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NASA Aeronautics Budget Proposes Return Of X-Planes (phys.org)
If President Obama's recently released federal budget request is approved for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2016, next year will be the first in a bold 10-year plan by NASA Aeronautics to achieve huge goals in reducing fuel use, emissions, and noise by the way aircraft are designed, and the way they operate in the air and on the ground.
One exciting piece of this 10-year plan is New Aviation Horizons -- an ambitious undertaking by NASA to design, build and fly a variety of flight demonstration vehicles, or "X-planes." The demos included advancements in lightweight composite materials that are needed to create revolutionary aircraft structures, an advanced fan design to improve propulsion and reduce noise in jet engines, designs to reduce noise from wing flaps and landing gear, shape-changing wing flaps, and even coating to prevent bug residue buildup on wings.
One exciting piece of this 10-year plan is New Aviation Horizons -- an ambitious undertaking by NASA to design, build and fly a variety of flight demonstration vehicles, or "X-planes." The demos included advancements in lightweight composite materials that are needed to create revolutionary aircraft structures, an advanced fan design to improve propulsion and reduce noise in jet engines, designs to reduce noise from wing flaps and landing gear, shape-changing wing flaps, and even coating to prevent bug residue buildup on wings.
Well, the X-15 was an experimental aircraft, the capabilities of which we understand enough today to not need to repeat - our current technological limit that is being tested is air breathing hypersonic aircraft, not rocket propelled hypersonic aircraft. Rocket propelled hypersonics are a "solved problem", so why do we need to keep spending money there?
The SR-71 can be equaled or exceeded by several countries today, but the reality is that it was a costly aircraft that was superseded by satellites and the aircraft it was intended to replace (the U-2). If a mission requirement for the SR-71 was ever to come around again, a new aircraft will be built - and as it stands, feasability studies are being undertaken into a hypersonic SR-72... The SR-71 simply outlived its usefulness, and the world moved on.
Unless you are suggesting the US government should be spending money on useless, ego boosting, prestige projects rather than actually advancing technology across a broader range of areas, what do you suggest should be being done?