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X-43A Mach 10 Mission Scrubbed For Today
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's third X-43A hypersonic research mission has been scrubbed for today due to technical glitches with X-43A instrumentation. When the issues were addressed, not enough time remained in the launch window."
I've never seen the word used this way.
e d
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scrubb
Well damn. I guess I'm just not terribly bright.
SpaceFlightNow's X-43 coverage
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It flew so fast that it traveled forward in time. Have you noticed that the X-43A has a little box attached. What do you think the little box does? (Reference to Primer movie)
... to have the day off "visiting the Black Mesa research facility" ;)
Is this like the space shuttle, where even if 99% of the components worked, the mission would still fail?
What 1% failed here?
Technical difficulty, sure.. I bet the pilot was busy getting laid or somthing. Pilots always get the women, especially when chicks know you fly a big powerful mach 10 jet!
I've had some doubts about this aircraft:
1) It cheats. It uses a booster rocket to get 90% of its velocity.
2) it's smaller than a car
So.... can the thing physically scale up enough to carry fuel and a seperate mode of propultion to reach the right altitude/speed, and have enough space to carry passengars and/or payload? Or, does its design specifically rely on being small?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
The NASA design is example 4 on the summary page and is quoted there as having a theoretical top speed of Mach 20.
The BBC has some good pics and information too.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So what if they would have spun for a few seconds before taking off.
Design by committee. Gauranteed to fail on their flagship product, but always careful with their experimental stuff.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
...technical glitches...and...Windows...and thought, "Oh, well, that explains it."
Mark parent as TROLL.
Delaying a mission because something needs sorting is not a failure. It's common sense. It's like you might, finding your moped tire a bit soft in the morning, delay your trip to the welfare office until you've gotten some air in it.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Unless it is entirely autonomous, it still has a pilot. I find it hard to believe though that they would put out a totally autonomous, mach 10 jet.
This 1 minute, 16 second narrated movie provides an overview of the X-43A as it prepares for a Mach 10 flight.
We've all heard about the short uptime of Windows, but this is ridiculous.
Go hug some trees.
The military and NASA cooperate on many areas of technology. A full scale test craft may already be flying out of Area 51. Certainly hypersonic technology is developed there.
when was the last time a nasa mission was on time?
Where's the X-303?
:D
I watch too much TV
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
Using a scramjet, when you want to get to orbit, is unreasonable even if it worked like bloody magic. The orbital vehicle would need *three* propulsion systems - one to get up to scramjet speeds, and one rocket to work after you left the atmosphere. That would put conflicting constraints on the vehicle, and a humongous weight penalty to carry all those engines.
A SSTO rocket would cost less and weigh less and have fewer parts. If we ever see scramjets, they'll probably carry bombs, not people.
I disagree. Mission launches ALWAYS have glitches. There are always delays, due to weather, technical problems, etc. It's just difficult for man, or machine, to keep up with the immense complexity of launching some heavy chunk of metal a couple hundred miles up.
So I think this delay doesn't really have much of an impact on NASA's reputation.
The speedometer only went up to Mach 8
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It looks very similar to the artists conceptual pictures of the Aurora I have seen over the years.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
You think mach 10 is fast. Well.. guess what... that's nothing. Mine goes to 11. It's one faster.
I don't want to take anything from Burt and his groups achievement, but ... taking the words from Simon on 'American Idull' -- "So what?". Burt used technology almost 40 years old, on a moderately novel design concept, popped the cork on his booster and stuck his nose into the lowest possible altitude, considered low earth orbit, for about 5 seconds total, and then came plummeting back to earth in a glider concept reminiscent of early shuttle designs. So what? I think that a private company with enough money should be able to achieve at the very least a low earth orbit altitude... I'm just surprised it's taken so long considering the technology available. In all honesty, NASA is yawning at their 'achievement'... put a man on the moon, land a rover on Mars... put a space station into orbit, and put people on it! Then lets get excited about Burt & Co. Personally I'm glad they did it, but put the success on the scale it deserves, and give credit to NASA for the amazing achievements that most folks never get to see. Hell... 90% of what NASA does feeds into US products in one form or other... anyone who'd like to challenge this feel free to... but first take a look sites like www.beowulf.org, or how about all the composite materials designed? There are tons of spin off products in your homes that you never knew got their origins in work done at NASA... and probably will go on living your lives never knowing about. But please, feel free to bash NASA and the work it does in the same ignorant fashion. I'm not going to bother modding what you wrote as troll... it would be a waste of mod points when there are so many interesting commentaries out there.
Quoting the last lines of TFA:
After a few seconds of jet operation, the final X-43A will enter into a glide, traveling about 850 miles before splashing down into the ocean, NASA said. The agency has no plans to recover the craft, which has been standard procedure with the scramjet tests.
Let's go boating out there tomorrow, we can pick up The Fastest Airplane In The World, abandoned by its previous owner!
Launching a monkey out of a cannon, to avoid technical glitches.
Would you prefer that after investing 230 million on a research vehicle, booster, ground crews, engineers, scientists, studies, etc. etc. etc.... would you prefer that NASA hurry the project up and launch a vehicle that wasn't 100% functional? I support NASA's decision to scrub for the day, and I look forward to watching the news tomorrow and see how the Mach 10 flight went. Good job NASA!
...discovering just how much of a waste of time and money that MCSE is. Welcome to your $14,000 tier-1 support role, and get used to it...you have noplace else to go. Except, of course, when they outsource it to some guy in Bangalore named Raj.
What launch window? Can B52's only fly 9 to 5 now? Does the autonomous drone punch a time clock and go home? Are they scared of bumping into all the other mach 10 aircraft wizzing around at 100,000 feet? wtf?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
See there, on the dial. Not 10, 11!
emt 377 emt 4
The underlying article is a day late. The test is currently happening.
Have a look at:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/x43a/status.html