Boeing X-50A Dropped by DARPA

Aerospace Daily are reporting that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have decided to drop the X-50 program after they lost both prototypes to crashs.



The craft was pretty much doomed from the very beginning despite being an interesting project as the concept has intrinsic control issues. The first crash occured in March 2004 after only two short hovers and the decision was made to continue the program with the single remaining craft.

On 12th April this year the second craft was lost during an envelope expansion flight. They never even performed a flight where the craft switched from rotor to fixed wing flight and Boeing is going use the remainder of the $52million on summing up the few actual achievments made.

Now I dont want any people saying that this project was ended because it has "gone into the black". The X-50 has been as dead as Elvis for the past two years!

Elvis died two years ago??

Damn GFAD cheers for the breaking news!!

only kidding. Its a good thing they dropped that monstrosity of a hybrid - good for nothing, built for every thing... Now lets get back to a good old comanche spin off, or a better way to get level flight speeds in a nice safe convertable winged craft..

Cheers for the piccie, as the only one I had was of it in hover mode.

I meant it was "as dead as elvis" ever since the first crash "two years ago". Two separate bits! Made me laugh.

I wasn't aware of a comanche spin-off do you have any additional info?

There are obvious advantages to having a hybrid craft of this kind but there have to be alot of sacrifices alon the way in aerodynamics, control issue etc. Sometimes I think its just not worth it.

Originally posted by gfad

I meant it was "as dead as elvis" ever since the first crash "two years ago". Two separate bits! Made me laugh.

I wasn't aware of a comanche spin-off do you have any additional info?

There are obvious advantages to having a hybrid craft of this kind but there have to be alot of sacrifices alon the way in aerodynamics, control issue etc. Sometimes I think its just not worth it.

I have heard through the grapevine that although this "thing" has been dead since the first craft crashed, the main reason for not pursuing technological development of this any further is that the same task can be accomplished with a flying wing airframe with ducted lift fans in the wings. It accomplishes the same goal but uses a different methodology.

Interesting that Lockheed has been touting such a design of late - and now the announcement of the dead Elvis ...er I mean X-50 program. Chalk another one up for LockMart.

Below: Lockheed's ducted fan flying wing transport concept

www.hitechweb.szm.sk...

here check out this drawing from Boeing - look at the middle design and notice the similarities of the craft.

Will be interesting to see which designs come out on top. I am betting on LM winning the comp. Didn't get the LO bombers, but sure as hell got every thing else!

I think everyone saw this coming.

This months issue of Popsci has a good article by Bill Sweetman, has some good info, and pictures (one of which intelgurl has posted).

...not much else to say but...

Originally posted by intelgurl
I have heard through the grapevine that although this "thing" has been dead since the first craft crashed, the main reason for not pursuing technological development of this any further is that the same task can be accomplished with a flying wing airframe with ducted lift fans in the wings. It accomplishes the same goal but uses a different methodology.

Do I sense a hint of disdain for the X-50? A "thing"?

I think you are right, although ducted liftfans add weight to the airframe its probably about equivalent to the mechanics involved in switching the X-50s thrust, yet much less is sacrificed in the area of aerodynamics ie control.

Originally posted by Murcielago
This months issue of Popsci has a good article by Bill Sweetman, has some good info, and pictures (one of which intelgurl has posted).

Yeah I started a thread on the article here., I couldnt decide whether to put it in the Area 51 forum or here but I decided on Area 51 forum since the article was specifically about plaes there. The new Aurora pic looks pretty good but in my opinion, and intelgurls I believe, I wish Bill Sweetman would drop the Aurora subject, hes not raised ANY new information on the subject in this article hes just summarised information we have known from practically 10 years.