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Boeing's X-51 WaveRider Jet Crashes In Mach 6 Attempt
An anonymous reader writes "Boeing's experimental hypersonic X-51 WaveRider aircraft crashed today during an attempt to hit Mach 6 while traveling over the Pacific Ocean. The cause of the crash was a faulty control fin, which compromised the test before the Scramjet engine could be lit. A vehicle traveling at Mach 6 (six times the speed of sound) would be able to travel from New York to London in just one hour."
Looks like they found the offinding piece of hardware.
Have gnu, will travel.
It takes 2-3 hours to get through security at the airport, and 1-2 hours to get bags and transportation at the other end, plus an hour commute time to the hotel. I'd rather have a big plane with a lay flat bed, and show up the next morning.
Four were built, three have been tested, one remains.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It's always a little strange to see the 'New York to London' figure given for something that is fairly clearly intended for blunt-force diplomacy, not passenger travel.
We ditched the Concorde years ago because there weren't enough customers to make flying that fast economic.
Yeah, 640 mph oughta be enough...
Initially this will be for better cruise missiles, only after the technology has matured would they consider it for human transport.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Why not build several, perhaps 3, at the time?
I doubt it would make the project three times as expensive.
They actually built 4. The first one flew for 143 seconds at hypersonic speeds, during the 2nd flight the engine shut down prematurely due to airflow disruption, and the 3rd flight is discussed in the linked article that no one is reading. They still have one more, and I am guessing they documented the design somewhere so they could probably build additional vehicles in the future if need be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-15
First flew in 1959. Reached Mach of 6.04 at one point. Had a pilot in it, not just a drone.
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
End of line..
Depends where it crashes.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
"While the hypersonic flight test didn't go very well, we're making excellent progress in artificial coral reef dispersion."
They include that bit about "from LA to NY in one hour" so that people can grasp how fast the speed is.
It isn't meant to make you conjure up a day where you'll be flying that speed. It isn't meant to sell you on an airline ticket in the future...it's simply a way to communicate speed to a broader audience. Anything you think of beyond the raw speed involved is *you* day dreaming.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
and we still lack the capability to punch someone over TCP/IP...
Of course we can. The USB Missle Launcher works over WMS or Skype. It qualifies for a sufficiently loose definition of 'punch'.
It's not about flying that fast, it's about operating a supersonic combustion engine to produce positive net thrust. Anyone can stick a rocket on the back of a tube and fly fast, but you have to carry all of your oxidizer with you (or use a monopropellant). With this you just carry the fuel and let the shock transition form the compressor for your jet engine. Of course, it's not quite that simple, since you can't slow down the flow to be subsonic and still achieve + thrust, so you've got to make combustion occur in a flow that's faster than the speed of sound.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
when writers should be acknowledging that such meaningful (ie, passenger and cargo) flights will never happen.
"Never" encompasses a very long period of time, and should almost never be used in speaking about technology. I'm sure 250 years ago people would have also said it would never be possible to communicate with another person on the other side of the planet in real-time, and yet here we are.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
How do you know what the risks will be after the technology is commercialized? The Concorde only had one crash in its history, and that was on takeoff due to a blown tire and debris hitting the wing under the fuel tanks.
And yeah, I'm sure everyone agrees the future of intercontinental travel is undoubtedly in automated cars...
Yet scientists/engineers have learned a hell of a lot in 250 years, among them (a) what kind of shapes are required to successfully pass Mach 1, and (b) how much extra energy is required to double from Mach 1 to Mach 2 and then double again to Mach 4.
Bog standard humans have learned at what point the extra speed isn't worth the stupendous extra cost.
This is why civilian aircraft reached their approximate speed peak 55 years ago with the Boeing 707 and has settled around 0.85 Mach 44 years ago with the Boeing 747. Everything else since then has been reducing noise and fuel consumption. Even in airplane size, the 747 was the biggest passenger plane for 35+ years.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
At 6x the speed of sound, no-one can hear your baby scream.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am guessing they documented the design somewhere so they could probably build additional vehicles in the future if need be.
you think? or maybe they will have to start from scratch, and see what they can remember from when they built the first four.
I know the U.S. Marines were interested in a suborbital deployment system, where they could put marines on your doorstep anywhere in the world in a couple hours' notice.
I'm not sure where I read about it (probably here, actually), but it's been a while.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Some monitoring and maintenance? The problems, just off the top of my head, of a suspended-in-the-middle-of-the-sea scheme which would need to be high enough to pass over the highest peaks yet deep enough to not be affected by wave action are:
(a) multiple ocean currents shearing it,
(b) the weight of the cables would be stupendous,
(c) the pressure on the 3,000 mile long tube at 1,000 m would be 1470 psi,
(d) salt water is *very* corrosive,
(e) one manufacturing or construction mistake and the high pressure water instantly destroys it, killing everyone in the 3,000 mile tube,
(f) exposure to terrorism, and
(f) lastly and by no means least: EXPENSE.
While I'm sure that for a few trillion dollars it could be built, the you and Grishnakh must first answer, "Why?" 550 mph is a Good Enough balance between time and money, though if you *really* want to get lots of stuff get faster from Here to There, invent some new ship hull design or coating to reduce friction or maybe a new, high-efficiency engine which allows the ship to go faster while using the same amount of fuel that they use now.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Actually, I agree with you on (a)-(f). The advantages of using a subterranean tunnel, which is implied in my post, is that it's much less externally exposed to terrorist actions and, while the pressure would be huge under the ocean floor, more of the pressure could be redistributed into/supported by the surrounding rock with the obvious remaining problem being tectonic plate boundaries. Of course, digging tunnels through rock just makes your last point, expense, even more relevant.
However, suppose EMCC manage to get the funding and Polywell technology working for a WB-D 100MW p-B demo plant. Line up 5-10 of them on a train (to keep the cross-section small) and you've got a lot of self-contained power that give you a lot more options for tunnelling than your typical carbide/diamond borers: direct thermal application, railgun-launched metal projectiles that could be picked out of the tailings by magnets and reformed/re-used, high-pressure water jets, or some combination of these or other techniques that might give you orders of magnitude faster and cheaper boring rates than currently available.
Why? Because if you've got p-B fusion then electricty is cheap and relatively clean, Nb for superconducting magnets become cheaper (it's refined from niobium oxide concentrate through electron beam refining), while jet fuel combustion pollutes with both greenhouse gases and other pollutants and is based on non-renewable crude oil. Most transportation and industrial production can be switched to using fusion-produced electricity, but probably not flight (at least not at current jet speeds, let-alone supersonic). An evacuated subterranean line can go from downtown to downtown, requires less intrusive and time consuming security screening than flight-based transportation because the failure modes are more limited, will likely require less power to operate, and would provide significant improvements in travel times at all stages of the process. Once the tunnels are built, large planes will be useless for anything other than transcontinental travel. For scenic flights you would probably use dirigibles instead. Really, with pB fusion available, the question becomes: why not?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire