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DARPA Hypersonic Vehicle Splash Down Confirmed

Posted by Unknown on from the you-win-this-time-robotnik dept.

dtmos writes "DARPA has announced that its Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 flight on Thursday, 11 August, 'experienced a flight anomaly post perigee and into the vehicle's climb. The anomaly prompted the vehicle's autonomous flight safety system to use the craft's aerodynamic systems to make a controlled descent and splash down into the ocean.' 'According to a preliminary review of the data collected prior to the anomaly encountered by the HTV-2 during its second test flight,' said DARPA Director Regina Dugan, 'HTV-2 demonstrated stable aerodynamically controlled Mach 20 hypersonic flight for approximately three minutes. It appears that the engineering changes put into place following the vehicle's first flight test in April 2010 were effective. We do not yet know the cause of the anomaly for Flight 2.'"

3 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Re:meanwhile... by SomePgmr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If it makes you feel any better, there's an investigation pending for Darpa surrounding this (and presumably other) contracts. I guess the woman that heads up the agency is in bed with one of their major outside contractors, RedX. Better details here... http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/16/nation/la-na-defense-contracts-20110817

  2. Re:meanwhile... by wygit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think you might be a touch confused about the meaning of the word "research".

    If the crap was working, we wouldn't need to spend money on figuring out how to make it work.

    I agree we need to re-prioritize our spending, but I would much rather see us cutting things like the billions we give to the oil companies, or maybe if we're going to have medicare pay for prescriptions, we do like every other industrialized country in the world and negotiate with the pharma companies, instead of just giving them whatever they want to charge like we do.

  3. wow by aquabat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Holy fuck! Mach 20? I scan slashdot regularly, but I somehow missed this story developing. I think the really cool thing about this is how the onboard systems allowed it to make a controlled splashdown. I bet no pilot in the world could deadstick a landing like that from that kind of speed. This is probably the beginning of the end for the fighter pilots.

    --
    A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.