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Mach 6 Test Aircraft Set For Trials

Posted by Soulskill on from the fly-her-apart-then dept.

coondoggie writes "The aspiration that jets may someday fly at over six times the speed of sound took a very real step toward reality recently, as the US Air Force said it successfully married the test aircraft, known as the X-51A WaveRider, to a B-52 in preparation for a Dec. 2 flight test. The X-51A flight tests are intended to demonstrate that the engines can achieve their desired speed without disintegrating. While the X-51 looks like a large rocket now, its applications could change the way aircraft or spaceships are designed, fly into space, support reconnaissance missions and handle long-distance flight operations. At the heart of the test is the aircraft's air-breathing hypersonic scramjet system."

7 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by voss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Engines reaching desired speed without disintegrating....thats a GOOD feature to have.

  2. With lube strip by imashination · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mach 6, how blades is that?

  3. "the aircraft's air-breathing hypersonic scramjet" by MRe_nl · · Score: 4, Funny

    WHOOOSH!

    (ducks)

    --
    "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
  4. Rockets vs Scramjets by sanman2 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Rocket supporters say that it's better to clear the atmosphere asap, and accelerate cleanly in a frictionless environment. Scramjet supporters say it's better to accelerate inside the atmosphere as much as possible to exploit its available oxygen, rather than carrying it as extra weight.

    Which costs more energy - carrying the extra O2, or overcoming the friction from having to accelerate in an atmosphere? Which imposes more design compromises?

    Which would be more economical in the long run? Bear in mind that there are 2 kinds of people that need to achieve very high velocities -- astronauts trying to make orbit and intercontinental travelers trying to get to the other side of the world.

  5. Titanium may well get cheaper by PeterM+from+Berkeley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Recent advances in the production of titanium may bring this metal into wide use in airframes. And everything else.

  6. Re:Not for aircraft. by moosesocks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The concorde was profitable in its last years (not extremely profitable, but it made money, which is more than most airlines can currently say).

    In the end, its operators decided it wasn't worth maintaining/refurbishing the planes, scrapped the program, and wouldn't let competitors purchase the unused aircraft. Richard Branson allegedly made several serious offers for the planes, all of which were rejected. Numerous allegations have been made that the grounding of the Concorde fleet was a result of a conspiracy between Airbus and the airlines (unsubstantiated, but certainly plausible, especially in light of their refusal to sell the craft to other carriers at a time when the company was losing money)

    In short, we got lazy and stupid.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  7. Re:That's fine for the Air Force, but ... by D+Ninja · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hmmm...I'm reading my post, and I don't mean to say that it would be great 9/11 would still happen. Don't get me wrong - 9/11 sucked and I would never want that to happen again. But, when I say "what's great" is the fact that nobody seemed to stop and think about how pointless many/most of the security measures actually are. (AKA, I was attempting sarcasm and it definitely did not come through...my apologies.)