Posted on 08/15/2012 11:23:51 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The dreams of being able to fly from New York to London in under an hour are once again put on hold, as the latest effort to fly at over five times the speed of sound has ended in failure.
A US Air Force test of a missile that is supposed to travel at six times the speed of sound has ended in failure when the vehicle went out of control and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.
It is still unclear what went wrong with the test flight. However, it joins a long list of failed hypersonic flights that shows just how difficult it is to reach these so-called hypersonic speeds.
The X-51 WaveRider - an air vehicle powered by a scramjet, a supersonic combustion engine, was dropped from a B-52 bomber off the coast of southern California on Tuesday. It was supposed to be propelled by a solid-rocket booster, then ignite its scramjet engine to reach speeds of up to Mach 6.
The X-51 is one of several military test programmes aimed at building an air vehicle that can travel at hypersonic speeds, usually defined as Mach 5 or above. Tuesday’s flight was the last of three planned tests of the X-51, a vehicle that was supposed to demonstrate the feasibility of a hypersonic missile.
But even building a test vehicle has proved difficult: the first X-51 flight test was cut short due to a flight anomaly, and the second test failed after the vehicle didn’t separate from its rocket, as planned. Yesterday’s failure is likely to raise even more questions about the future of hypersonic efforts. “Hypersonics test and evaluation is extremely unforgiving of miscalculation and error,” says Richard Hallion, a former senior advisor to the Air Force, and a leading expert on hypersonics.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
They (another team) pulled off the rocket hovering, cable lowering of the martian rover a few days ago. THAT was impressive.
This is much lower budget, with room for error. They are using that room.
The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer........
Lots of work going on with the supersonic/hyperspeed air breathing engines since the 60s, still not there yet
Agreed. But ponder this: Is there any other animal on earth that would climb into an aluminum tube and allow themselves to be hurled through the air at supersonic speed like this? And we are the smart ones?
the same “animal” has airconditioning and gets around on in a land vehicle which is powered by causing little explosions.
Horses could outrun the first cars too.
It's grrrrr ATE !
Even if it is in a few hundred small pieces on the sea floor I expect that the Navy will expend a lot of resources recovering the X-51A. An opponent could learn a lot about hypersonic flight just by analyzing the materials used.
Thanks. Nice break away...
Will admit I find it a bit funny though, in that they don’t explain that air intake below, and what the captured compacted air is used for.
Instead they point to JP-7 fuel and the associated fuel systems.
I realize the thing has to get past a threshold, so the JP-7 is needed, but it’s what happens next that is the real excitement here.
Great movie...
Several days ago they said there were no plans for recovery.
Perhaps they expect the whole thing to burn up on re-entry. ;^)
It all depends on how small the pieces of the person are.... but that was another news story.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.