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Air Force Sets Date To Fly Mach-6 Scramjet
coondoggie writes "The US Air Force said it was looking to launch its 14-foot long X-51A Waverider on its first hypersonic flight test attempt May 25. The unmanned X-51A is expected to fly autonomously for five minutes, after being released from a B-52 Stratofortress off the southern coast of California. The Waverider is powered by a supersonic combustion scramjet engine, and will accelerate to about Mach 6 as it climbs to nearly 70,000 feet. Once flying, the X-51 will transmit vast amounts of data to ground stations about the flight, then splash down into the Pacific. There are no plans to recover the flight test vehicle, one of four built, the Air Force stated."
quick! Nobody tell the Navy they've been using numerous nuclear powered aircraft carriers for earth bound travel for almost 50 years without incident!
moox. for a new generation.
Does anyone else think it is odd that the fastest plane in the world is still the SR-71, which came into service in 1964.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
If there was a plane faster than an SR-71, there's no guarantee that it would be public knowledge.
That said, a fast plane isn't as necessary for spying as it was in the 60's. Who knows what kind of crazy tech is out there doing the hard spy work now, the geek in me hopes that there's something more interesting than satellites...
They have had this in France for years. France is largely nuclear powered and sells electricity to it's neighbors. The train is a very sensible tech platform - uses existing rail lines for up to 140mph, and can go up to 200mph on specially graded track. I took the TGV from Paris to Marseille - a few hours for what would have been a six or seven hour drive and at least 3 or 4 hours through an airport.
Most Americans have no idea how convenient rail travel is. I bought my ticket 10 minutes before the train left, and a few minutes after boarding I was enjoying a cup of coffee while I sat in the equivalent of first class on an airplane for about $50. I had a table, a full size restroom nearby, and dining car at my disposal. If you've really got the dough or don't have the time, you can walk on without a ticket and pay the conductor the highest rate.
Planes are still the way to go for cross-continental travel, but a regional electric train system is a no brainer. Well, if you have a society that wants reality based solutions instead of empty rhetoric like "Drill, baby, drill."