U.S. Air Force Set To Begin X-51 Hypersonic Flight Tests

U.S. Air Force Set To Begin X-51 Hypersonic Flight Tests

The maiden flight of the X-51 Waverider aircraft — the first U.S. hypersonic vehicle to fly in six years — is scheduled to take place later in March. Boeing Defense, Space & Security Systems of St. Louis has been developing the aircraft since 2003 on behalf of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The missile-shaped X-51 will be carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber, Joe Vogel, Boeing’s director of hypersonics, said in a Feb. 22 interview. It will be released from the jet over the Pacific Ocean and drop for four seconds until its rocket motor ignites and accelerates it to about 5,800 kilometers per hour, just shy of the widely accepted start of hypersonic flight at Mach 5, or about 6,100 kilometers per hour. At that point, its air-breathing scramjet — or supersonic combustion ramjet — engine, built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., will kick in, shooting the craft to Mach 6, or more than 7,400 kilometers per hour.

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X-51 WaveRider


It looks like the renouned scramjet is making another debut in the form of the x-51! should be interesting to see what this baby can do!

Wild looking ride

Got a seat for Roger Ramjet ?



[edit on 10-3-2010 by radarloveguy]

thanks for sharing this mate

Exciting... would be great to see in flight

Ocker

I sure wish the time and place for these tests would be published. Just so we know where to look in the sky for them.

Vandenberg AFB launch schedule.

Viewing Vandenberg missile launches.

So just out of curiosity, these suckers could hypothetically be launched into space (from wings of B-52's and such? Provided they were obviously reinforced a great deal and we actually had a reason to do such a thing with a small vehicle similar to this.

Originally posted by philosearcher
So just out of curiosity, these suckers could hypothetically be launched into space (from wings of B-52's and such? Provided they were obviously reinforced a great deal and we actually had a reason to do such a thing with a small vehicle similar to this.

Nope. For one, they don't reach orbital velocity...for another, they're air-breathers, which rules out space flight.