said to have been poring over the data to discover how it was achieved. They are also said to be discussing what the projectile might...

The United States military had to delay a test of its new hypersonic weapons system due to rocket failure, according to Reuters on Thursday. A booster rocket with a hypersonic glide body attached failed to launch during a test at Kodiak, Alaska, according to ABC News. The aborted launch was part of the joint 'Dark Eagle' program jointly run by the Army and Navy... ...It comes after it was revealed that China carried out a second test.. believed to have taken place on August 13