NASA Testing Supersonic X-51A Jet Tomorrow

First time accepted submitter littlesparkvt writes "The NASA and the Pentagon's experimental aircraft could go from NY to London in about an hour. With a cost of 140 million dollars USD. During the test the X51-A will reach speeds of 1700 meters a second and climb to an altitude of 70,000 feet."

Comments

Cost

[Hydrated Wombat]

Still costs less than a F22 Raptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor

Re:Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Still costs less than a F22 Raptor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor

That's probably because the F-22 is an operational aircraft capable of take-off/landing under its own power and houses a human pilot (among many other things).

Re:Cost

[bolthole]

UNLIKE the f22- raptor, though, this is basically an "unmanned vehicle". The title implies "jet aircraft" )ie: passenger vehicle) to most people, but in reality, this is not much more than "an oversized, air-launched missile".

Which makes it sadly way less interesting

Re:Cost

[R3d M3rcury]

This isn't a jet-plane. It's a fucking missile.

Okay. So it could blow up London in about an hour.

Re:Cost

[amiga3D]

It's really just a test bed for scramjet research. It's a long way to an actual manned version.

Re:Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

But it will still take NBC 6 hours to report it.

Re:Cost

[BadgerRush]

No, they are crashing the f22's into the desert

Re:Cost

[jamstar7]

Sounds to me like they could use a few dozen Russian engineers.

The way the Russkis used to do things was, design and build a prototype with all the bells and whistles and kitchen sink. Get it working. Then re-engineer it back to something a goat herder in Kazikstan could use with 5 minutes' training. Case in point? The MiG-23. They could crank them out for a cost of about 3.3 mil per, when the nearest Western equivilent was the Kfir C2 coming in at 4.5 mil and the F16 at 14. They used aircraft grade aluminum and stainless steel where Western aircraft were using titanium. They couldn't engage as many targets, but you could have 90%+ of them available to fly at a moment's notice where maintanance cycles grounded up to 2/3rds of the F16s at a time.

Re:Cost

[ozmanjusri]

Or you could compare it to something similar:

The original University of Queensland's HyShot hypersonic tests were done for less than $2 million. Even better well-funded followup flights were around $4.5 million.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1127540.htm

Re:Cost

[SplashMyBandit]

Correct. Turns out that the 'Raptor' problem is, in fact, related to incorrect inflation of the "Combat Edge" chest corset of G-suits. This incorrect inflation also occurred on F-15s and F-16s but no one noticed. Only on the F-22 was it noticed/significant.

Just in case you think I'm full of shit, here's a citation quoting USAF sources:
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/08/01/air-force-confident-f22-oxygen-riddle-solved.html

With that (apparently 20-year old) problem solved, Raptor is back in the air and back to Top Dog.

1700 miles a *second* ???

[gaspar ilom]

> 1700 miles a second

This is obviously a mis-print, right?

Re:1700 miles a *second* ???

[similar_name]

Warp .01 sound way cooler.

Re:1700 miles a *second* ???

[jbeaupre]

Nope. It's correct. They are launching over the Pacific ocean. They expect it to disappear off the left side of the map and reappear on the right side of the map about 14 seconds later. 24,000 miles divided by 14 seconds gives you 1700 miles/sec.

Maybe they should use a globe.

Another article with more background...

[daveschroeder]

...is here

Re:1700 miles a second?????

[Sparkio]

Mach 5 = 1,701.45 m / s... still pretty crazy fast - LA to NY in ~42 minutes - but no, not LA to NY in 2 seconds. Methinks someone plugged it into google and thought 'hey, m must mean miles, right?'

Re:Math

[fustakrakich]

You have to account for jet lag.

Re:1700 miles a second?????

[R3d M3rcury]

Mach 5 = 1,701.45 m / s

Yup. m = miles, s = seconds. That's 1700 miles per second.

I mean, what else could m possibly stand for? There's only one unit of measurement that starts with the letter 'm'...

Re:1700 miles a second?????

[R3d M3rcury]

m is metre moron

It's an American missile. Why would they be talking in weird foreign measurements? I mean, "metre"?! R before E? Who spells like that? Sounds like some kind of cheese-eatin' surrender-monkey socialist kind of measurement. Certainly not the kind of measurement that freedom lovin' people from the Good ol' USA would use.

So there you have it. 1700 miles per second. That'll put the fear of God into those godless commies.

(I was going to mark my original post as sarcasm but I thought, "Nah. People will get it.")

Re:huray for proofreading

[hargrand]

Dad: Max, why does the word "wing" appear twice in this sentence?

Max (6yrs old): Because the B-52 has two wings.

It's not supersonic, it's hypersonic

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Above Mach 5 or so you have to start considering different physics about the air flow.