NASA 'Hyper-X' Series Scramjets

swight1701 writes "Sciencedaily.com is reporting that NASA has revealed its plans for developing Hypersonic aircraft within 2 decades. These plans include planes that could routinely go Mach 5+ and capable of taking off from an airport and visiting the IIS, or for you earthbound folk, from one airport to any other within 2 hours. And you thought your luggage gets lost NOW.:)" NASA's release includes some graphics showing what the test vehicles look like.

Comments

Stupid designs.

[Mordant]

At those speeds, wings are a hindrance. One finds that the leading surfaces must be made of unobtanium.

The correct model for spacecraft is to take off and land on a tail of fire, as God and Robert Heinlein intended. The DC/X proved that; 11 successful test flights, including an 11-degree 'walking tilt', before NASA took over that program and (deliberately?) crashed the prototype on their first try with it.

Re:fa!

[Paul Neubauer]

Look at the early days of NASA. They sure blew up a lot of rockets then. I recall one book claiming someone quipped that if the first model didn't blow up on the pad, there was something nasty and unseen wrong with the design. (If it blows up it's still wrong and nasty, but at least you know to look for something amiss.)

But now rockets tend to get the job done more often than not. This new thing might be 'an airplane' but it's still a new thing and new things tend to not work the first time. There's process called learning involved. Sometimes, alas, it is terribly expensive.